Waverly
Considering the $$$$billions that has been lost to shareholders, which you may have an unseen stake in with pension funds and the like, maybe that extra layer of bureaucracy is completely justified.
These are just the cases that we know about, and you will note there are others being investigated Xerox is one.
This is rather getting away from the point, the one that has been made is that unions seems to be held by the OP for all industry ills, and that unions are all extortion rackets and other slanderous lies.
We could try and move to a market economy where there are virtually no controls on companies, where labour is priced low and then undercut by worse companies who are in turn undercut by even worse ones.
Just don’t forget what happened at Bhopal and then try to imagine if such a disaster operated at a US plant would have been likely to occur.
Nothing at all directly to do with unions, but I’d be willing to put money down that if that plant in Bhopal had been unionised there would have been better enforcement of safety standards.
I do not care too much how well paid CEO’s are, these people operate in a differant labour market, and each labour market has differant rules.
What I do want to see is CEO’s and companies behave in a civilised manner, which is to treat employees with a proffessional courtesy, and as essential parts of a successful business.
When companies skimp on safety, we, the ordinary workers get killed, but the managers are never prosecuted for corporate manslaughter.
If we really want to go to the fullest logical extent of free markets then why should we not go right the way to indentured tied workforces, or even slavery, remember that it was money that put them in the fields and it was money that fought to keep them there.
I do not demand anything that I am not reasonably entitled to expect, I expect safe working conditions, I expect the company to adhere both to its own rules and to legally enforceable rules.
Companies are in a position of power over their employees, time and again this power is abused, individuals cannot hope to stand against it, people like me try to ensure that you get what you are entitled to, I resent some remarks here, I work hard for my employer, I then work in my own time for those around me to ensure their lives and living standards are protected, and ultimately my union work ensures that my employer does not get itself into situations where prosecutions will result.
Junior managers will tell senior managers what they think they want to hear, union representatives tell them how it is, there is a need for adversarial industrial relationships, else we all become far too cosy and complacent(provided that the adversarial aspect is not destructive)
There are poor unions, there are naiive unions, but there is an old axiom
“There are no bad workers, just bad managers”
If a worker is lazy and workshy, managers have the power to dismiss them, managers should be capable of managing, too often they are placemen who play golf with their friends, too often they are useless.If as a CEO, I found I had serious industrial relations problems, I would take a long hard look at my management team.
Good example here, look at the UK car industry, our production rates were poor, we lost millions of days in strikes, yet the Japanese built a car plant over here, using Japanese management and guess what, no strikes, highest production rates in Europe, higher quality standards than Japan.
The only differance between the UK car makers and the Japanese one was the management, the workers were the same.'nuff said I think.
