The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: thundley4 on November 13, 2008, 01:12:01 PM
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ERIE, Pa.—A union is fighting the firing of municipal bus driver in northwestern Pennsylvania who struck and killed a surgeon three years ago and then hit another pedestrian in September. That was the third time the driver hit a civilian since 2000.
The union's grievance against the Erie Metropolitan Transit Authority says last month's firing of 49-year-old David Justka was unfair. That stemmed from Justka's most recent accident Sept. 30 in which he injured a 16-year-old girl.
Justka was previously fired for hitting the bicycling surgeon in August 2005, though the union helped him get his job back. The widow's lawsuit against the transit authority settled for $500,000 last month.
Among the grievance issues is whether Justka's past driving record is relevant to his current firing.
This (http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_10973191) is BS, and we only have more of this to look forward to if the Card Check bill is passed.
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This (http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_10973191) is BS, and we only have more of this to look forward to if the Card Check bill is passed.
Waddya mean "if"?
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Previous killings do not justify firing for the current killing ! Only a union could argue that preposterous position, Betcha the union isn't reimbursing the city for lawsuits stemming from the accidents.
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Waddya mean "if"?
You're right, I should have said "when", it is passed.
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The US Postal Service, which used to have a monopoly on letters and packages is now 2.9 BILLION dollars in the red. Why? There is a union for everything. There are at least five separate unions for those intellectual giants the letter carriers.
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This is a perfect example of why Unions need to go down the road.
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Unions need to get back to doinw what they should have been doing all along, seeing that a FAIR wage is paid for the wiork done in a REASONABLY safe work enviornment and providing a single negotiator for the workmen.
NOT a bloated, political bueauracy extorting excessive compensation for unskilled labor forcing the employer out of business over time.
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Unions need to get back to doinw what they should have been doing all along, seeing that a FAIR wage is paid for the wiork done in a REASONABLY safe work enviornment and providing a single negotiator for the workmen.
NOT a bloated, political bueauracy extorting excessive compensation for unskilled labor forcing the employer out of business over time.
Right...that's the government's job.
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Unions need to get back to doinw what they should have been doing all along, seeing that a FAIR wage is paid for the wiork done in a REASONABLY safe work enviornment and providing a single negotiator for the workmen.
NOT a bloated, political bueauracy extorting excessive compensation for unskilled labor forcing the employer out of business over time.
The need for this is long gone. I hear this arguement from Union workers and it makes me think, WHEN was the last time you saw a sweat shop in the USA? Why does a guy who stands in one place and does a mindless job deserve $25-$30 an hr?? This isn't the turn of the 19th century.
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EXACTLY, I wrote a reasonable wage. $20-$30 is not reasonable for an unskilled labor job. THAN'S UP TO $1200 a week. , or over $60,000 per annum for UNSKILLED labor. That's nuts. Do you think the Carolina's unshilled laborers get that? NO, they don't.
The ABILITY to form a union , by SECRET ballot only, is usually enough these days to keep employers from gettint too previous. But, not always, and there are "sweat shop" employers out there, given the chance.
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Previous killings do not justify firing for the current killing ! Only a union could argue that preposterous position, Betcha the union isn't reimbursing the city for lawsuits stemming from the accidents.
In fairness, I think the article says that the latest accident resulted in injury but not death. Your point still stands, of course.
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EXACTLY, I wrote a reasonable wage. $20-$30 is not reasonable for an unskilled labor job. THAN'S UP TO $1200 a week. , or over $60,000 per annum for UNSKILLED labor. That's nuts. Do you think the Carolina's unshilled laborers get that? NO, they don't.
The ABILITY to form a union , by SECRET ballot only, is usually enough these days to keep employers from gettint too previous. But, not always, and there are "sweat shop" employers out there, given the chance.
Every day..................they are proud members of the IAMAW
Why they are is a problem with me.
Right now I'm qualified to work in three different shops, yet the branch head won't let me due to Union backlash. The moment a GS worker walks in and does the job of a WG.........8shit hits the fan. Yet where I have asked gto work is 3 months behind.....................yet the Union wins out
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What state are you in? Is it a right to work state? Man, that situation stinks on ice. And why we cannot compete overseas in any labor intensive products.
