Teamster split from AFCLO union

The AFCLO split up from Teamster. Does this mean Union is having serious problem. Do you guys notice that many US companies are exploiting their workers by paying lower wages in past decade? The Union has been powerless to do anything. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I have little respect for unions... and I was in two of them.
Both were crooked and only cared enough to keep sucking dues out of the members. When contract time came they did little or nothing on our behalf... one even insisted we take a contract that essentially allowed the company to pay us half time on holidays.

Well at least it was the Teamsters choosing to withdraw rather than like the last time when the AFL-CIO kicked them out for being too crooked and infested with mafia.

Should have next to zero impact in the overall future of labor unions.

Picard, there are complicated politics about it, but the way I heard it, the split was about what you say, that wages have been getting lower and lower all over. The old unions mainly tried to get the best possible benefits for their existing members and were successful at it, but it turned the union into sort of an exclusive club that was hard to join (not very many of those jobs). The unions that split felt that the low-wage non-union sector was making everyone suffer and so they put more emphasis in expansion, getting some benefit for as many people as possible, instead of maximizing benefit for just a few people. For example, one of their goals is to unionize Wal-Mart, which the old union made no serious attempt to do. So, they think their approach will be good for labor in general even if it's less help for those already at the top of the ladder.

As for corruption, yes, anytime there's a lot of money in one place, there's corruption. The unions have corruption but the corporations and their CEO's are also corrupt, so it all evens out /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif.

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picard said:
Do you guys notice that many US companies are exploiting their workers by paying lower wages in past decade?

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I think that had more to do with the economy than anything else. Companies in general, not just US companies, pay what they have to for employees. With the economy in the toilet for the last 5 years (and headed that way even before) the companies could get away with paying less.

It remains to be seen what will happen next. The economy seems to be improving but there seems to be a lot more off-shore production these days. For example, China and much of Asia for manufactured goods, Russia and India for software, Latin America for produce. That may contribute to the downward pressure and keep wages low.

Please don't misunderstand me, I am not in any way blaming other countries for what's happening. We make our own choices for what we buy and live with the consequences.

I hope the split of unions is not omen of bad future for all employees. I understand the politics is complicated. I don't even want to discuss politics. The job market in north america is bleak right now. There are too many off shore jobs going to India. US consumers can live with the fact China is major producer of hardware goods. The hardware goods can be automated but still achieve high quality. I feel frustrated that white collar jobs are transfer to India. What happens if companies decide to transfer most accounting jobs to India? IBM already laid off 5000 employees; and their jobs have been transfer to India. Dell opened another 1000jobs in India to save money. India. If companies assume they can pay pennies to an Indian worker it doesn't mean we have to stoop low to become slave here too. I hope NGO organizations will step in to stop this bleeding of jobs to India. NGO have done excellent work in many political & social issues.

that's my 02 cents !!

There are good and bad things about unions. I'm represented by a union where I work, and have mixed feelings about it. Due to some quirk of the agreement with my employer in Texas, or some peculiarities of state law, the union must represent all non-management employees, but cannot force them to join the union.

Upsides:
> The wages and benefits are excellent
> Representation if I want it during any "closed door" meetings with management (but that doesn't count for much in a "right to work" state - and even the union knows it)

Downsides:
> No merit raises or bonuses
> I'm treated more or less the same as barely-competent co-workers
> Seniority isn't everything, it's the only thing

Unions were born out of a need created by unscrupulous employers. Unfortunately, now there are some unscrupulous unions. If both sides were fair and reasonable, unions wouldn't be needed.

One of my pet peeves are the teacher's unions. They make it impossible to get rid of lousy teachers, which only hurts our children. This should be changed. If the unions promoted excellence in teaching, no one would mind paying them a good buck. But instead they promote mediocrity.

Without commenting on the reasons that Unions formed in the first place and their benefit / challenges, they have made a major strategy error in the US.

Their strategy has been to focus on unionizing employees with jobs, which is a rapidly declining number due in fact to imports from countries which greatly subsidize their industries (such as Taiwan and China). Their other source of members is from public employee unions, which are rather controversal with their employers (tax payers).

What the unions should be doing, is working on ways to reduce imports and increase exports. They need to focus on making people feel guilty for buying Chinese / Indian made products and services, putting Americans out of work, not just union people out of work. This would raise overall US employment, and therefore, raise the number of employees willing / able to join unions.

Rising water raises all ships.

I agree with Harry comments completely. Unions have lost their strategic focus on the job market. They are too involved with increasing their own profits just like corporations. Moreover, teachers union only coddify incompetent teachers.

"They need to focus on making people feel guilty for buying Chinese / Indian made products and services,..."

Guilt-trips don't work for very long tho'. For example, I stopped feeling guilty about American auto companies and workers somewhere back in the '70s when my GM cars started stranding me out in the boondocks.

