U.N. Special Report: U.S. Workers Restricted in Exercising Basic Union Rights

afl-cio ^ | 10/21/2016 | Aaron Chappell

[mdittmar]

A new report finds that the United States fails to uphold the most basic rights of workers, particularly in the South, where some states "support or collude with employers to infringe upon workers’ rights to peaceful assembly and association." The report cited examples such as Tennessee officials’ opposition to unionization at a Volkswagen plant and the "government of Mississippi [which] touts the lack of unionization as a great benefit when courting potential employers."

[Alberta's Child]

Sure. I have no complaints about that.

[Beagle8U]

“From what I understand, Volkswagen actually wanted the union because they apparently figured it was easier to run a union plant when all their plants in Germany are unionized.”

Nope. The VW UNIONS in Germany wanted unions in the USA plants because they knew that VW would be tempted move all their plants to America.

The Company, VW, is very happy with non-union USA plants.

[Myrddin]

I've been salaried since 1980. No unions. In my current position, I earn 7.68 hours of vacation for every 80 hours billed to the customer. In reality, I work 60 to 75 hours every week for a 40 hour pay check. I have 450 hours of vacation on the books with a max limit of 480. I still have "use it or lose it" holiday from Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas plus two floating days to take this calendar year. Once I accrue 480 hours of vacation, they stop crediting. Finding time to take off without destroying the delivery schedule is very difficult. Since returning home to Idaho, I've put less than 100 miles on my Harley. I routinely rode 1300 miles a month in San Diego. That's disappointing.

My income is good, but I've lost years of time with my family. My oldest son passed during the 5 year "trip" to San Diego Two of my favorite dogs died. I was only home two weeks each year in that time frame. The house is mortgage free in Idaho, yet I was paying rent to live in a rented bedroom in San Diego to avoid unemployment. My family had the resources they needed monetarily, but I was reduced to a daily phone call. Not ideal.

[editor-surveyor]

.
I’m an employer.

I have a right to decide who I employ.

FU-UN

[Mr. Douglas]

I was a COBOL programmer for Nordstrom in 1996. I worked 350 extra hours on a project and was thrown a $250 bone at the end for the work. It drove me into contracting. Immediately I made more (I was getting a $47k salary from Nordstrom and my contract rate was $27 an hour. Works out to slightly more, when you take into account the hit for holidays and vacation.

But within two years that bumped to $55 an hour and was at $125 an hour by the turn of the century. I’ll not be so specific with what transpired after that other than to say it came back down to around what it was before that spike, but now in KY I at least get time and a half for any overtime.

And the thing is, if I work a single extra hour, I log it and get paid time and a half for it. It’s what I love about contracting.

Of course, I’m almost 63 and have no health insurance (since the exact day Obamacare took effect), but it’s so expensive that the 8% rule keeps me from having to pay the penalty.

Meanwhile, I get hints at how much the employees around me make. It’s far less money, but they have all those nice intangible “benefits”. And yes, I’m being sarcastic.

Just give me the raw dollars and let me decide how much time I want to take off, insurance options, etc...

[Mr. Douglas]

BTW, that all comes from a ten month $2100 COBOL/IMS school. No college.

[Mr. Douglas]

Most important BTW: It was ALL the Lord’s doing. There is even a bonafide miracle in there...

[mdittmar]

Two of my favorite dogs died

You should join a Union,they would pay to bury your dogs.

[Safetgiver]

Oh, horsehit!! They get paid, don’t they? In the armed forces you don’t get paid any extra for being awake 72 hours at a time. YOU, sir, are a concern troll for well paid slackers.

[Mr. Douglas]

;-)

[YogicCowboy]

Freedom of association includes freedom from association.

Communists hate freedom for anyone but themselves.

[Myrddin]

I like my work. My degree in Molecular Biology was followed by a year of grad school. Finished all my course work for my masters, then almost died from pneumonia. For amusement I added a First Class Radiotelephone license with Ship's RADAR endorsement, Extra Class amateur radio license, teaching credential and private pilot's license. Endless curiosity lead me down of the road of being a UNIX systems programmer (kernel and device drivers) and writing applications in C/C++/Java/Pascal/Assemby(6800,68000,8080,Z80,8085,PIC18F) and data communications protocols. I'm equally happy designing hardware or writing firmware/software. I have 16 people working for me right now doing a mission planning system for fixed and rotary wing aircraft. It's a C++/MFC/C#/XAML/OpenGL for 3D kind of work. Most of the staff are both programmers and licensed pilots, so we are working on something where we have real world experience. The SMEs include a Black Hawk pilot and a F/A 18 RIO. A previous generation of our software was seen in the Top Gun movie when the pilots did the replay debrief of their flight. That took racks of machines. We can do the same on a Windows PC today with an nVidia card.