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Unions need to get back to doinw what they should have been doing all along, seeing that a FAIR wage is paid for the wiork done in a REASONABLY safe work enviornment and providing a single negotiator for the workmen.
NOT a bloated, political bueauracy extorting excessive compensation for unskilled labor forcing the employer out of business over time.
How much of Detriot's automaker issues are due to the unions?
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I admit that I haven't been following this issue too closely. What is so bad about the Card Check bill? What exactly will it do that is so bad.
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How much of Detriot's automaker issues are due to the unions?
Just the pension plan for GM adds $2300 to the price of every new car. They have 780,000 on their pension plan that pays most to the tune of 60,000 a year! Google it!
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I admit that I haven't been following this issue too closely. What is so bad about the Card Check bill? What exactly will it do that is so bad.
It stops the secret ballot. In other words, the union thugs will know how you voted!
Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out they can threaten you for your participation. It's what they been doin' since the union's inception.
Lot easier to get the workers to vote for you if you can break a few legs of the folks that disagree with you!
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It stops the secret ballot. In other words, the union thugs will know how you voted!
Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out they can threaten you for your participation. It's what they been doin' since the union's inception.
Lot easier to get the workers to vote for you if you can break a few legs of the folks that disagree with you!
That doesn't worry me. If one lacks the balls, to state in public, what they stand for then they are pussies.
IMO.
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That doesn't worry me. If one lacks the balls, to state in public, what they stand for then they are pussies.
IMO.
Don't deal with unions much, do ya? To call them Mafia thugs would be an understatement.
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It enables the Union to send thugs to your house, say, at night, and ask ever so nicely if you will sign a card saying you want the union. No secret ballot, just you and the union thugs, there, in the dark.
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I admit that I haven't been following this issue too closely. What is so bad about the Card Check bill? What exactly will it do that is so bad.
No more secret ballots. Your vote will be public. Think that might influence folks....just a bit. Nah, there wouldn't be any voter intimidation on union issues. :whatever:
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Don't deal with unions much, do ya? To call them Mafia thugs would be an understatement.
That is correct. I don't deal with unions, thus am possibly a bit niave about it.
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It enables the Union to send thugs to your house, say, at night, and ask ever so nicely if you will sign a card saying you want the union. No secret ballot, just you and the union thugs, there, in the dark.
I suspect I have them out gunned. I don't answer the door at night without a firearm at hand.
:-)
But I take your point. I can see where such activities by the unions could be intimidating to folks.
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What Unions won't talk about is how many business's have "folded up" just to break the Union, and then reopened offering the same jobs at the same rate without the Union skimming workers wages.
They are an impediment to jobs in this country.
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The US Postal Service, which used to have a monopoly on letters and packages is now 2.9 BILLION dollars in the red. Why? There is a union for everything. There are at least five separate unions for those intellectual giants the letter carriers.
That's not entirely true. The USPS really started hurting when they faced competition like Fed Ex and UPS and when the airline industry deregulated and allowed those companies to compete with them directly. Not to mention with the dawn of the online banking and such, a lot of services are quickly becoming obsolete. One of their more successful competators(UPS) has a union too. Normally, I'm not a union defender, but the USPS had a lot going on in the last 25 years that helped get it to where it is. It was not only attributable to the union, although no doubt the strength of governmental unions AND regulation hindered the USPS greatly from expanding and competing in the manner it needed to in order the challenge both Fed Ex and UPS.
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Remember when fed ex etc overnight letters had to be in a BOX? By law, letters could be delevered only by the USPS, but boxed "freight" could be delevered by anyone.
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That doesn't worry me. If one lacks the balls, to state in public, what they stand for then they are pussies.
IMO.
It doesn't have to bother YOU. It only has to bother enough people who don't want to have an "Unfortunate accident" to get the union to a simple majority, then you are along for the ride with the union whether you want to be or not, including dues withholding from your pay in closed shop states...of which there would be more, if the unions had more power, and this is a path to that power for them.
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I actively fought the Teamsters a few decades ago, and wound up sleeping after work until my parents went to bed, then got up and armed myself, then slept after my Father awoke, then to work . Three union thugs were following me around, armed, for over a week. The smallest outweighed me by about 100 lbs.
