Well, I think you might be right about that.
True, that’s how this thread started. But when the rabid anti-unionists come a-knockin’, I feel compelled to respond. I mean, some of them say such ugly things, categorizing entire classes of people so negatively. Please remember also that they knocked, and the door was opened, well before I got involved in the thread.
:mad:
As am I. What’s your point?
What don’t you understand? You are the only one who is <and I paraphrase here> vehemently demanding we stand behind this strike because of the good unions have done in the past. </aiph>
I’m still trying to wrap my head around how you can claim that you owe everything you have to the union. I mean, don’t you take any credit for what you’ve achived in your life? Do you not think you would have the same things, if not better, had you chosen another profession?
Don’t get me wrong here. I defend teaching and appreciate teachers as a whole and am one of those who firmly believes that teachers aren’t respected enough nor are they paid what they are worth.
But it boggles my mind how anyone could ever say they owe everything they have to another someone else. Og included although I think I could understand someone giving credit to Og before I could understand a union being the reason for someone’s success, or failure for that matter.
Kathy
My point…
Perhaps you think you are but you’re not coming across that way.
Kathy
(bolding mine)
How do you come to this conclusion? The Public School System in United States is run as a virtual monopoly. One of the basic precepts of monopolies is that prices are set above the true Market Price. This runs counter to basic economic theory.
As early as 1914, possibly earlier, but this is the first cite I pulled. It is a University cite, but it is easily verifiable by other means based on the information presented. This is well before many of the actions of the ‘pro-labor’ President FDR.
Without these exemptions from various Anti-Trust laws, unions would fail. One instance where, IMO, one group enjoys unequal protection under the law.
tclouie, I don’t owe you a detailed, word-for-word account of my experience. I have told you I am not “mistaken” about what I encountered. You can either believe me or not, I don’t give a hoot. You can spin it however you like, though, saying you do not believe me is tantamount to calling me a liar.
Until such time as you retract the accusation, I’m done “discussing” this issue with you. Particularly since I have now twice asked you to stick to the facts about this strike by these people over this issue, yet you dodge and weave all over the place, gushing about the All-Good, American-as-Apple-Pie Unions who’ve given you “everything” you have in your life. Talk about taking things personally!
My opinion is based on my experience working in school districts and having family/friends who were/are teachers. I’ve seen situations where people do send their kids to school expecting the teacher to do their job for them.
Also, school districts I’ve been connected with were notorious for not having the funding to provide teachers everything they needed to teach the kids so the teacher would take the money out of their pockets to buy supplies for the students.
It’s just MHO.
Now, in the spirit of this thread, are you telling me that the teacher’s unions are responsible for the pay scale?
The OP started out addressing one situation but this thread seems to have spead out all over the place. Let’s see if we can track better. Can you tie this in to the current supermarket strike or at least get closer and connect it to unions? Sheesh
Kathy
**Bill H., I referred to specific chapters in those books that you so sniffily disdain. In particular, the chapter I recommended in Franken’s book is powerfully written and well-documented. But you’ll never know that if you refuse to even look at it. So why not swallow your pride, read it and then tell me if you think it is not powerfully written and well-documented. There’s nothing like reading a book before you criticize it.
[/quote]
I never criticized the book, friend. I critisized your referring to it as a “cite”. As an educator, I’m sure you’re aware of what an actual cite is. It a) contains the cite’s actual words in a quotation, b) contains a pointer to that quotation, such as a book and page number or a web site, and it’s c) from someone in some authority on the subject.
You’ve given none of those. Saying “Michael Moore agrees with me, and he’s got lots of cites, including the New York Times” is really really silly, and again as an educator I’m surprised you’re saying that. If you were teaching high-school, would you accept that sort of cite from one of your students?
And again, so you can visualize what I’m saying, suppose I said “Mallard Duck is anti-union and he quotes lots of reputable sources.” Then suppose I follow that up with what you followed up with, namely
Friend, you don’t have a cite, not one. You have your opinion.
And as part of your opinion, you made one of the few numeric claims in this thread, that CEOs on average make 411x what their workers do, when European ones make much much less. You didn’t claim it as an opinion (though it was); you claimed it as a cite. Your word. Fine, show me the money.
Argh. In the above, the first paragraph, namely
was a quote from tclouie.
And by the way, I’m sorry but unless I’m tied down and they forcably drag a tv into the room, there’s no way I’ll ever read or view anything by Michael Moore, whom I think is an immoral and contemptable man. But don’t acuse me of blindness. I choose not to have a one-way debate with Moore through reading his book, but I’m happy to have a two-way one with you. You started by claiming you have a cite, so let’s see it.
Also, FWIW I did read Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot when it came out, and enjoyed the first chapter, but found the rest rather boring and non-productive. I do think Franken is a very funny man though.
AH HA!
Vindicated!
In this morning’s Los Angeles Times:
And now I hear on KFI Radio that local churches have begun a food drive to help the striking workers feed their “starving families.” A canned food drive has begun, however, they are telling their parishioners to not buy their donations at the striking stores.
