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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (788082)	6/6/2014 1:58:41 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Recommended By gamesmistress Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575780

Workers were put in the most dangerous situations and they had NO power to say no. If one quit there was always someone to take their place. Not only that they were paid next to nothing. I don't think anyone argues there wasn't a need for unions at some point in time. I certainly don't. But as we know, power corrupts and unions took on far too much power. And they ended up shooting themselves in both feet as a result. You end up with General Motors, where unions took them to bankruptcy, and corrupt intervention by a corrupt president guaranteed they will return to bankruptcy, because he gave unions power they shouldn't have gotten. Today, there is little need for them to exist at all. No one is working in sweatshop conditions. No one is a slave other than to government which is now the worst slave driver in the US. At that time, before the popularity of Mother Jones, work WAS dangerous. Lots of it. And people had to decide whether they wanted to do that work or something else. The great thing about America is that our people had absolute freedom to choose what they would do. They were NEVER, as you claim, powerless to say NO. They could always make other choices. But for whatever reasons they chose as they did. Important projects like the Brooklyn Bridge, Hoover Dam, the Empire State, and hundreds of others would never have happened had there not been men who were willing to do the hard, dangerous work. They just could not have happened. So, do you think we would have been better off without them, or what?

To: koan who wrote (788082)	6/8/2014 1:06:33 AM
From: RMF	2 Recommendations Recommended By Brumar89 i-node Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575780

koan, when I was a kid I read, "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and it gave me a perspective on why unions were necessary and how they had helped create a middle class in the U.S. Then, when I was in college I had to go to work to pay for the rest of my college and I got a job in a steel mill. At that time I learned how perverted and distorted unions could make things. At first I worked like crazy and I was flattered that they picked me for every job. Then a guy told me that they picked me because I was one of only a few that would actually work. I learned that merit didn't exist there. Seniority was the ONLY thing that mattered. They say that power corrupts and that's what happens to unions when they get too much power. Workers need representation but businesses also need to be able to present their case. In New York City they have a "warehouse" for incompetent teachers. They don't want them in a classroom but the union won't let them fire them. You don't think that's right, do you? Things need to be balanced.....