Union slobs want more pay during recession; threaten strike at 11 Houston refineries

A question for the typical conservatives who hate unions. The percentage of union workers is at a low point since perhaps the start of the New Deal and the economy is at a low point. This may be logically just correlation, though I doubt it. If nothing else, how can you explain that the economy is not getting stronger and stronger as the percentage of unionized workers get lower?

 

Sometimes I envy conservatives and Republicans. When they win they get the thrill of victory, when they lose they know that justice has triumphed.

A conservative Republican is someone who cannot enjoy a good meal unless they know that others are hungry.

 

What a weak argument. It's based on a false correlation and woefully inaccurate at that. Our economy is many times larger and healthier, even today, than it was when the New Deal was enacted. Unions have shrunk over time because they are dinosaurs. They haven't kept pace with the times, corporate America avoids them like the plague because of their abysmal productivity levels, and union workers themselves are questioning the benefits of wasting their dues on inefficient, corrupt, and superfluous organizations. Labor laws on the books today invalidate the need for unions. Very few successful companies/industries lean heavily on union labor. Many failures of companies/industries lean heavily on union labor.

Take several history classes, please. It's amazing that people actually think like you think. It's tragic that they vote. Don't ever make the mistaking of voting ever again, glynch.

 

Unions were brought about when we had major labor excess and human rights were about the level they are in the PRC now.

When osha and other federal labor guidlines came into place they kinda became pork.


It really takes some balls to strike right now.

 

Unions have shrunk over time because our government has allowed corporations to outsource manufacturing without disincentive to countries with crap labor laws that don't respect worker's rights. It has nothing to do with productivity.

The election has rattled you like a Maraca. Snap out of it kid.

 

Totally wrong. Furthermore, do you think companies check in with the clowns in Congress before moving ahead with projects to build manufacturing facilities abroad? Now that's just funny. I guess it's the government's fault that workers in China, Mexico, Vietnam, etc are willing to work for less money than the union slobs. Wow

 

Companies pay off the clowns in Congress through lobbying to be able to move their operations offshore without tax and legal repercussions. That's the real "free market". Bribe your home government so you can ship middle class manufacturing jobs overseas and then bribe the destination country so you can pay workers pennies on the dollar, deny them healthcare, deny them pensions, deny them retirement, destroy the environment, have dangerous work conditions, etc.

The corporate greed mongers are all about who they can bribe and marginalize next to justify their bloated salaries, their private jets, and their ridiculous bonuses. They have no problem burning down the system as long as it makes their financials look good today, forget tomorrow.

 

If all the crap we bought was made here, middle class would be much harder to get.

A toaster would cost over 200 bucks, computers?, speakers, CLOTHES!

The money we make would have such low buying power we would be screwed.

I mean it sounds like you are for isolationism or something. Middle class job is the job where they help to design, market and ship the products made. Not actually make them.

 

The wages arent' competitive regardless of unions are not, unless you believe american workers should earn only $5 a day.

BTW, don't be so freakin smug like you couldn't lose your job to a foreigner.


Banks sought foreign workers while laying off american workers

Banks sought foreign workers as Americans were laid off
By FRANK BASS and RITA BEAMISH Associated Press
Feb. 1, 2009, 11:22AM
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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

As the economic collapse worsened last year — with huge numbers of bank employees laid off — the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in the 2007 budget year to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions. Such visas are most often associated with high-tech workers.

It is unclear how many foreign workers the banks actually hired; the government does not release those details. The actual number is likely a fraction of the 21,800 foreign workers the banks sought to hire because the government only grants 85,000 such visas each year among all U.S. employers.

During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.

Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers.

Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified.

"The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that opposes the H-1B system.

David Huber of Chicago is a computer networking engineer who has testified to Congress about losing out on a 2002 job with the former Bank One Corp. He learned later the bank applied to hire dozens of foreign visa holders for work he said he was qualified to do.

"American citizenship is being undermined working in our own country," Huber said in an AP interview.

