Delphi Proposal to Cut Wages in Half!

Of course things like that can happen but the point is the original poster made the broad statement that being a union member prevents management from firing bad employees and that simply is not factual.

mike hunt

That is not true either. The fact is the more one earns in the US the more one pays in taxes. Not only do you pay more in dollars, you are taxed at a higher RATE as well. Those at the top already pay more than their fair share of taxes. The top 5% of all taxpayers pay more than 50% of all the taxes paid to the federal treasury. Since the tax RATES were reduced in

2000, around 45% or more, of all American pay NO taxes to the federal treasury. That information is available on the IRS web site for anyone willing to do a search.

mike hunt

Really? None of the assembly plants that GM has shut down, over the past five years, have been bought by other auto manufactures. Why would any of the foreign manufactures want to buy them in any event? Most of their plants were built at taxpayers expense in non union states to attract them to those states. Notice the Toyota ads that say they operate in new pants worth billons of dollars. They never say they OWN those plants. They say they assemble cars and trucks in several states, but if you look at the fine print, its says they are assemble them of world sourced parts. You said it yourself if GM goes under the jobs lost will go off shore. Do you think Toyota will still assemble car in the US of Chinese parts when it will be far cheaper to make the parts and the cars in China?

mike hunt

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

"Mike Hunter" wrote in news:fSCdnaNepr snipped-for-privacy@ptd.net:

On 10/11/05 08:13 am TheSnoMan tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

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.

"Mike Hunter" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@ptd.net:

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!