hershey
PR Elite
You're mainly seeing the negatives, and yes, there are a lot of them.
Let me put it this way:
George Baker is a bright, young, hard working individual that had enough sense about him to put himself through college to open some doors of opportunity that otherwise wouldn't be available. Georgie has paid a very high price for this education. He has also done his internship and has paid his dues to get where he is at. George is becoming incredibly well skilled in his chosen profession. He even works the "s**t-shifts" that others won't, but he does it so that he can earn a good living, at a good wage, and build a strong future for himself. And he even has enough good sense to live conservatively and put away a bit each week, for his eventual retirement. And he'll do this for the next 45 years.
Now, first you have all of these welfare case freeloaders coming in to get Georgies services on the taxpayers dime. And then you have the incessant greed demands of the corporation that he works for, who will be forever demanding more, more, more, for less, and with less. This corporation wants Georgie to forever be completely flexible, in every possible way, and they, like many and most greedy corporations, have notorious track records of abusing employees, and will retaliate if Georgie screams for any employee rights of his own. Georgie has to fight for every pay increase, has been passed over for promotions or better positions because of nepotism and workplace politics. And everytime he gets a new boss, the same old crap begins all over again. 10 years into his career, Georgie becomes increasingly aggravated. And then the news arrives that the company is now going to screw with his hard earned retirement benefits.
What's Georgie do????? Georgie and his coworkers get fed up, and vote to unionize for collective bargaining rights.
Oh and let's not forget how Congress and the Presidents have the ability to just vote in their own pay and benefits increases. An example is Obama's proposal to increase pay and benefits for retired presidents. (pay increase 18%).
We are Professional. We're not interested in kissing anybody's ass to be recognized as star employees of the month. We just want to do what we do without all the BS. And many of us are very, very good at what we do and get sick and tired of having to defend or prove ourselves over and over to idiot's that are F****ing clueless.
Every job isn't in the capitalistic private sector. And you just aren't going to have those same "A Valued Member of the Team" environments. If you are a city employee who manages the Municipal Sewer Plant, you're not going to work with the same motivations or mentality as an employee of a Building Contractor, or Software Development company. And yet that City employee was required to have at least an Environmental Bachelor Degree, makes himself available 24hrs a day, 365 days a year, and manages a lot of stressful job requirements and accountability. He is entitled to a good wage and benefits for that, and shouldn't have to fight, beg or grovel for it.
Georgie quits his job and gets a better one. Eventually a poor employer wont have employees.
Like I said, not all unions are bad but you still havent answered my question.
In the IBEW it doesnt matter how good an employee is you cant be rewarded much better than a employee who was pushed through the apprenticeship even though he shouldnt have passed. Both a great employee and a substandard employee make the same top rate. Sure there are a couple things like foremans rate and other small bonuses but thats it. How is that not socialism?