View Full Version : Bailing out the unions...
https://www.lexology.com/r.ashx?i=6782236&l=8H3K3BE
Call me selfish, but I dislike the idea of paying for the retirement of union members who drove their employers out of business while purchasing the obligatory Harley and boat on a laborer salary. Plus taking unemployment during the winter.
Coal Dragger
08-05-19, 13:48
That’s right blame the workers.
No bad management sunk those companies. Nope.
SomeOtherGuy
08-05-19, 13:53
Whoever you want to blame for the pension plans being underfunded, us taxpayers should not be on the hook for the pensions. Fairness would be making the business owners/shareholders responsible, and senior management second. All those pension promises don't write themselves, and a pension that fails was usually sabotaged decades earlier - often from day 1.
Blame sometimes belongs with unions, and sometimes with management, and sometimes the industry is 99% dead anyway and the union strike is just the 1% tap needed to kill it.
Whoever you want to blame for the pension plans being underfunded, us taxpayers should not be on the hook for the pensions. Fairness would be making the business owners/shareholders responsible, and senior management second. All those pension promises don't write themselves, and a pension that fails was usually sabotaged decades earlier - often from day 1.
Blame sometimes belongs with unions, and sometimes with management, and sometimes the industry is 99% dead anyway and the union strike is just the 1% tap needed to kill it.
You nailed it.
As someone who lives in a Right to Fire state I say screw em
https://www.lexology.com/r.ashx?i=6782236&l=8H3K3BE
Call me selfish, but I dislike the idea of paying for the retirement of union members who drove their employers out of business while purchasing the obligatory Harley and boat on a laborer salary. Plus taking unemployment during the winter.
After working at a place that was unionized, but not being in the union nor in ownership/management, I can assure you blame goes to both groups for any ultimate failures.
As someone who lives in a Right to Fire state I say screw em
As a union member (FOP), I say screw em too. I worked in the auto industry too long to be a fan of 98% of union labor.
Imagine if they’d taken control of their own retirement fund and held those funds in their own name instead of relying on a union?
Unions diminish my quality of living and cost me money. They encourage inefficiency and cover up for and protect employees who should no longer hold those jobs, or should be imprisoned.
It’s not 1900 anymore. Workers have rights, labor laws exist and you don’t need a union to protect workers any more. Now unions are just friends of the employed and enemy of the poeple.
Top three on my list are teachers, police and postal unions. All three of these unions dimish the quality of service the public provides by protecting its members.
The idea of tax payers bailing out a union makes my blood boil just like tax payers bailing out student loans. Not my problem, not my choice.
It’s election time again. Which means it’s time to buy votes with taxpayer dollars.
FromMyColdDeadHand
08-05-19, 15:15
"multiemployer pension funds"- that means the unions right? The Unions took over control of the pensions, correct? What does this have to do with the companies. If the Unions bought it, then they broke it, I don't see how that is the companies problems. Unions seem to want people to think that the union employs them, not the company. I'm guessing the union promised some benefit based on some money from the actual employer and then didn't manage the money right.
"multiemployer pension funds", because they know that if they said 'Union pension funds' people would lose their votes.
Coal Dragger
08-05-19, 15:22
Go work for a Class 1 RR in a craft job and then tell me about how unions are not needed.
FromMyColdDeadHand
08-05-19, 15:46
Crafts? I can make a pterodactyl or a broach. ;)
Maybe I understand when you have a large population that is stuck in a location with no real options- but when you are talking about how many positions and how many alternatives you have. The job sucks, sure. Don't do that job?
Someone going to tell me that a union protects you more than OSHA? The EPA? The FDA?
The unions had a place and a time. Now ain't it. Maybe it will come again as a way to deal with new revolutionary changes in employment- just like when unions started.
Unions seem to want people to think that the union employs them, not the company.
Yes. I hate that.
I work in a previously heavily unionized industry, and the carcasses of the dead and dying companies, as well as those who can’t be competitive enough to stay in business (sometimes directly due to union agreements signed by both parties, sometimes due to poor management, sometimes both) are in the way and need to go. And the attitudes of most of their employees (who think the union somehow employs them) are reprehensible; they will have difficulty getting hired anywhere else.
Unions are not all bad.
Most of unions’ purpose is irrelevant since the 70’s and earlier.
Most (non-trades) union workers I know got out and did something else if they had the capacity to do so (including me).
Coal Dragger
08-05-19, 17:21
Crafts? I can make a pterodactyl or a broach. ;)
Maybe I understand when you have a large population that is stuck in a location with no real options- but when you are talking about how many positions and how many alternatives you have. The job sucks, sure. Don't do that job?