I was for that period, resolved to the idea that it was going to be a kill of be killed showdown at some point. It damned near was, and it was very disconcerting too. Ihe illegal use of the local LEOs enabled me to defuse the matter until I was sworn into the Army.
The NEXT DAY the thugs were back, and pulled a gun on my cousin , threatening his life.
Yeah, there are tough guys out there who can, when facing the tiger, jump in, and Satan take the hindmost. But most, with familes, children, homes, cannot, so the threats work, and work well. And the LEO's really don't want to be involved until there's blood.
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I have freely admitted to the fact that I have never dealt with unions and am possibly a bit niave about their tactics.
I can only speak for myself.... I for one refuse to give into such strong arm tactics as the unions have been known to use in the past.
It's not that I am some "tough" guy. It's just that I stand by my personal convictions. I simply will not be intimitated in such a fashion. I'd rather die 1st and I mean that most seriously.
But I do understand that others don't share my convictions or attitudes.
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I have freely admitted to the fact that I have never dealt with unions and am possibly a bit niave about their tactics.
I can only speak for myself.... I for one refuse to give into such strong arm tactics as the unions have been known to use in the past.
It's not that I am some "tough" guy. It's just that I stand by my personal convictions. I simply will not be intimitated in such a fashion. I'd rather die 1st and I mean that most seriously.
But I do understand that others don't share my convictions or attitudes.
As you can imagine, with my occupation I share your convictions. However, like what was professed above, many members have wives and children and are not willing to endanger them in order to "stick" by their convictions.
Ya know what ah mean "Vern"?
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How much of Detriot's automaker issues are due to the unions?
Yes.
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Better face the tiger once or twice in this life, then tell us what you think after. Point is, that these things can get very dangerous very fast, and real people can die needlessly.
But, if they ever come "after you" and you know they are comming or have a hint, take this advice given to me decades ago by a couple of "semi retired" hit men. KILL the person they send. Don't say "Hello", don't threaten, bargan, discuss, negotiate. They'll kill you dead as you blather. Just shoot until there's no one standing in front of you, THEN get your pow wow and try and resolve the issue.
When these thugs are interested in you, life becomes very interestingm, and occasionally, very SHORT.
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The anti-union sentiment is a bit much... they're legally obligated to ensure due process was followed, including appeals. As long as the case for his dismissal is solid, there's not much to worry about.
Aren't the courts supposed to ensure that due process is followed? Judges? Juries?
While I'm no fan of the justice system, mostly since there IS no justice, this is the basic premise that we all live under.
Unions, then, are redundant unless the judicial system is so whacked that it takes more attorneys, hired by the unions, to see to it that criminals like this bus driver are adequately "represented." :whatever:
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Ya know what ah mean "Vern"?
I do indeed.
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In an ideal world, there wouldn't be a need for justice systems such as the courts and unions. Not that I'm placing them at the same level, but to an extent they serve similar purposes, as you yourself mentioned.
Union grievance and arbitration processes, allow an individual to stand up against a tyrannical goliath for what's fair and right. Without them; few would have the resources, procedures, or capability too.
Personally, I'm enthralled with the idea of all groups within an organization working in unison for a common goal, a partnership driven towards excellence. But we all know that ceases to exist in many work places. As the very anti-union sentiment expressed almost instinctively here, tends to carry across to many industries and work places amongst executive management and the non-unionized white collar employees. Quite often, to my sincerest dismay, it ceases to be about what's best for the stake holders... and degrades into the ugliness of "us versus them". Where even profitability ceases to be an objective.
Oddly enough, you seem to have convicted this driver, when it hasn't been mentioned once in the article that they were convicted, cited, ticketed, etc. in any of the cases. Granted, I'd be absolutely at a loss and astonished if they weren't, but harnessing that rashness to judge and convict is in part... where I find the unions still serve a purpose, among others.
Let's not mix apples and oranges, shall we? As I'm reading it, we have two issues here. The first has to do with the subject of the thread (which we've gotten away from) - the bus driver who reportedly has injured multiple people and even killed one in his "alleged" checkered past.
