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To: Steve Lokness who wrote (98343)	6/5/2009 10:52:29 AM
From: westpacific	4 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116555

My grandfather came to America cause he was working in a Union Shop and hated the laziness. I do not agree with you... He was always told he was working too hard and too fast, to stop that. Slow down and do less; milk the system THIS IS UNION!!!! So he came to America to start a business and work as hard as he wanted and reap the rewards for such... May I ask; do you have Union in your family, I expect so. It all starts at the top is right; look at the Hill in Washington! West

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (98343)	6/5/2009 11:14:17 AM
From: benwood	5 Recommendations Respond to of 116555

Steve, unfortunately unions rise up because of management greed and oppression (to put it simply). The union where I worked, a Weyerhaeuser pulp mill, proceeded to bloat up the labor force and drive the factory out of business. The mentality of those workers was exactly like described by West's CEO -- enormous pressure by peers to be as lazy and haphazard as possible. Guess what -- all their jobs are gone. Somewhere there is a sweet spot where labor doesn't resent the hand the feeds it and workers remain productive. Starbucks and Nordstrom are a couple I know that have tried to hit this. They are dogged by unions who can't convince workers they have it bad enough yet. The management does this little trick by paying better, providing better than peer benefits, and by (mostly) having better work conditions. The unions themselves are parasites, feeding on the workers they are supposed to benefit, much like a health care administrator company. At that Weyco union, membership is mandatory, fees go up, and union reps pay escalates and benefits escalate (trips to big meetings with other unions etc.). Unions especially profit with declining performance, as more workers are required, and they all pay dues. In the ten years my dad worked at that plant, the maintenance worker group swelled from 60 to 200. His observation was that it was their hiding and shirking which caused the increase. When there was a threat of closing the plant a few years later, he said they were as busy as bees. But eventually the plant could not recover from the cost overhead and closed permanently. To go back to the start though, I continue to believe that poor management (largely through greed and a willingness to be reckless with the safety of workers) are what causes the unions to be sought after in the first place. So even though workers eventually cause the problem, I still lay the problem in the lap of poor management.