Someone going to tell me that a union protects you more than OSHA? The EPA? The FDA?
The unions had a place and a time. Now ain't it. Maybe it will come again as a way to deal with new revolutionary changes in employment- just like when unions started.
I have never seen an OSHA employee, EPA inspector etc on the property while I've been at work. The FRA certainly seems to give roughly zero shits about RR employee safety, equipment inspection, public safety or anything other than collecting their paycheck.
The unions for RR employees exist primarily at this point to defend employees in company kangaroo courts, and in front of arbitrators. RR's love to fire employees as a way to assign blame. Their first instinct to blame the crew no matter what, which usually involves firing the crew. So the unions spend a lot of time representing members who have been wrongfully terminated. For example in the past 3 months the General Chairman's office of the BLE-T has successfully represented a few of my former co-workers in the terminal I work in, it took a few years because arbitration dockets are backed up but they all got their jobs back. One of them with something like $400K of back pay. When an arbitrator tells the company lawyer that not only can they not fire an employee for whatever bullshit excuse they used to fire him, but that they also owe the guy $400K; then you know the company is making some shit heel decisions. As it turns out the company stooge was so mad he wouldn't even sign the arbitration decision, got up and walked out. **** that guy, I hope he dies of butt-hurt.
I'm also enjoying the unions helping to defend some of my co-workers from some legal bullshit involving some fatalities because our employer gives zero ****s about safety. Long story short my friends keep getting called for depositions from the company legal team, as the company desperately tries to blame dead guys and keep from getting their shit pushed in in court. They're totally going to get their shit pushed in by a jury and it will be glorious.
Plus collective bargaining has been reasonably effective at negotiating wage increases for the last 13 years that I have been in the industry.
Union elevator constructor here. Absolutely love my union and would fight tooth and nail for it. Our union is an actual well run machine though. No stronger union than elevator constructors around today.
Whoever you want to blame for the pension plans being underfunded, us taxpayers should not be on the hook for the pensions. Fairness would be making the business owners/shareholders responsible, and senior management second. All those pension promises don't write themselves, and a pension that fails was usually sabotaged decades earlier - often from day 1.
Blame sometimes belongs with unions, and sometimes with management, and sometimes the industry is 99% dead anyway and the union strike is just the 1% tap needed to kill it.
This. Pensions are part of payment and the company and people who failed to fund it should be liable.
At the same time tax payers should not be liable. At all. And unions have and will price themselves out of jobs in certain circumstances.
"multiemployer pension funds"- that means the unions right? The Unions took over control of the pensions, correct? What does this have to do with the companies. If the Unions bought it, then they broke it, I don't see how that is the companies problems. Unions seem to want people to think that the union employs them, not the company. I'm guessing the union promised some benefit based on some money from the actual employer and then didn't manage the money right.
"multiemployer pension funds", because they know that if they said 'Union pension funds' people would lose their votes.
I missed this, good points.
I have to say, I manage a union shop, and our guys are great, and the union president at the shop is 100% reasonable. That said, Ive worked with other types in the past and it was not good for the company, nor the workers. I dont hate the idea if unions, but they are still more of a detriment IMO and Id never work for one, but my experience is limited to one union org.
HardToHandle
08-05-19, 23:40
I have to say, I manage a union shop, and our guys are great, and the union president at the shop is 100% reasonable. That said, Ive worked with other types in the past and it was not good for the company, nor the workers. I dont hate the idea if unions, but they are still more of a detriment IMO and Id never work for one, but my experience is limited to one union org.
I work for a household name unionized company, but have experience in five different unions and have been local officer before becoming management. If you have a collaborative approach and decent folks, the union system really works. I wish I knew what the secret was, but a little bit of employer-employee tension can make real progress.
We had one local and the company get focused on safety. Awesome results by both sides not being douchebags. 300 miles away, a different local is still maiming folks and grieving all the wrong fights. In that case, it was a giant local (1000s) that got collaborative and a smaller local (100s) that fights solutions.
As noted, long term, both sides have to be looking for the future. When that happens things work.
As an aside, our unions had Cadillac health plans under Obamacare. The Democrats screwed unions and the employers with the healthcare tax policy. My biggest frustration was the unions took that hit in a middle of a recession and stayed quiet. Republicans came to the defense of the unions and while the DC folks know that, it doesn’t make for a good rank and file talking point.
Unions, good or bad, why is it the taxpayer's duty to bail them out? Again, this is is just buying votes.
