My Walmart Oil Change From Hell

and why do co's provide these benefits? out of their concern for employees? do you think they would provide these benefits if they wer not forced to?

thanx to unions and collective bargining power.(over the last 200 years)....they must to be compettitive...

The reason my company provides these benefits has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with competition for good employees. Now if you want to credit the unions for what we provide our employees then God bless you. You have that right. But I can tell you flat out unions don't enter into the calculation. Not for us anyway.

I find it interesting that you credit unions with being competitive. Do you think United Airlines pilot unions were thinking about being competitive when they forced UAL into the 1999/2000 contract that made them the highest paid in the entire industry? That's not competition it's extortion and it backfired big time. 3 years in bankruptcy. Pensions that are now worthless and massive pay cuts. The flying public doesn't quite support what United was trying to implement.

In ten years or so none of this will matter. Companies (Including GM) are moving slowly away from being the health care provider or their employees. Over time this will put so much pressure on the federal government that the USA will finally fall to socialized medicine. Although I think this will be great for those who are denied health care in this country it will also mean we start waiting in line like Canadians for low tech health care. My neighbor is a surgeon from Toronto and he says we have more MRI machines in our small pocket outside Denver than the whole of Ontario. Americans with health care don't wait for high tech procedures. We're spoiled in that regard. However, I do think having 45 million uninsured is unacceptable. I hope the USA will combine what's right with the Canadian system and what's right with our current system and create something of a mix. Otherwise we won't like it. Side note: we provide health care insurance for our Canadian employees (even though Canada provides health care) just to bring them up to USA equivalents. i.e. drugs, dental, optical, etc.

go to school and take a history class or two.....you have a lot to learn.......

"The reason my company provides these benefits has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with competition for good employees. Now if you want to credit the unions for what we provide our employees then God bless you. You have that right. But I can tell you flat out unions don't enter into the calculation. Not for us anyway. "

D> >

Thanks for the advice. Anything else?

nope, I think that should do the trick...I would hate to think that the thousands of lives lost, during the early years of union fights for collective bargining were lost for nothing...I am sure they will cover that in any labor union history class...fires, shootings, bombings...there is a lot of violence that will be covered....only 2-3 hundred years of history to get to where american workers and the us economy is today...imho, of course....

D> >

I've learned something already from you. American labor unions began before our country did. I never knew that. Thanks for the enlightenment.

your welcome...so Don, are you going to use wal mart for any future auto service?

D> >

~^ beancounter ~^ wrote:

Oh dear.

Who do you think or how do you think these conditions came about?

It wasn't by the love of the worker.......

Hammo S70

Well, it seems like everyone else is commenting on this, so I guess I will put in my two cents also.

While unions did raise awareness for workers' needs many many years ago, now it seems that they are just an easy way for greedy factory workers to avoid hard work. In most companies, you can achieve higher pay and better benefits through a corporate miracle referred to as a "promotion." If these workers were a little more competitive and simply worked harder to be given one of these promotions, the costs of those products would remain affordable while their quality increased.

Secondly, unions do harm a company's wellbeing. It seems as if some people believe that all of the white-collar higher-ups of America are simply greedy, no-good people looking to rip off the blue-collars. That is simply not the case, I believe. They just want adequate compensation for their work. Consequently, the bosses will pay the blue-collars as much as the company can afford to. Therefore, when a union comes along and demands and forces a company to pay more, pay more, pay more, to the blue-collars, the company is paying them with money that it simply doesn't have. This causes the company to go down the tubes as the workers rely on the union and quality of work lags. This is exactly why GM is in the mess they are in now. They paid the blue-collars adequately for the work they did and the education they possessed...but that wasn't good enough. So they complained to the unions, which got them higher pay, so they realized they didn't have to work as hard...they could still get raises and benefit hikes without results. This is what brought down the American automotive industry. This is what is bringing down the American manufacturing industry. And, as we are still largely an industrial society, this is what has caused the current national depression, or plateau, at the least.

At least that's my opinion.

That's true (your snipped comment), in some cases. The unions of today have a had a huge impact on some industries...such as auto, mfg, and...say air traffic controllers...etc...teachers...Not just the factory workers...as a lot of those jobs are not even done here anymore

(moved off-shore).. Unions today are much different that those of

But, I still stand by my assertion that busines generally does not give any benefits out of the "goodness and compassion" of ther heart.. only by compettittiveness and negotiation do they reluctantally hand out benefits...Unless it is Enron or something, then $ flow freeley "at the top" of the organization....I doubt the folks "at the bottom" got any enhansed benefits...imho, of course...

Robert wrote: