Kerry won't cross a picket line; Romney will.

[wolfeden]

..and did, here in Boston at the Mayor's Conference.

I've been both a unionized and non-union worker before. Some union stuff pisses me off but overall -- in my experience -- the proletarians amongst us are a lot better off with the protections of an organized labor force. From public service (EMS) to food service (supermarket clerk) I've learned to respect the power of the union. From working outside those unions in hellish retail and veterinary jobs I learned to appreciate them even more.

Romney crossed the police picket line.
Kerry did not.

Draw your own conclusions.

 

[nbcrusader]

If you support unions, you will applaud Kerry. If you don't, you will applaud Romney.

If you criticize a politician for being "owned" by big business, is it any better when a politician is "owned" by a union?

 

[BostonAnne]

It seems to me that Politicans that are "owned" by a union are owned by the people or are more for the people, so yes - it is better.

 

[nbcrusader]

I tend to find those "people" are union bosses and not average workers.

 

[Dreadsox]

So let me understand this......

If Boston Police Department sets up picket lines in front of the Democratic National Convention....Kerry will not cross them?

 

[Dreadsox]

For those of you outside the state...the police union has been holding up work outside the Fleet Center preventing work to prepare for the convention.

 

[nbcrusader]

So let me understand this......

If Boston Police Department sets up picket lines in front of the Democratic National Convention....Kerry will not cross them?

Principle only goes so far.....

 

[verte76]

For those of you outside the state...the police union has been holding up work outside the Fleet Center preventing work to prepare for the convention.

That sounds like a heck of a mess.

 

[wolfeden]

So let me understand this......

If Boston Police Department sets up picket lines in front of the Democratic National Convention....Kerry will not cross them?

Given the BoPo's own long and convoluted history of corruption, who knows what exactly they're going to do at the convention itself.

Likely as not they will "demonstrate" but not picket, so as to make as much of a mess as possible without actually, you know, standing on principle and picketing.

But yes...I believe Kerry (and just about everyone else scheduled to be there) would not cross that picket line if one was present at the Fleet Center during the DNC.

 

[Dreadsox]

I hope to God they set up a picket line. They have been without a contract for long enough.

 

[melon]

I doubt the unions with picket the DNC. They would make the Democratic Party look bad, and they know the alternative.

Melon

 

[BostonAnne]

I tend to find those "people" are union bosses and not average workers.

The purpose of the "union bosses" is to benefit the union workers. The purpose of big business is to produce a profit. While there is always a situation where people don't do their jobs properly - the unions that do are for the average workers.

 

[wolfeden]

Thought not. No DNC picket.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics.../06/29/police_say_they_wont_picket_convention

The police deserve a friggin contract already. God knows they don't have an easy job here.
What I don't know is if it's just Menino holding things up or something bigger.

 

[nbcrusader]

The purpose of the "union bosses" is to benefit the union workers. The purpose of big business is to produce a profit. While there is always a situation where people don't do their jobs properly - the unions that do are for the average workers.

Sounds great in theory, but doesn't work in the real world. When $200K+ a year bosses direct $50K a year workers to give up their paychecks in losing battles on principle, the benefit to the worker is not there.


Also, corporations produce profit for shareholders. Whether most workers realize it or not, they benefit as shareholders through pension funds or other investments. Healthy corporations benefit California state workers, for example, more than they realize.

 

[melon]

"Give up their paychecks?" If it weren't for the unions, they'd have worked for far less in wages--and we can see the difference between the salary and benefits of union workers versus non-union workers--and, secondly, they aren't really losing their paychecks; I would think that, most likely, they are picketing when they aren't working! I don't think that the police and firefighters are allowed to stop working completely, due to their importance in society.

As for "shareholders," most of them are not employees, and the difference between union pensions and non-union pensions are equally as dramatic as the differences in their wages and benefits. In the case of Costco, which is similar to Sam's Club (for all you Wal-Mart fans out there), the shareholders are bitching, because the CEO pays its workers far better than the competition does. The shareholders' logic? "It's not your place to help workers. It's your job make us money." That's why there are unions, because, outside of Costco, most businesses couldn't give a shit about their workers; they are as disposable as the computers they purchase and discard when they get too old.

Melon

 

[wolfeden]

wages, benefits, and a lot more.

when I worked overnights at Stop&Shop paying my way through UMass, I had a bulk bin slide off a top shelf and hit me square in the face, destroying my (expensive, complicated bifocal prescription) glasses. Union paid for the replacement pair, no problems -- and no way could I have afforded to do so on my own as there was no vision coverage provided thru the university health care and I didn't work enough hours at S&S to qualify for their health plan either.

Fast forward to working for a private ambulance service -- that did not offer a health care plan.
I hurt my back on the job -- no union, no bennies, no nothing. If I'd filed for workman's comp I'd have lost my job. Two weeks out of work, no pay, no coverage.

I'll take the union, thanks.
"Healthy corporations" don't give a rat's toenail about their workers - does Enron mean anything to ya? How healthy was THAT for California?

 

[DrTeeth]

Unions

 

[BostonAnne]

Fast forward to working for a private ambulance service -- that did not offer a health care plan.
I hurt my back on the job -- no union, no bennies, no nothing. If I'd filed for workman's comp I'd have lost my job. Two weeks out of work, no pay, no coverage.

Isn't it illegal to lose your job if you filed for worker's comp? How could that have happened?

 

[wolfeden]

Isn't it illegal to lose your job if you filed for worker's comp? How could that have happened?

normally yes; somehow because this ambulance service was a nonprofit agency they had it in their bylaws or something. yeah it was pretty dodgy but at the time I couldn't afford to fight it -- rookie EMT only a couple years into the profession, and here in MA (as you may know) it's almost impossible to get hired by another service if you're _fired..._..
I was so groggy and out of it from the stuff they had me pumped full of at the ER (muscle relaxers and some tach-nuke painkiller) I kinda spent the whole first week flat on my back in a blur and the second one in physical therapy.. by the time I was back on the job it wasn't worth me fighting over it..

 

[BostonAnne]

wolfeden, I'm sorry you had to go through that! That stinks!

 

[wolfeden]

Heh, thanks... No biggie, at least it was only a couple weeks...
Goes to illustrate again though, a few sharp differences between unionized/non; my brother works for Boston EMS and thereby has union benefits and that sort of thing would not have happened to him; he also would have had the option of "light duty" until he could safely lift again.

 

[BostonAnne]

Well, I admire you for your career choice. I couldn't handle all of that trauma.

 

[Dreadsox]

Lots of businesses do things like this. On a different vein, I was fired from my job when they found out I was enlisting. It too is against the law to do such a thing,......but

 

[wolfeden]

damn dreadsox. that sucks.
heh. Stop&Shop union had a specific clause for enlistment and deployment stuff.

 

[BostonAnne]

Lots of businesses do things like this. On a different vein, I was fired from my job when they found out I was enlisting. It too is against the law to do such a thing,......but

Unbelievable. How can a business get away with that?

 

[Angela Harlem]

If America had some kind of standard with wages and conditions, you'd not need a union.
Unions shit me.

 

[Dreadsox]

I was a maid at the time..hehe...going house to house in Milton and in Brookline. I was disposable.

 

[wolfeden]

Aaargh yeah... the summer I was between junior and senior year high school I worked for a moving company ($20/hr was nothing to sneeze at back then) and they got spastic when they found out I was going up for the Marines... didn't fire me, but there was an understanding that if I had ended up going off to boot camp I'd lose the job...

 

[Dreadsox]

[Q]Mayor Thomas M. Menino unloaded a searing attack on fellow Democrat John F. Kerry [related, bio] yesterday, calling his presidential campaign ``small-minded'' and ``incompetent'' - laying bare a years-old rift weeks before the city plays host to Kerry's FleetCenter coronation.

Menino, in an exclusive Herald interview, let loose on the hometown senator two days after Kerry snubbed him by siding with union picketers outside a U.S. Conference of Mayors event.

``Maybe they should use some of their energies to get their message across to the American people instead of trying to destroy the integrity of someone who is on their team, to try to discredit someone on their team,'' Menino said. ``They have better things to do.'' [/Q]

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=33881

 

[melon]

Menino should know better that Democrats crossing a picket line is the equivalent of a political death sentence. He should spend less time blowing hot air at a fellow Democrat and more time trying to settle the union contract disputes.

Melon