And they just keep asking for more.

The company I work for used to have 6 separate facilities in my state 35 years ago. They’re now down to 2, and one of them keeps getting slowly whittled down. My particular department had over a thousand people across 3 shifts and now they have about 2 dozen. After several years of posting losses, tens of thousands of people who fought so hard against the evil company found themselves out of a job entirely, and watched as the work and equipment to do it all went overseas. In those people’s minds it’s still the company’s fault, and they had absolutely no part whatsoever in the business being forced to restructure.
But that’s just how people are. Some of us are wired primarily for personal responsibility and individual choices determining our lot in life, and others are wired to place all the blame on their external environment, the companies they work for, and their perceived shortcomings of the system in general.
Maybe the truth is somewhere in between making people pick themselves up by the bootstraps and tearing the entire system down to make it more equitable for everyone.

 

Unions did some good things, maximum work weeks, payment for injuries at work, child labor laws etc etc
The problem with unions is they make everyone equal. Why you have to pay dues weather you belong or not. If you pay dues you might all well join so you can vote.

if you ever worked you have seen this
A group works their arses off
A group works hard enough to not get fired
A group you wonder what they actually do!
All get paid same


Labors time has come boomer are retired and everyone had less kids

 

Guess im never buying a brand new vehicle again.

 

Man I could tell you some stories of what goes on but someone would turn me in and my house would get torched to the ground… You can’t mess around with the good old boys’ club.

 

VERY WELL SAID Eric!

 

I've never worked in a union shop.. and have avoided it my whole life.

I've got relatives and friends that used to work in a union shop.. till it was shuttered and all the jobs went overseas.

They all had grievances against the union protecting extremely non productive workers. Ones that were frequently drinking or using drugs while on the job, etc.

Don't get me wrong.. they exist outside of the union environment, but employers can more easily remove them from the workforce.

I can attest that poor workers are a morale killer in any shop. I detest having to work harder to cover for a slacka$$e$ desire to do just enough to keep their job.

I read what was said about unions lifting all wages.. and to an extent that is true.

But that primarily only applies when there are more job openings than qualified workers. If there are more workers than the union site can employ, then other employers don't need to meet union wages to attract employees.

Our shop has paid lower wages than the union shop did.. and my boss never had much issue filling positions.

After the union shop went overseas, he had to turn away applicants, as there was no need for additional workers.

No intelligent company hires more workers than they can actively employ and benefit from.

All my friends and relatives also had to endure layoffs, sometimes quite lengthy ones, and a couple had to endure strikes decades ago.

Until Covid, I had never been laid off a single day in the 20 years I've worked for the company.

I'm not anti union, they have a valuable place in the working environment.

But I've never needed a union steward to protect me from losing my job either.

Also.. the longest I've ever been unemployed has been 8 months, but I was looking to remain in the IT field, in a non IT heavy region.

Edit.. Should qualify that I mean "actively unemployed".. meaning actively looking but not finding what I wanted.

There were times I was "voluntarily unemployed".. just not looking, or going to school.

Never drew one day of unemployment pay during those times.. only during the Covid times.
/Edit

I've never bought the whole "I just can't find a job" line. One should be honest enough to say "I can't find a job that requires little work for excellent pay"

$.02

As an aside.. I've received 2 raises this year, that amounted to a 15% pay increase.

 

Both great posts.

 

Well.. He did say "in between" the 2 extremes.

 

Exactly. I was trying to be ambiguous about the two schools of thought without explicitly going there. Per our various PMs I think you know where I stand

 

The Federal Reserve mechanism to regulate the cost of money (interest rates) was even more severely distorted after the Great Recession when they papered over the underlying problems with ongoing zero interest rate policy.

After this next recession, the markets will not just require more debt to function, but exponentially more debt. The current labor disputes and settlements are going to further inflame inflation. I think we have to buckle up for some really hard times because we will all continue to pay the bill in the form of both higher inflation (silent taxation) and higher for longer interest rates if J Powell has the fortitude to do so. By the time they start to lower rates something big is going to have broken. It would have happened already had Silicon Valley Bank not been bailed out. How much longer the can will be kicked down the road is the real question.

In my area of the mid-west, a pre-1964 90% silver quarter is still able to purchase (in melt value = $4.10 USD) the same amount of gasoline the year I was born (one gallon). We have seen the evidence that bad money chases out good money. Most people don’t realize what has happened to undermine their purchasing power. Now the masses are slowly waking up as complacency wanes, and they are getting restless and desperate. We are now in the midst of the largest yearly increase in homelessness in the USA ever. If not for programs such as SNAP, the breadlines would far exceed those of the Great Depression. Some economists are now calling the current situation the “Great Silent Depression.”

Speaking of vehicle costs, I am planning on maintaining our current fleet as long as possible! I can’t stomach the idea of buying a new truck with a price tag higher than our first home. A lot of people in this community are way ahead of the game in terms of self-sufficiency, but we are all going to continue to feel it as things really get rolling! The proverbial water boiling the frog maybe nearing 212F in my opinion, and one can hope for the best (a soft landing), but it would probably be prudent to prepare for the worst.