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Termyn8or -> RE: What the Union I belong to, means to ME :) (12/14/2008 7:52:01 PM)
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In one of those Moses movies they show around Christmas time (which makes no sense), Moses says something to the effect that "Sick slaves make less bricks than healthy slaves, dead slaves make none".
You open up and talk about things, now answer me this question. Oh those who know it all and see the future and every other thing, you have a goose and it lays you a golden egg once a day. It weighs what it weighs, and let's say you are getting $3,663 per day. However this goose is no secret and security is expensive, there is overhead and you see that bottom line creeping up. So you hop in an armoured vehicle or whatever and head down to the vet and ask the vet if there is a way to get the goose to lay, say two eggs a day.
His reply is that yes he could do that but it would shorten her lifespan, she would be dead in two years, three at the max.
What do you do ?
On to the topic at hand. I have seen unions from their best to the worst. I personally know people who were in the UAW who were home when they should be at work and tell me flat out "Charlie will punch me out at quitting time". I have also seen the opposite end of the spectrum, as exhibited by local 5 in Cleveland, the bricklayer's union.
This is a very difficult union to get into, you have to be sponsored, and meet some requirements. Normally during your apprenticeship so many days a moth are school days, you go to the hall and build a wall, something like that. The union assumes all the cost of learning materials and such, bricks, block, mortar. Meantime the company for which you work pays your hourly wage as you go to these classes.
I saw the books they gave my buddy when he was going through it, it is a quite thorough education in the matter. He is now a full mason and can build just about anything. It is hard work, working with brick, block, stone, granite, marble and so forth, but it does pay well. It pays well because it has to be done right the first time. He does well, but has been fired for something that wasn't his fault, it came down to him thinking "That isn't going to happen" and it did. But that was not the end of the world.
People just ain't that smart sometimes. If they thought enough of my Uncle to buy him off from running for union office, there was a reason, and I think I know what it was. He was a realist. Tell you what I think would've happened if he got past the local and into real power, he would have gotten something done. Most likely that would have been to take over the retirement investment business, but he would have run it right.
Even so there would still be some crisis, but most likely about a year ago, like JR Ewing said "I want a revolution", my Uncle would've said "I want liquidity". Now. Actually a Man like him in control of alot of investment capital may have precipitated this "crisis" before the Bush adminstration wanted it.
Read that last sentence again. I'll be back.
T
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