Those (many ) CEO's worked to get where they are. The rich (many of them) earned their money the hard way.
Look at some in the CEO's they get a mil or two bonus and the corporation is bailed out by the gov or they are chapter 13 , or close the doors ,,, they sure eared there money
For the record, I am definitely against any "bailout" for anyone. All a bailout is, is a way to eliminate accountability. That is one of our (many) big problems.
And the one who said people work better if they are shown appreciation....
I definitely agree with that.
It's me. I brought that up. My point about CEO pay was the widening gap between what we all make and what they make. They are certainly welcome to nearly everything, but how about taking care of the people carrying the business....the workers? Just one case in point.....In my area, a local hospital was having financial troubles. What does the administratives do? They let go nurses and janitors, but kept "their" jobs and salary in tact. The whole thing in Wisconsin is no different. The governor ain't taking a cut in his pay, or paying more for his retirement, much less giving some of it up, or having to pay for more of "his" medical insurance. Just the worker dudes! Home depot had a CEO that wasn't cutting it. While the average home depot employee makes a little above $8 an hour, this guy gets ousted and still collected his bonus! Can't remember how much it was, but it was cozy! You can defend CEOs all you want, but I just don't think they are so great that they deserve greater reward for their performance, when the average worker gets token rewards. Getting back on topic, and hammering my point is that the unions, while flawed and in some cases corrupt, at least in principle, are their to fight for the worker, in the presence of cheap skate and unethical private industry.
I do not necessarily want to be accused of defending the CEO's themselves.... I am, however, in defense of the system of capitalism, free market, and supply and demand.
I will agree that I do not necessarily understand why a CEO will get a bonus while the company is in turmoil... Doesn't make sense to me. I just have to wonder what the SHAREHOLDERS are thinking. Back to unions....
Like I said earlier... I have worked at a union shop, and the pay and benifits were great.
I also saw the workethic that it bred... It was very difficult to get rid of a union employee. There was no such thing as reward for performance... Unless performance=time on the payroll.... I just saw the problems with it and I also have read about what the UAW gets and how competitive the American companies are ('nt).
I just want to know (from those pro union folks out there).. Do you think a unionized company is more or less competitive than a non-union company? Pretty simple question.
Let me be clear Yellowjeep.... I am pro "responsible" capitalism, as I stated earlier. Unions are certainly not, but then neither is a single American worker competitive with a Chinese or Mexican worker in their own countries, either! So applying that logic, let's get rid of all American workers and get them Chinese laborers in the assembly plants. Unions aren't perfect, but then when I read stories about Henry Ford before his company went union, canning a man on his assembly line just because he suspected the man was gay? Well, I know that in a union system, that guy would have been protected!
Let me be clear Yellowjeep.... I am pro "responsible" capitalism, as I stated earlier. Unions are certainly not, but then neither is a single American worker competitive with a Chinese or Mexican worker in their own countries, either! So applying that logic, let's get rid of all American workers and get them Chinese laborers in the assembly plants. Unions aren't perfect, but then when I read stories about Henry Ford before his company went union, canning a man on his assembly line just because he suspected the man was gay? Well, I know that in a union system, that guy would have been protected!
Again...... THE UNIONS AT ONE TIME SERVED A GOOD PURPOSE.
Now, I can tell you who else is protected. The guy caught sleeping (not falling asleep, but making a bed in a dark corner), and the guy who has been working (present, anyway) on the job for 25 years.
The purpose of this thread was simply to state that restrictiong the abilities of unions (private or public) could have a DRAMATIC effect on the economy of this country as a whole. Now, if you somehow think that unions are helping the nations economy, then why not unionize all types of work? What do you think would happen then?
I just don't believe that unions promote successful business and I have yet to hear any evidence otherwise. I have heard plenty about what the unions do for the workers. I think they DID some needed things. Now, they do way too much. They are pretty much trying to keep the union workers from having to make the sacrifices (almost) everyone else is having to make.
See, I disagree with you. I think the unions still do serve a good purpose, but then that's me. I sure wish we had them in Idaho. Go back and read the difference in my personal wages between a "right to work" state and a union state. Both jobs are government, but one allows the contractor to pocket the extra money. As regards saving the state of Wisconsin, I'll say it again.......How about those at the top, taking a bit of a cut too? I sure think that if they were to suck it up a bit, you know.... be like Lee and show genuine concern about cutting a deficit rather than just lip service or political motives or spotlight theater. My contention, as is those who are standing up and protesting, is that the governor can make cuts elsewhere without putting it on the backs of a few. I can see how people get pissed thinking that "Hey! I don't have that, why should they"? What we should be saying is that we all should have that! If you let the establishment whittle away at your rights and you income, pretty soon, illegal immigrants and Chinese workers who will work for 18 cents an hour, will be replacing us all. At the current rate, it's just a matter of time before we all will be competing with those sorts of wages, if republican governors and the walmart mentality have their way!
2 March 2006 Thomas Sowell
Workers themselves increasingly recognize the reality that there is no free lunch through unionization and are increasingly voting to be non-union. But the word has yet to reach many among the intelligentsia, who still think of labor unions as institutions that benefit the working class.
