JadeRose, You seem to be totally disregarding my comment that I felt it important to save GM and all of it's tentacles, which employ real people just like you and I. Let me attempt to explain my union perspective.
I've been union represented(because I work in a closed shop) for nearly 30 years. I won't bore you with the details unless you really want to know, but I have vast experience to base my opinion on regarding unions and their real objectives.
In the old days, before OSHA, NIOSH, MSHA, and various other governmental safety organizations, unions were often the only protection for employees being coerced into unsafe work practices for the sake of production, but that is no longer the case. You will see unions play the workplace safety card to shut down a jobsite that was perfectly acceptable prior to there being some other labor or benefit issue or unchanged before a return to work, so it's not really about safety, it's about organized labor and leverage.
Unions also had a place before common labor laws existed spelling out the length of a typical work day and what merits overtime pay, or full time employee status, etc. but that was long ago and no longer true in most cases. Collective bargaining can be a benefit, if you are just an average employee, but mostly what I've seen the union do is protect the deliberate **** ups while padding their pockets with the weekly dues of thousands of members. Unions, IMO, are about making lots of money and providing very lavish lifestyles for those at the top of the union foodchain, standing upon the backs of the working men and women. Not so different really from the Robber Barons or corporate titans of today except that unions produce nothing, they simply sell the labor of those whom they "represent". Huh......sounds like pimping when I phrase it like that........
Pheloniousmunk wrote:
