Delphi Proposal to Cut Wages in Half!

The first 'union' was started in the anthracitic coal fields, in and around
Schuylkill county, in northeastern Pennsylvania in the late 1800's. Irish
coal minors fought against 12 hour work days, six days a week, in the most
horrible and deadly working conditions imaginable, for $3 a week. Do a
search for a group know as the 'Molly McGuire's.'

mike hunt

 

The union is requires by law to fight for the workers in the plant what ever
the cause, even for those that do not belong to the union but are covered by
the union contact. However they can NOT win the fight to keep a worker that
does not do his job etc.. The only one that can win is management, who may
chose to keep the employee to win a bigger fight that they can not otherwise
win.

mike hunt

 

Aw, shucks Mike... sorry to put you through all that.

I guess i forgot the 'rolleyes" smiley!


Oh, well... never hurts to fire for effect!

BTW: Folks at GM.com are reading this.

I posted a longer version on my blog and there was someone at GM on it
immediately.. for 7 minutes

to find that article just do a blog search on my email username

 

Our local paper this morning reported the findings of a survey by the
Kaiser Family Foundation: health-care costs are increasing at triple the
rate of inflation. Fewer employers are offering health-care benefits.
Health insurance for a family costs more than the income from full-time
employment at minimum wage!! IOW, health insurance in the US costs some
people more than 100% of their income, whereas in Australia (see an
earlier message of mine) it costs nobody more than 2.5% of his or her
income, and that 2.5% of income is sufficient to cover in addition
people with no income -- typically the unemployed.

Perce

 

So are the airlines. Four of them went bankrupt under similar circumstances
last month.
The whole damned service/manufacturing industry (except for housing
construction) is about to crash, due to world economic pressure.
Only problem with third world wages is that they won't pay my first-world
property taxes.

 

But we can't have any kind of public health coverage. Oh, no. Huh-uh. That
would be Socialist, which is the same as Communist.

This is what we get for having stopped teaching civics, government and
logic in the public schools.

 

Follow the reply trail and think about what it really means... we're in a
global economy and if we want to SELL our goods we have to play through
the WTO.

It IS NOT the union wages, however that is sinking the old-line ship, it
the union productivity in large part. it's the generous HS diploma to
grave benefits on the other hand.

Where ELSE but in the heyday sixties could a kid graduate HS, get a job,
then get married, buy a house car and boat all in the next five years...
sounds too good to be true and it was.

Part of our great standard of living is that we DO get cheap goods.
There's a price to pay on either end.

Those that carp about the foreign content in American assembled vehicles
will seem to never be happy. Look at the parts production Honda moved
here.

Look, my family is GREATLY affected by this, but trotting out all the old
buzz doesnt help a damn thing.

 

Gov't debt is higher now than in the 60's.

Medical care that can be given to people today is more specific, more
effective, and MORE EXPENSIVE than what was available 50 years ago
(even if people aren't living a whole lot longer now than 50 years
ago, their senior years are certainly more expensive).

And there are simply more people now vs 50 years ago.

We are telling ourselves that the more people there are, the more our
cities grow, the better life will be.

It's a fiction. Taxes go up even when forests are mowed down and
thousands of homes go up.

Life (in north america at least) does not get better with more
people. Infrastructure costs grow disproportionately. More people
need more jobs, more schools, more food, more ENERGY.

It will always take more taxpayers to support the social infracture of
the current population. It's a spiral that is out of control.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants are needed in North America each
year to create the tax-base needed to support the current
infrasturcture.

And in future years those immigrants will need even more immigrants.

There is no concept of trying to achieve a stable population level.
It's always got to be more. More and more. There must always be
growth. That concept is even embraced by religion. It's certainly
embraced by policitians at all levels of gov't.

The promise that life gets better when there are more taxpayers, when
there are more people, is false. It is proven every year, with every
strike, with every increase in property taxes, in sales taxes. We go
to war to make sure we have the oil to support ourselves, and we
delude ourselves that it was for another reason.

 

The consumer benefits, is the mantra of cheap imported goods.

I'm typing this on a computer that is a Bitsa, it's a PIII with a
Adaptec SCSI card and a 20 GB SCSI drive. All from dead, used computers
I put together. The keyboard is an old AT Clone originally off a 386,
big plug and all. It's almost old enough to vote. Computers could go up
by a factor of 10 as far as I am concerner, I have around $200 in this
one.

I used to fix VGA monitors, we would put flybacks, horizontal output
transistors, you name it in them. Now you just landfill them. Phooey
phooey phooey. We would still have Amigas and Ataris and far more
efficient software if it wasn't for the onslaught of supercheap
unrepairable PC hardware.