Government is not the only institution that promises something for nothing. The decline of General Motors is just one consequence of the idea that labor unions can get their members something for nothing.
Workers themselves increasingly recognize the reality that there is no free lunch through unionization and are increasingly voting to be non-union.
But the word has yet to reach many among the intelligentsia, who still think of labor unions as institutions that benefit the working class.
You can always benefit particular segments of any society at the expense of some other segment but unions do not benefit even the working class as a whole -- just those who are current union members -- at the expense of other workers, current and future.
One reason that General Motors has been losing market share for years -- going from selling about half the cars in the country to selling about one quarter today -- is that its union contracts put them at a disadvantage compared to its Japanese competitors.
Even though Toyota has factories in the United States, the American employees in those factories vote to keep their jobs by staying non-union.
Toyota takes business away from unionized Detroit car makers, who are forced to lay off thousands of workers while Toyota is hiring additional workers.
There may not be any big difference in pay scales but unions can create higher production costs in many other ways. Fringe benefits are just one.
Work rules are another.
In some industries, employers pay their workers as much as, or more than, unionized workers receive for the same jobs, just in order to be free of red tape restrictions on how they can organize their business or discipline employees who aren't doing their jobs right.
Toyota, for example, takes fewer hours to produce cars with fewer defects than Detroit cars.
While unions are declining in the private sector, they are expanding among government employees. Government agencies are usually monopolies, so competition is no threat to their jobs.
Taxpayers get hit with the high cost of these monopolies. There is no such thing as something for nothing.
Teachers' unions fight desperately and ruthlessly against vouchers, because they must maintain a monopoly of school children under the compulsory attendance laws. Their members stand to lose jobs if forced to compete with private schools.
Monopoly is the key to unionized teachers' job security -- at the expense of children's education as well as the taxpayers' money.
Labor unions in the private sector have long been in the forefront of those pushing for higher minimum wage laws. Usually union members already make much more than minimum wages but they need to safeguard their jobs from others who could do the same work for less.
People on the inside looking out benefit at the expense of people on the outside looking in. Losers include not only less experienced and lower skilled workers, whose output would not cover the cost of the minimum wage, but also future workers who may find fewer job opportunities in the unionized industries.
Minimum wage laws are like protective tariffs insulating unionized workers from the competition of other workers. It is robbing a less affluent Peter to pay a more affluent Paul -- all the while using noble rhetoric that appeals to the uninformed and the unthinking, which includes many people with fancy degrees and even fancier illusions about their own higher sense of compassion.
Some people may believe that unions benefit their members at the expense of employers -- and that big corporations should be paying a "living wage."
That may be possible in the short run. But think about it: If unionized workers producing widgets get higher pay by reducing the rate of profit of widget manufacturers, do you think investors are going to continue to invest as much in the production of widgets when they can earn higher rates of return by investing elsewhere?
The rate of return on widgets cannot remain permanently below rates of returns in other industries. Widget prices will have to rise -- and that means lower sales and lower employment. There is no free lunch, no way to get something for nothing.
Some, in arguing against unions, maintain that increasing union wages can only increase cost in the end because the companies paying higher wages will just pass on the cost. This opinion completely disregards the fact that maybe the executives and managers are overpaid. An equivalent decrease in executive pay alongside an increase in worker pay would therefore lead to no additional costs to the consumer. This is not hard to achieve since executives are making over 300 times as much as their workers.
Or are those arguing against better pay for workers merely unwilling to see management take home less? Is it that under no circumstances must executives receive less compensation, only workers must sacrifice? Executives can have golden parachutes, secure retirements, paid country club memberships, use of the company jet, and perks as far as the eye can see in perpetuity. But the workers are at fault for budgetary issues? The workers must sacrifice and go without? The $12 an-hour they are making is too much?
Second, I've see some defending corporations regarding the money they are making. Paraphrasing, "Not all received bailout money. So leave them alone." But as I've described in many previous posts, all, especially large corporations, do receive many forms of public largess. And, it has also been shown that public workers often would have cost less to complete a project rather than the contracted private company.
Third, unions don't "price themselves out of a market." Federal and state policies (influenced with corporate cash) eviscerate unions by making them compete with third world slave labor. We’ve allowed a regression to take place. We're watching all the struggles the labor movement fought for over the last two centuries go down the drain. As we use jargon like "globalization," "competition," and "efficiencies" to gloss over the fact that our government, complicit with multinational corporations, has allowed workers the world over to be exploited in pursuit of the profit for a select few. They are not pricing themselves out of anything. The money that workers were previously earning is now being siphoned off by executives and CEOs. As productivity of the American worker has increased, they have not seen a correlated increase in their pay. Yet, executive compensation has skyrocketed.
"is that the one where people died in the fire because the doors were chained shut? Just curious."
That's the one.
Something happens to some people when money is involved. They lose track of it's actual value. Maybe that's why the "eye of the needle" was mentioned at all.
Money is a tool we use in our society, it's not some magic elixir of happiness. You're the same person if you have millions or nothing at all. It's certainly not worth burning employees or child labor.
Carnival Ride From Hell
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I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
or they are chapter 13 , or close the doors ,,, they sure eared there money 
I'm ducking for cover now!
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