Unions, good or bad, why is it the taxpayer's duty to bail them out? Again, this is is just buying votes.
It isn't. Nor was it for the tax payers to bail out GM, banks, and so on.
Crafts? I can make a pterodactyl or a broach. ;)
Maybe I understand when you have a large population that is stuck in a location with no real options- but when you are talking about how many positions and how many alternatives you have. The job sucks, sure. Don't do that job?
Someone going to tell me that a union protects you more than OSHA? The EPA? The FDA?
The unions had a place and a time. Now ain't it. Maybe it will come again as a way to deal with new revolutionary changes in employment- just like when unions started.
Maybe, but sometimes it isn't that simple to leave. Do some research on tech companies no poaching agreements that popped up in the last few years.
Unions have had and undoubtedly will continue to have a place. And I imagine some areas will come up that are benefited in the short term by union involvement, as long as some companies do sketchy things.
But that doesn’t mean anyone else should have to make up the pension payments when the unions or union-dominated companies fail.
I didn't see any one mention organized crime as an issue. Teamsters? AFL-CIO? IOOT? (Typographers) this list is long...
Teamsters. Yeah.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2019/7/30/20746272/ex-teamsters-leader-john-coli-extortion-case
They have been screwed up from Day One.
Whoever you want to blame for the pension plans being underfunded, us taxpayers should not be on the hook for the pensions. Fairness would be making the business owners/shareholders responsible, and senior management second. All those pension promises don't write themselves, and a pension that fails was usually sabotaged decades earlier - often from day 1.
Blame sometimes belongs with unions, and sometimes with management, and sometimes the industry is 99% dead anyway and the union strike is just the 1% tap needed to kill it.
Pretty much where I'm at.
HardToHandle
08-06-19, 21:32
Unions, good or bad, why is it the taxpayer's duty to bail them out? Again, this is is just buying votes.
Somebody is going to pay either way.
Case in Point -
During the Bill Clinton era, 1996, Newt Gingrich passes welfare reform. The intent is that abled bodied people will have time limited welfare benefits. Initially it drops the welfare rolls and absolutely stopped the growth rate of welfare as a federal budget line.
However, the US disability rate takes off in 1996 and continues to climb to and above the number of people who were taken off welfare. The data supports the contention that the same number of people are getting government assistance, just under a different program. In this case, the Social Security taxes are now supporting the same people as got welfare, just the Social Security Trust Fund is a direct tax on individual income and doesn’t get support from corporate taxation or other government revenues.
In other words, a shell game. That’s the game here relative to unions. There aren’t real consequences for the union pension mismanagement, because no one wants Aunt Mildred to starve.
58388
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/disability_trends/sect04.html
Fuuuuuuuuu$k the unions. Tax payers should never ever be on the hook for mismanagement of union pension plans.
I have never seen an OSHA employee, EPA inspector etc on the property while I've been at work. The FRA certainly seems to give roughly zero shits about RR employee safety, equipment inspection, public safety or anything other than collecting their paycheck.
The unions for RR employees exist primarily at this point to defend employees in company kangaroo courts, and in front of arbitrators. RR's love to fire employees as a way to assign blame. Their first instinct to blame the crew no matter what, which usually involves firing the crew. So the unions spend a lot of time representing members who have been wrongfully terminated. For example in the past 3 months the General Chairman's office of the BLE-T has successfully represented a few of my former co-workers in the terminal I work in, it took a few years because arbitration dockets are backed up but they all got their jobs back. One of them with something like $400K of back pay. When an arbitrator tells the company lawyer that not only can they not fire an employee for whatever bullshit excuse they used to fire him, but that they also owe the guy $400K; then you know the company is making some shit heel decisions. As it turns out the company stooge was so mad he wouldn't even sign the arbitration decision, got up and walked out. **** that guy, I hope he dies of butt-hurt.
I'm also enjoying the unions helping to defend some of my co-workers from some legal bullshit involving some fatalities because our employer gives zero ****s about safety. Long story short my friends keep getting called for depositions from the company legal team, as the company desperately tries to blame dead guys and keep from getting their shit pushed in in court. They're totally going to get their shit pushed in by a jury and it will be glorious.
Plus collective bargaining has been reasonably effective at negotiating wage increases for the last 13 years that I have been in the industry.
I say no bail outs for unions, corporations, students, homeowners, etc. That said, I’m unionized and I’m thankful I am. Like anything else, there are good unions and bad unions. Unfortunately, as CD has described, unions are vital to protecting employees health and welfare in many industries.
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