The consumer benefits but the producer takes a high hard one up the
you know where. Where can I get a job as a professional consumer and
just consume stuff all day? We are all amateur consumers and
professional producers. I say cut off cheap imports because only the
idle rich and government drones will suffer.

 

Bret Ludwig wrote: " I used to fix VGA monitors, we would put flybacks,
horizontal output transistors, you name it in them. Now you just landfill
them. Phooey phooey phooey. We would still have Amigas and Ataris and far
more efficient software if it wasn't for the onslaught of supercheap
unrepairable PC hardware."

We need to stop being a disposable society. Business want us that way so
they can sell more product. It does not make them big profits if we can
repair our stuff. The two way radios I use at work or Motorola. They sell
two radios that look identical and with the same features, one is their
expensive model and they other is their cheaper version. Both use the same
case and internals. When either break at work they just keep the case and
put in a new internals in the old case. In the old days, the radio tech
would have hooked up his trusted soldering iron and instruments and found
what was bad with the circuitry and just changed the bad transistor or other
component.

Sarge

 

You are sadly mistaken in your computer logic. Computer technology is
disposable in that it is evolving so rapidly that thing posssible today
were not a few years ago and thing not possible today will be in a few
years. If you are still using a P3, more power to you but you are way
behind the power curve and I am not even talking to be state of the art.
A 400 buck entry system is light years ahead of your system.

 

Never read about the Pinkerton's and strikes? Take a walk to your local
library and read away.

 

Certainly I have. You're suggesting that because of events from the past
-- mostly the *distant* past -- unions in their present form are an
undebateable force for good. I disagree with you.

 

You would have us revert to our past? Although in some ways we are headed
that way imo.

I said somewhere in this thread that some unions suck, others don't. Also
said that the members make up the union read what ya want into it. Were
there no unions today do you truly believe that benefits, wages and
safety,would be as they are?

Roy

 

Plain and simple, I know it sounds cold but the wages are to high for
the work being done because you can train anyone with no skill at all to
do nmost of those jobs in short order. They will have a choice, a job
with maybe 40 buck. an hour in wages and benfits which is not bad money
for that work or hold out for current wages and have no job at all.

 

Okay, you want cold. I suppose then that you are willing and able to have
your pay cut as the Delphi workers. Sorta lead by example.
You then will I'm sure be cutting your plowing rates by the same percentage.
Sorta lead by example. No? Oh, I see it, is just the driver of the truck
that get's his pay cut 50%, from $20 down to $10. You, as owner, continue to
haul in $100-150@hour.

If high wages are the problem and all unions suck, I'd expect you folks to
be doing your part and give back to whoever you work for, 50% of your pay.
Oh, silly me how could I think such a thing. That only happens to somebody
else.

You folks might want to take the time to get a good grasp on reality,
because when they pull it off with the unions, care to guess who is next?
YOU!

 

If there families full time income is less at minimum wage they get their
health care at no cost via Medicaid

mike hunt

 

By what measure? % of GDP is the one that counts.. but you may be right.

But they ARE living a LOT longer and yes it is more expensive to let them
live longer... so euthansia?

More people producing more and buying.more.. a wash..

Uh yeah... because folks demand more services, and environmental needs
are far more complicated, sewer rates being excellent example

see above

We could limit birth to one child/family

Are you sure?

That does not necessarily follow... it MAY be in growing expectatioons of
lifestyle.

Social services and environemtnal and personal protection

Utter CRAP.

If you look at the costs... even at 1/5 the actual money US actually
spent, it would have been FAR better deal to do what Chirac did... make
an under the table deal for Iraqi oil.
- in fact, there were rumors and innuendo that the US TRIED that... if
the charges could have been proven there would have been hell to pay!

But then Cheney et al would be facing charges for that instead of the
French and Russian guys.

You really need to read between the lines of the news instead of
swallowing kool-aid wholesale.

The REAL news is right here on Pravda...

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/16256_dollar.html

Note that the Euro's keep saying their economy problems are due to
population stagnation... yet they are running 12 % unemployment.

What's our unemployment?

What's the difference? Yep... social services and govt red tape.

the Delphi news isnt good, but we've been through that sort of thing
before.

Go peddle your sky-is-falling crap somewhere else!

 

If you can find someplace I suggested doing so, please post a message ID.
I'll be over here waiting.

 

Riiiiiiight, unions are all that's preventing massive, wholesale
elimination of all jobs.

It's amazing to me how the unionists will wave their little flags and
chant their vacuous little slogans as long as it's the union bosses who
call the shots. Let it be the government instead, and these same
sloganeers start bitching and whining about socialism.