This, on the very face of the story from purely that story's viewpoint, is an outrage. And it also happens to sell newspapers and gets blog hits on the web, but I digress.
It goes without saying that this person gets his day in court. But if half of what is reported is true, this guy not only should be punished, but punished severely enough to send a clear message.
Enter Issue #2 - the other part of the outrage, the union.
As you've correctly deduced, there very much is an anti-union sentiment on these pages. After having worked around unions for some years and having a number of family members express the value of unions ("so that I get my money so that I don't have to do no work," is the recurring theme stated by my cousin), I've seen over and over again that common "goals" toward profitability and spirit of "fair play" is completely overshadowed by uncommon greed and corruption that has become all too common - particularly by the unions, though that's an arguable point.
At the risk of hijacking this thread even further, one of the largest elements in Detroit's failures (yes, I was born and raised in that area) is due to unions that, in my view, have gone far beyond the mere "oversight committee" that you're suggesting.
Historically, unions have been corrupt, ruthless, and contemptuous. In the distant past, when sweatshops were common and unions were needed to bring a semblance of control to out-of-control business owners, they served a role. Many, many changes regarding job safety were mandated and done, most of which by various governments. There's no question about that. Unions also saw to it that benefit creep and wage increases rose exponentially to the point where you've got a guy pushing a broom who earns $25 per hour plus an unbelievable assortment of benefits. (Little wonder that outsourcing is done - unions have priced themselves out of the market.)
But in this day and age where unions have crippled those business owners to the point that union grievances are filed because a non-union guy takes immediate action and resolves an issue on the production floor (the supposition being that the non-union guy "took" a union guy's job for all of 10 seconds), I think we've gone way beyond the "oversight committee".
Splitting ridiculous hairs seems to be the order of the day.
If I hadn't seen this myself, I wouldn't be talking about it.
But back to Issue #1:
Let's momentarily disregard this particular allegation for just a minute. Why is this bus driver even WORKING as a bus driver after he's killed someone with said bus? Isn't that some kind of showstopper? Is the union so powerful that common sense can't even be used to rid the system of dangerous people?
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Vonne, just for the sake of clarity:
The cousin I referred to in my earlier post, the guy who smoked dope on a regular basis and who was known to park his ass on a cot until he was "needed" to "troubleshoot" problems at Chrysler and who often bragged about how he earned more money by staying at home collecting occasional voluntary unemployment than he did by going to work, is a cousin by marriage. No gene pool issues there.
I'm glad to see that we agree on some of the more apparent issues. And I'd be the first to agree with you that the overall managerial decisions by the overpaid hacks that run these auto companies have led to the majority of problems with the Big (well, not so big anymore) Three.
Going after the quick buck (light trucks, SUVs, etc.) versus building quality and dependability into their products deliberately building in failure rates in components that are singularly designed to compel people to buy more cars instead of getting the old ones fixed (let me talk to you about my 1993 Ford Taurus sometime), has blown up in the faces of the Detroit elite. Empowering employees to take direct responsibility for stopping production instead of allowing the same old shit to be built tends to speak to people, a practice that Toyota has built into their culture.
In short, it's my position that labor unions in general and the UAW in particular has propagated a culture of "**** the company, just grab at whatever you can get" that has, in part, contributed to Detroit's problems. We can argue about the culpability of the auto industry's executive management and I'd be right there with you - those idiots don't get it. Lee Iococca, bless the ol' coot, was probably the most effective of them all and even he couldn't turn a cow's ear into a silk purse. Just check with him about the Chrysler K cars.
The really bizarre thing is, Michigan is a blue state and has been for just about forever. The overall employment picture and economic situation there has sucked for better than 30 years. A sizeable percentage of the population has fled that shithole.
You'd think that the rest of the people would get a clue.....
But, back to our bus driver again - if the guy was driving the bus and he's had more than one infraction, that's too many. You don't play games with people's safety, but sometimes our zealousness in protecting some guy's job overshadows simple common sense.
You don't give a certified klutz a pair of crutches and not expect the guy to not fall down.
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Considering we're in exactly the same field, do you really consider yourself working with mafia thugs?
The union I'm currently in is actually pretty loose. You can't say that about some of the IBEW locals I've deal with, to say nothing of Teamsters or worse.