Posted on 12/12/2005 1:22:19 PM PST by ncountylee
"Sometimes true, often false, same old mantra."
OK, my friends and I will get together and extort money from you using picket lines around your home and place of business, threatening phone calls to your friends, beatings, and arson.
This is what I dealt with as a business owner until I finally fired everybody and shut down my business, whereupon I got several more death threats for depriving honest, hard-working thugs of their union dues payments.
I didn't say they are not descent or they are dirt.
Only, when I speak to them, I am not sure if they are well educated at all. Some even seemed disabled.
So, I think they are lucky that they can generate income to support themselves and they have WALMART to thank for it. Largest employer in US!
In my thirty years as a union member I have never raised a threatening hand against anyone. I have spent quite a few of them as a local union officer. I have had beer bottles sailed at me on the picket line (of which I have been on maybe four). No one had the guts to attempt crossing our line so violence was not an issue. Perhaps you would have been that fool. I know of no threatening phone calls to any-one. I will say this. If anyone listening is stupid enough to cross a Teamsters picket line then they deserve the ass whooping they get. That is a no brainer. I know of no outfit that is Teamster that is not making good money. Prove me wrong. I have said it before here and I will say it again. Union does not belong in small business. Some of my brothers may disagree but I will stand by my statement. My brothers also know that I am conservative and Republican and I never even came close to losing union office. My union rolled with the punches when the RR was having a tought time of it. We made sacrifices and we have all prospered. Check out the symbols. BNI, KSU, UPI, NSC. You should only wish that you owned this stock. We do not cripple the hand that feeds us.
You admit you are thugs. How refreshing!
Wal-Mart doesn't manufacture appliances and Whirlpool doesn't manage a chain of stores selling cheap goods. And I don't believe that Wal-Mart sells refrigerators or washers, either. I fail to see where one can put the other out of business.
By the way, all those appliances you see sold at places like Sam's Clubs are prior year models. Wal-Mart buys up excess inventory when GE or other manufacturers change models and that's how they sell them so inexpensively.
In Korea they are almost there in trying to find lower cost solution and replace MS.
Yes. That's what IBM thought when they put out OS/2.
As far as educational skill, its never too late. They don't have God given right to remain stupid.
You would think that, wouldn't you? But as far as educational skills go what would you suggest they study?
No, your claim that all those new jobs are better paying than the ones they replace. The BLS statistice someone posted earlier show that on average they pay about half the salary that the Whirlpool workers made.
Compare and contrast:
"In my thirty years as a union member I have never raised a threatening hand against anyone."
versus
"If anyone listening is stupid enough to cross a Teamsters picket line then they deserve the ass whooping they get."
Those statements would have been funny if they hadn't been so pathetic.
Thank you for proving my point about unions being violent extortionists, though.
Somewhere there is a serious disconnect between those two statements.
It doesn't matter who makes them, Whirlpool profits from them. Whirlpool (or any company for that matter) can't just arbitrarily raise prices and sit back and make more money. There is no such thing as cost push inflation. Whirlpool can only charge what the market will bear. If it is paying its workers too much it will have to lay them off, lower their wages, or go out of business - or - move to a lower wage country.
"Yeah I suppose these workers were greedy b@stards same as the Delphi workers who are being busted down from $26/hour to $12/hour. Come on Freeper union busters! Here is your thread to tell us how much you despise unions, how Americans should accept slave wages."
...
I don't have a problem with people who actually have the skills and knowledge that warrant $26.00 an hour or more. My problem is example: with people whose only job is to stand OR SIT on an assembly line slapping a product sticker on the product. Or when a burnt out light bulb needs to be changed out of a simple desk lamp and only a "union" person is permitted to perform the task.
"A country is judged by the strength of it's middle class. Right now ours is under assault from every direction. It's a long fall from ivory towers."
...
And Walmart wasn't the company to start that ball rolling decades ago. Walmart isn't a factory, it's a retailer. Factory production has and is the back bone of a thriving country.
Thankyou for not crossing a picket line
Thank God he is in chage because with people like you thinking you are, we need him!
NS: Why bother soon those jobs will fall under the category of 'over paid' American labor and we will need the cheaper Indian, Chinese, or $PissPoorNationWithTerribleHumanRights to do it for us to save 15% on something..
You seem to think that the Governemets initial revenue source (tariffs) which was approved by and used by the founding fathers is new big government liberalism? wow! BTW I am not against Wirl-Pool going to Mexico and making washers I am against the American Worker getting screwed by it! I am all for Free trade with Japan, Europe, South Korea, Australlia, New Zeland, ....
I'd cross one, but I have a CC permit.
No, they cut the costs by moving manufacturing overseas and leave the prices as they are. Works about the same as raising prices, though they'll do that too.
Whirlpool can only charge what the market will bear.
When you have 80% of the market it will bear a lot.
If it is paying its workers too much it will have to lay them off, lower their wages, or go out of business - or - move to a lower wage country.
Why are they paying their workers too much? What suddenly caused the work they do to be worth less? If their productivity goes up aren't their services worth more than before? And what about management? Isn't it possible that they are being paid too much too? But they're never the ones who suffer. And far from going out of business Whirlpool is a pretty well. Over $400 million in profits last year. Stock price is up about 30% over the last year. All while being saddled with those nasty U.S. workers.
What do you mean 'soon'? It's been happening for years to programmers, engineers, customer support, medical, you name it.
The Teamsters working on my (former) plant floor and driving my (former) trucks contributed absolutely nothing to me. In fact, they could've walked into my office and strong-armed me for my wallet and there would've been no difference. Screw 'em.
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