Only in America....BAH!

[Seanith]

Unions in the grocery stores like safeway are rediculous. They make retarded amounts of money an hour, and i had some stupid experiences with stores like safeway with strong unions. I was merchandising for the summer, and safeways you aren't really allowed or supposed to do work in their stores like facing etc. So you have to ask if its ok and sometimes your not allowed to. Oh well didn't have a problem at co-op, iga, or walmart! (even though co-op has the same union as safeway just not as strong )

[davidI]

Originally posted by 4wheeldrift
How do you decide what is deserved though? And even if you do deserve it, who's to say you are going to get it? Lots of people deserve raises and don't get them, why should a union be allowed to take people hostage to force situations that could kill a company, require sacrifices to services already on life support and barely getting by or destroy a budget?

This isn't to say that its the teachers or nurses or cops fault there isn't enough money, if the government would spend less cash on useless crap and more on schools and hospitals and police stations etc, things wouldn't be nearly as big a mess as they are. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of unionized employees have unreasonable expectations for raises and benefits, and demand them regardless of whether they deserve them or are able to have them or not.

I don't want anyone to think I think unions are necessarily a bad thing, i'm just playing devils advocate here

I know you're just playing devils advocate but Teachers now need a 5 year university degree just to get a job where they get paid so little a lot of them have to moonlight to get by. So, the teachers go on strike to try and get back their lost wages and instead of solving the problem Klein orders them back. Why is it that all of my best teachers left the profession to become employees in privately owned companies? A good education system is reflected by society. More money towards schools is in an inverse relationship with judicial spending. More education, less crime. I'm taking management at school and have a very capitalist mindset, just like Klein, but my parents are teachers so I see both sides of the situation. I realize that money can't just come from the government but I think school should start allowing more advertising within the system to pay for basic supplies. I don't know why so many people think it is wrong to have Pepsi buy a bunch of books for a school just to have their logo painted somewhere. The kids that see this in their school are going to go home and see the same logo on television an hour later. I'm just babbling now...it's late and I'm in a shitty mood but it's definatley a complex topic.

[thich]

Unions have their good/bad side.
When a union is detracting from productivity of the organization then obviously we have an inefficiency in the system.

I personally am biased against unions but I see where they can be useful.

With teachers though... I am still reserved about my thoughts on the issues with unions and them striking.
I don't understand why they can't teach with their (overloaded?) class sizes when most asian countries can manage to teach children and make them productive (academically) in classrooms that have like well over 30-40 students.
I think a lot of it has to do with the North American culture too.
If you go to Asia, you will be hardpressed to see unions b/c of the difference in cultural priorities (ie. a group-oriented complex).

like i said earlier though, they have their good/bad... as the ppl who are affected, we just have to suck it up

Quoted from DavidI

I don't know why so many people think it is wrong to have Pepsi buy a bunch of books for a school just to have their logo painted somewhere.

cuz apparently it's morally wrong :P
but it works to help alleviate some of the monetary issues doesn't it?

[E36M3]

I guess you didn't learn a whole lot about the rest of the world in school . The United States has one of the least restricted economies in the world, and is far less encumbered by unions and the problems that come with them.

In Canada and lots of other countries that are more socialist than the United States, unions are a huge problem.

I remember hearing about the strike, but I hadn't noticed yet. Is Albertson's one of the stores affected by the strikes? We only really shop at Andronico's and Albertsons.

Just as a matter of principle, if a union strike stopped me from shopping at a store that I frequent, I would never shop there again, period. Unions are against everything that a free economy stands for.

(this isn't flame bait, just an opinion, so please take that into consideration before bashing me)

QUOTE]Originally posted by Zephyr
this is so stupid....in cali our grocery stores are on strike so some stores i cant get to because the dumb fucks pickters jump infront of the cars entering the plaza where the grocery store is plus sometimes i want to buy some stuff the grocery stores are like empty because the truck union is supporting the picketers and refusing to deliever the food shipments. and now our MTA mechanics are on strike so the public buses are stopped so more traffic than usual. whats even dumber is that my county worker union is going on strike starting yesturday and we doing rolling strikes, and i work for the county argh this is so stupid...only in america there would be 3 strikes together... [/QUOTE]