I had an assignment at Wingcast (Ford/Qualcomm) trying to compete with OnStar. I put in 210 hours a month for 10 months to cover the work of 2 EE, 2 CS (C++/C) and 4 Java programmers. I designed the interfaces to the telematics control unit to emulate 4 models of Ford and one Nissan Infiniti. My lab staff constructed the prototypes, then I wrote the emulators. I also wrote all the backend software to run on a couple desktop machines. I could only handle 10 concurrent users. The other 600 people in the building were supposed to build the real backend for 250,000 customers. They missed the deadline and the venture was terminated.

I turned 60 in August. My first grandson arrived Tuesday of this week. My wife passed her system admin cert exam yesterday and will take her boss's job in February. We work hard and enjoy the fruits of that effort.

[Mr. Douglas]

You and I seem to have the natural curiosity. Also, I’m turning 63 in a couple of months. The one big difference between you and me is I absolutely loathe any formal school environment. Other than high school and the ten month course and various short term “required” training, I avoid it.

The result is that I was held back. I represented myself in court against a good attorney and won. I honestly could have been a good trial attorney but school always seemed like such a waste of time to me. i.e. six months to learn what you could on your own in a few weeks is how I saw it.

I think it is the legacy of public schools and its impact on me. In my senior year, I got a B+ in civics and missed 13 days per quarter playing hooky. I was one of those kids that got straight A’s without having to do homework.

Part of me feels like it was such a waste, but becoming a Christian in 1981 gave me a different perspective on life. My needs are very light, and I’ve come to see the human life span as a single day, with re-incarnation occurring every night. And my favorite Old Testament book is Ecclesiastes. It sums up my attitude very well.

I believe the more one knows, the more one can enjoy and appreciate life. But, more importantly, put it in perspective. And that knowledge can come from a plethora of sources.

I do think I should have valued shingles more in my life, though.

[Myrddin]

I chose a different approach. Society expects certain milestones. I opted to step on the gas and accelerate the process. First step was changing my high school district policy to define class standing by number of credits earned, not number of semesters attended. Second step was to take all the summer school sessions allowed to complete all the requirements in less time. The result was graduation from high school at age 16. Another 100 of my classmates followed my lead.

I continued that policy filling the Summer after high school graduation with a microbiology and judo class. The Fall was a full 16 units and overlapped the start of UCSD in January 1974 by 3 weeks. I limited myself to 16 unit at UCSD the first quarter, but 3 weeks of overlap was challenging. The rest of my time at UCSD was 18 to 22 unit per quarter. Sometimes I had to get 4 units from the extension as the provost office would limit me to 18 units. That almost backfired on final night. I had co-scheduled a multiple choice 500 question neurophysiology final and an essay oriented developmental biology final at 7 PM. I informed both profs and agreed to do the multiple choice first, then then essay. I had a perfect score on the multiple choice test and was 15 minutes late to the essay exam. Calculated risk. Still pulled an A in both classes. I graduate from UCSD in June 1976 at age 19. I had set my sight on med school in 8th grade. By graduation day at UCSD, I was less committed. I opted for grad school in pathogen microbiolgy at SDSU. The 2nd semester I nearly died from pneumonia....something about taking 16 units of grad work and working 42 hours a week a Radio Shack.

We choose different paths for different reasons. My dad intended to retire from the Navy in September 1977. We could afford pay as you go to UCSD if I lived at home and commuted 30 miles to campus. Registration was $212/quarter. Parking was $46 annually. Books about $120/quarter...offset by selling back those I didn't have a future desire to keep. Gasoline was 33 cents/gallon. I packed a sack lunch, left for school at 6:30 AM and returned home by 8 PM. I did have some extended evenings due to being a physics or chemistry TA and working on some of the more complex biochemistry labs. In the end, the effort paid off.

I have balked at piling up certifications. I've read the books cover to cover. The skill sets are committed to memory. It's really education and skills I'm seeking, not stuff on the wall. The only motivation to sit for the exams is to help my business unit compete on proposals. To that end, I'm likely to sit for the SSCP, CEH and INCOSE systems engineer exams.