$1200/month for carrying a sign. Funded in part by money taken out of their checks the last year or so. How long was this strike in the planning stages?
Let’s not get off the subject here, people. My OP was not intended to be specifically anti-union, it was more anti-“this particular strike.”
Let’s try to keep it civil, and keep this discussion to the grocery strike, with a possible expansion to the public transportation strike in LA as well.
Which brings me to my next point. Now, not only are we not supposed to buy food, we’re also not supposed to use public transportation to get to the store or anywhere else. The Times is reporting that 400,000 people in Los Angeles are without a ride to their places of employment because of the MTA action, their second action in three years.
Sheesh. And people wonder why we can’t get a good public transportation system in LA? One of the reasons: every time we park our cars and begin to enjoy public transportation THEY GO OUT ON STRIKE, forcing us back into automobiles. If the MTA thinks their hurting the corporate suits sitting in their ivory towers making “20 million dollars a year,” as stated in an earlier post, think again! You’re hurting the lower classes with this action. The people who can’t afford their own car! What are you hoping? That the lower class will rise up and overthrow the middle and upper classes?
Holy George Orwell, Batman!
The hypocracy is stunning, isn’t it, Rico?
These people are willing to contribute money out of their weekly paychecks to their union for insurance in the event of a future strike, but they’re unwilling to contribute money out of their weekly paychecks to their healthcare provider for insurance in the event they or their family become sick or injured and need medical care.
I just can’t begin to tell you how sick it makes me to see how fucked up their priorities are.
$200-300 a week?! That’s more than I usually made working full-time, 35-40 hours a week when I was working retail! Must be nice!
And yea, the LA strike pissed me off. Rich people aren’t taking the bus, you dummies!
I have not said that. My previous posts have shown a more nuanced view of this particular strike. And while I personally support this strike, I have not demanded that anyone else refrain from going to a struck store (see my first post). In fact, let me remind you (again!) that I said I might have to cross the picket line myself. (Again, see my first post.) Talk about “missing the mark”!!!
Uh, yeah, I do. See previous post for my explanation of that statement.
Once again, nuances are lost on some of these posters. It’s not good form to skim previous posts before you criticize them.
“Missing the mark,” indeed.
**
Thank you.
:rolleyes: You would have to be either an expert on semantics, or a mind-reader who can tell what people intended to say better than those people themselves.
Any person can say they feel insulted or threatened by any innocuous act of another person, but that’s their problem.
Retract your own accusation.
**
I talked about this strike and this issue in my very first post – also in several subsequent ones. I have fully addressed the OP.
Bill H., I have a feeling that no matter what cite I came up with, you would say that it’s not good enough, or not a “real” cite. There’s not much I can do if you refuse to even look at the source.
I would like to remind you that not all information is on-line; off-line information is just as valid. You can’t expect to be spoon-fed information, as if you could click your way to enlightenment. Sometimes you have to physically go out there, to the library or the newspaper morgue or the bookstore or to your personal observations, and actively get the goods. And yes, those are legitimate cites on SDMB.
BTW, do you have a cite for your definition of “cite”? The standards for citing of sources on these boards are somewhat more relaxed than APA Style. However, as a grad student I have gotten excellent grades on my research papers, using APA Style for my notes.
Also, do you have a cite for your repeated assertions that unions are job-killers? Do you even have one cite of your own? I’ve given several, but you don’t like 'em.
Anyway, the Michael Moore cite stands.
And yes, as a teacher I would definitely recommend the reading of outside texts to my students. I was being rather teacher-ly when I recommended all those books in my first post. It is totally educationally sound to recommend that people go out and get information for themselves instead of just giving it to them.
Depends on where and when you’re working, I guess. Right now, in southern California, $200-$300 a week is minimum wage (around $8/hour, IIRC).
$300 per week = $7.50 per hour, before taxes based on a 40 hour week.
California minimum wage is $6.75 per hour.
If that’s so, it should again be fairly easy to prove then, shouldn’t it?
Didn’t say that the employees deserved any of the profit increases. That’s not the case in this strike, the workers are not demanding anything that they don’t already have, but the stores are trying to take $5/week away from the employees.
This, to me, implies that the burden of proof is on the grocery stores to show that they cannot make a reasonable profit while keeping employee benifits at their current level. They haven’t been able to prove this sufficiently to the union, and this is why we have a strike.
In the media, the stores make great claims about non-union Wal-Mart starting to open superstores to compete with them in the area. But again, the Union states that Wal-Mart’s current plans will allow them access to only 1% of the market, while the three stores in question represent 91% of the market.
Now, the Union is the only one who seems to be talking numbers to the media, while the stories I’ve seen have the stores talking generalities. This, to me, lends credence to the Union’s initial position in this case, which is why I asked for and continue to ask for any real, publically-declaired numbers to back up either position.
-lv