Also, after a while people will figure out a way to not feel bad, no matter what the guilt was about in the first place. That goes for Civil Rights, Women's Lib, the Greens, etc. It sure didn't take long for hybrid cars to get into a horsepower/torque race instead of the MPG race. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Edited by me because my response could lead this thread down a less desirable path. My bottom line was, Big Unions as they are currently structured often make a company non-competitive. Therefore big unions share some of the blame for outsourcing.

Hear hear, Dave. I maintain that the outsourcing we are seeing is merely the logical outcome of the the unrealistic wages union's have brought about for certain manufacturing jobs. Growing up here in Michigan I'm quite familiar with the concept of the autoworker that makes $25/hr for bolting on a part, and time and a half, or double time on holidays, plus full medical and pension. If you brought up the disconnect between the cost per hour to the company vs. the actual value of the work performed the autoworker defensively responded "Well why shouldn't I be entitled to make a decent living?" disregarding the fact that the sentiment, while understandable, did nothing to alter the economic reality of how much bolting a part on was actually worth.

For decades now people have predicted that the unions were going to price their members out of a job. The members that kept pushing for the wages increases somehow thought that day would never come. Well, its here. Don't blame those that weren't listened to, blame those that didn't listen. People can talk about how unrealistically low wages in other countries lead to outsourcing, but here in Michigan, aka the state with the nations highest unemployment, we're living the logical outcome of disregarding the realities of uncompetively high wages.

And as Russia and China come online fully as manufacturing and consumer powers, pretending we can make overpriced wages competitive by tarriffs and protectionism ignores the reality that within the next two decades the rising economic power of these emerging markets mean that the rest of the world will be more than happy to buy the cheaper goods that we can no longer afford.

The way the unions run themselves is going to guarantee their demise in the global marketplace.

The more flexible unons that try to avoid the harshest "evil management/poor workers" rhetoric, and actually bargain realisticly and make concessions in the face of economic reality will survive a bit longer, but the writing is on the wall for them too.

In it's simplest terms, what is a labor union? Most would say that a union is an organization of workers who banded together to collectively bargain for pay and working conditions etc.

It's true, that is a function of the union, but the key phrase there is "collective bargaining". When the union "bargains" that means that a union is a kind of BUSINESS, that is SELLING LABOR, to it's CUSTOMER, i.e. "evil management". That begs the question, what other entity on earth can be successful in the long term by abusing it's customer by selling what are rightly it's own resources back to it, at ever higher and higher prices, and does so by the threat of walkouts and strikes? And on top of that, it does so in a completely parasitic fashion to that customer, there is some HR offloading a union does like pensions and benefits, but the employers mostly still has full HR administrative burden for their own employees that the union still got to "sell" to them through collective bargaining.

It was a successful system in the first half of the twentieth century, where the combined forces of the Industrial Revolution, and World Wars I, and II, left the U.S. the world's sole economic power until the late 1960's Those days are long gone, and our competitive standing on the world stage can no longer withstand such self-abuse.

If the unions were serious about surviving in today's global economic climate, they would turn themselves into non-profit co-op outsourced labor firms. The "members" would be employees of the union itself, and not the business owners. Instead of collective bargaining, they would bid their labor pool out competitively. This would actually save businesses money, as they would offload the HR burden onto themselves as additional savings.

This model is already partly in place now. There are any number of for-profit firms that do this today, Manpower Inc. for example, and any other number of IT and BPO (Business Processing Outsource) firms that staff companies and governmental IS and clerical departments. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for auto workers, carpenters, or truck drivers. The difference is that these firms would be NON-Profit, and the employees/members still have their vote. This new kind of non-profit outsource union would pour any earnings back into the employee/member's salaries and benefits, and thus be able to actually put their money where their mouths are when it comes to all the pro-labor rhetoric, instead of financing it by twisting the arms of the owners through legal extortion.

The business owners/corporations can offload their payroll/FICA taxes, HR burden, and benefits overhead. Suddenly all these expenses now move into the loss/expense category, instead of taxable column. Their profits and competitiveness in the global marketplace increase, they expand. Amazingly, they can now "buy" even more labor from the "union", which in turn increases overall American employment. The co-op labor outsource firm (the former union) is non-profit, so they get certain tax-breaks which reduces their overhead as compared to a for-profit firm, and since they plow any "profit" back into salaries and benefits, they can be competitive in the labor market by attracting the best talent.

It makes sense, and it creates a much needed "loophole" that reduces the tax burden our government ridiculously places on employment. By eliminating the payroll tax on employers the U.S. would probably reverse the trade deficit as companies moved here, and see 99.9% employment within a year, and would likely recoup the loss through increased income tax revenue anyway. But if they don't, creating the non-profit co-op outsource union has great potential to be win-win-win. For the owners/management: They save money, cut overhead, and in turn get more competitive in the global market. The unions: They get to continue existing as a social/political force in America, maybe even grow, unlike now. And finally, the workers: They stand a better chance to keep their jobs, and the non-profit outsource union pours any profit into their paychecks.

