Look for the union label!

[Peter_Puget]

The sound you hear is the sound of jobs leaving the Puget Sound....

[olyclimber]

Yay for corporations!

 

It will be interesting to track compensation over there. At least they won't have to pay Guido, right! Hopefully we can get back to a 7 day work week soon, with no overtime so as to keep up with Chinese labor.

[Bug]

You do know of course that unions are socialism?

Maybe now Seattle can return to a free market society.

What a win for capitalism.

[olyclimber]

Not that I think the modern day unions are the greatest instituion.

 

WTF does a union need a golf course for?

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,472304,00.html

[KaskadskyjKozak]

You do know of course that unions are socialism?

 

Yay for the 40 hour work week, eh Bug?

[t_rutl]

Not that I think the modern day unions are the greatest instituion.

 

WTF does a union need a golf course for?

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,472304,00.html

 

the UAW nonetheless...

[t_rutl]

most of those who run unions are scum

[prole]

Any way you cut it, this is a huge victory for American workers.

[j_b]

The race to the bottom continues. At the minimum, it's time to ask back for the billions in tax incentives plus interest Boeing received over the last 20 years.

 

Isn't it remarkable how PP couches it as if he were sorry to see the jobs go, yet he hasn't said a word about the 10,000s of jobs lost over the last couple of years (~11000 this past June alone).

[j_b]

most of those who run unions are scum

 

most of those who assimilate union leaders to scum are corporate tools

[Off_White]

Are they going to rename it the 787 Scabliner?

[j_b]

Onward to the age of the robber barons:

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Onward to the age of the robber barons:

 

 

1960 - 1969 were such golden years. Back to the future!

[j_b]

As a matter of fact, it is widely acknowledged that the 30 years following WW2 were an era of prosperity for most people compared to what followed. An era during which unions were at their strongest.

[wayne]

As a career Union Professional for all of my adult life . I may have a small insight for what may happen here. In my field there is no hiding . The pay is good but if you dont measure up you are gone. It is a free market. It doesnt apply when companies move to areas that dont care about such issues as heath insurance, living wage and a decent retirement. Th companies will win in the end I am afraid. Their poison will get to us all. Until then > The Unions are our only hope against their well organize march to enslavement

[ivan]

As a career Union Professional for all of my adult life . I may have a small insight for what may happen here. In my field there is no hiding . The pay is good but if you dont measure up you are gone. It is a free market. It doesnt apply when companies move to areas that dont care about such issues as heath insurance, living wage and a decent retirement. Th companies will win in the end I am afraid. Their poison will get to us all. Until then > The Unions are our only hope against their well organize march to enslavement

word - i'm in a union too - the cure for a disease is often nearly as deadly as the disease itself - i'm a rep w/n my union n the vain hope that i'll understand it beter and maybe minimize its shitiness. thinking that everything would just be groovy if the goddamned unions were never around is decidedly daft.

[JayB]

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

 

 

[olyclimber]

the invisible hand job of the corporation

[j_b]

in JayB parlance it means that people are supposed to negotiate with owners-managers one on one, because it is so much more expedient that way.

 

All trades haves associations including doctors, lawyers that lobby for their professions, yet I never heard JayB complain about those. Trade associations have existed for almost a millenium and they are likely to be around for a while longer.

[ivan]

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

 

okay fine, but did adam smith really foresee just how far and with what force industrial corporations would thrust their vast thorny cocks up the ass of the working man? how would that oft-raped class be a single bit better had unions been broken in their infancy?

[Bug]

In Chicago, 1904, both of my great grandparents were killed in an "industrial accident". Some undisclosed number of other unfortunates died with them. It was some kind of gas is all we know.

My grandmother was 11 and her oldest sister was almost 13. They raised their three younger siblings together with a little bit of help from kindly neighbors. There was no compensation of any kind from the company. They did not even send a representative to the house.

Without unions we would still be in that state of affairs.

[ivan]

capitalists should like unions - their use of the democratic process made a marxian revolution unnecessary and kept ya'll in bank w/ unslit throats (transferring a fair bit of the slime off you and onto the union machinery in the process)

[ashw_justin]

Atypical restraint on compensation increases has been evident for a few years now and appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity. In 1991, at the bottom of the recession, a survey of workers at large firms by the International Survey Research Corporation indicated that 25 percent feared being laid off. In 1996, despite the sharply lower unemployment rate and the tighter labor market, the same survey organization found that 46 percent were fearful of a job layoff.

 

The reluctance of workers to leave their jobs to seek other employment as the labor market tightened has provided further evidence of such concern, as has the tendency toward longer labor union contracts. For many decades, contracts rarely exceeded three years. Today, one can point to five- and six-year contracts--contracts that are commonly characterized by an emphasis on job security and that involve only modest wage increases.

Nothing like a rate-cut inspired/fueled asset bubble bomb on the economy to shatter workers' despicable demands for higher wages and job security eh? Bravo maestro! Shock and awe

[j_b]

okay fine, but did adam smith really foresee just how far and with what force industrial corporations would thrust their vast thorny cocks up the ass of the working man?

 

Smith viewed prosperity as a rise in standard of living for the population as a whole, not the upper 1% of the income bracket becoming ever richer at the expense of everybody else. Smith wasn't an apologist for unfettered capitalism despite what libertarians would like us to believe.

[Fairweather]

capitalists should like unions - their use of the democratic process made a marxian revolution unnecessary and kept ya'll in bank w/ unslit throats (transferring a fair bit of the slime off you and onto the union machinery in the process)

 

You may be right--to a point. But the fact that the William Jennings Bryans' and Eugene Debs' of the world never even came close to being elected may throw that theory askew. You're thinking like my hero Teddy though--and I like that.