Beyond seeking approval for visas from the government, banks that accepted federal bailout money also enlisted uncounted foreign workers, often in technology jobs, through intermediary companies known as "body shops." Such businesses are the top recipients of the H-1B visas.

The use of visa workers by ailing banks angers Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

"In this time of very, very high unemployment ... and considering the help these banks are getting from the taxpayers, they're playing the American taxpayer for a sucker," Grassley said in a telephone interview with AP.

Grassley, with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is pushing for legislation to make employers recruit American workers first, along with other changes to the visa program.

Banks turned to foreign workers before the current economic crisis, said Diane Casey-Landry, chief operating officer for the American Bankers Association. The group said a year ago that demand exceeded the pool of qualified workers in areas like sales, lending and bank administration. Now with massive layoffs, the situation is different, Casey-Landry said.

The issue takes on a higher profile as the government injects billions of dollars into the economy and President Barack Obama pushes for massive government spending to create jobs nationwide, on top of the $700 billion already approved for the ailing banks.

"You're using taxpayer dollars and there's an expectation that there are benefits to the U.S.," said Ron Hira, a national expert on foreign employment and assistant public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "What you're really doing is leaking away those jobs and benefits that should accrue to the taxpayers."

But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes more access to "worldwide talent pools" will better position U.S. financial companies against global competitors, spokesman Andrew Brent said.

The U.S. Customs and Immigration Service declined to disclose details on foreign workers hired at the banks that have received federal bailouts. The AP has requested the information under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Nearly all the banks the AP contacted also declined to comment on their foreign hiring practices. Arlene C. Roberts, spokeswoman for State Street Corp. of Boston, which has received $2 billion in bailout money, said the company has reduced H-1B hiring in recent years, and just hires for specialized positions.

Jennifer Scott of Yreka, Calif., a retired technical systems manager at Bank of America in Concord, Calif., said in 2004 she oversaw foreign employees from a contractor firm that also sent overnight work to employees in India.

"It had nothing to do with a shortage, but they didn't want to pay the U.S. rate," she said, adding that the quality of the work was weak. "It's all about numbers crunching."

Frank Bass reported from East Dover, Vt.

 

If you really think that a supposed lack of labor unions has sent the economy spiralling out of control, then you really have no clue about the economy.

This is unncessary...and incorrect.

A liberal Democrat is somebody who will enjoy a good meal while making sure everybody else gets the same while everybody else is stuck with the check.

 

Out of curiosity, if unions were stronger today, what impacts do you think they would have on the economy that would have made it stronger right now?

 

let me know when the strike happens so I can put in my resume

 

I'm even more smug than that -- I don't think I could lose my job to an AMERICAN!

 

I worked as a contract automation consultant for 10 years and during that time I worked at a variety of manufacturing facilities. Many of these were union. My experience was, the larger/more national the union the less motivated the employee. IE local small local unions were often impossible to distinguish from non union plants. Large national unions like tire plants/auto industry had less productive workers with higher wages and were extremely hard to work with as a contract professional hired to improve manufacturing efficiency.

I was around 3 different plants that went on strike, all 3 closed. At least one of those strikes was mandatory because the union contract gave the union all the power to negotiate and the workers didn't even get to vote if they wanted to strike. Most didn't, and they all lost their jobs. So did I as far as working for that plant goes. Those jobs are in China now and the small towns that lost them were crushed.

The best tire plant I worked in was non union, had the hardest working, happiest, highest paid employees.

I'm not a big fan of unions where there are "corporate" union bosses that are just as corrupt as the CEO's and "the man" unions are always "fighting".

Just my two cents.

 

do you know if this plant is still open

 

yes it's still open

The highest paid part comes from monetary performance/production incentives. IE the hardest working most productive people make the most.

I'm just relaying my experience, perception and opinion. I could give examples but I don't think anyone cares.

 

bloomberg

 

The union members need to quit wasting their dues if this is all they are going to get out of their leadership. What an embarrassment. Thank goodness for our economy that the union is so weak.