Where am I wrong with this?

The Teamsters and SEIU split from the AFL-CIO mostly because they felt that the AFL-CIO was spending more time lobbying Congress than trying to increase the membership of the unions in the AFL-CIO. They felt that more members would bring more clout to the bargaining table. Very probably they should do that and push Congress, too.

I never was a teamster, but way back when (1970's), I had a job that was with a university that had an endowment of almost $700 million but offered its workers 2% or less annual raises. The head of the department I was in timed breaks with a stopwatch and after belittling the women in the department to their face, stated that women were weaker and cried easily. I've worked in places that didn't need one, but yep, that place really needed a union. SEIU was a good choice for that situation. A good raise was won and even non-union employees benefitted (to keep them from joining probably). Raises and benefits were one thing, but health and safety issues were another. The union pushed on those issues and did well.

I haven't kept up with the operations since then. I can't state that things are always better with a union or that unions are always a good or bad thing, since unions are made up of people and the members have to get envolved in the operations of the union. Kinda like politics, eh?

Not all union members make $25+/hour and get the world handed to them for sleeping on the job. Life for people on many jobs can be pretty rotten for a lot of reasons. The work can be boring as hell, demand fast paced work, be dangerous, and/or do a good job of making you feel not only like your a machine but that you can bereplaced as easily as any machine part. You ought to be paid for any of that.

Overseas companies flood our market with goods made by people getting paid a fraction of a dollar per hour. Health benefits are getting cut while health costs are going through the roof. Jobs are harder to come by and costs of living are rising no matter what the government tries to say. Unions aren't the answer for every problem, but some unions really do help, and can help a lot.

But they are like the people who are in them. Some good, some not. Life ain't all black and white.

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MichiganMan said:
Growing up here in Michigan I'm quite familiar with the concept of the autoworker that makes $25/hr for bolting on a part, and time and a half, or double time on holidays, plus full medical and pension. If you brought up the disconnect between the cost per hour to the company vs. the actual value of the work performed the autoworker defensively responded "Well why shouldn't I be entitled to make a decent living?" disregarding the fact that the sentiment, while understandable, did nothing to alter the economic reality of how much bolting a part on was actually worth.

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If your operation requires large numbers of people to "bolt on a part" full-time - maybe even dedicate their working lives to the process - then you'd better pay them enough to make a living at it if you want the work to be done. Almost sickening how Americans are productive enough to sustain the highest standards of living (and thus, costs of living), but noone can afford to pay them to make products in their own country or perform many of the high-paying functions... Is there going to be any market left to sell into in a few decades as all the skills go offshore?

There's nothing more depressing than working full-time and making below-subsistence wages. I've been there. Those businesses are always hiring, yet try to maintain absurdly high standards for their disposable employees. In retail, the factor is easily 20:1 between the lowly clerk/cashier and the store manager. Surprisingly, the lowly clerk/cashier is now seen as surly and lazy - no surprise given the lack of real incentives other than escape.

I do not doubt the many challenges and benefits that come from unions, many of which have been discussed.

Remarkably, most people do not realize that similarly educated and employed people in Taiwan often make MORE than in the US, not less. The competitiveness we face in these markets is generally not a wage issue, it is a government subsidy issue.

Imagine the improved competitive position that Ford and GM would be in if the US government loaned them 100% of the cash needed (at 0% interest) for all of their "work in progress inventory". Also imagine, that Ford and GM had no income tax burden (as in 0) That is what we face every day competing with Taiwan.

Imagine if the US government said "we want the US to dominate the market for LEDs", so they paid to set up the equivalent of 4 Lumileds / Cree type firms, gave them free water, power, land, buildings, and equipment. Paid to train all of the employees and ensured that the wages were paid, even if the company had no money.

Then imagine that the US government backed firms ignored all IP issues from any other country, and blocked the importation of LEDs to the US.

That is what is we face every day with China.

Union or not, the only way the US will remain competitive on a worldwide basis is to make a major restructing of the tax code which switches the burden from taxing the income of the locals, to taxing retail and stock sales.

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MichiganMan said:
Hear hear, Dave. I maintain that the outsourcing we are seeing is merely the logical outcome of the the unrealistic wages union's have brought about for certain manufacturing jobs. Growing up here in Michigan I'm quite familiar with the concept of the autoworker that makes $25/hr for bolting on a part, and time and a half, or double time on holidays, plus full medical and pension. If you brought up the disconnect between the cost per hour to the company vs. the actual value of the work performed the autoworker defensively responded "Well why shouldn't I be entitled to make a decent living?" disregarding the fact that the sentiment, while understandable, did nothing to alter the economic reality of how much bolting a part on was actually worth. ...

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Bingo. Unions are on the way out, fellas.

Factory-type jobs and government jobs are the only places they'll hang on. Educated, competative people generally have little use for unions. People doing telemarketing will lose their jobs to India if they decide to unionize.