American manufacturing has been in decline for years.
Our textile industry moved overseas a long time ago.
The steel mills like wise have relocated.
Today, companies have "outsourced" many of their services to third parties located in other countries.
And most recently, GM and Ford are laying tens of thousand off and circling their wagons.
Large manufacturing companies operate under a huge burden with employment costs and benefits.

Have the Unions forced America into becoming a "consumer" rather than the "supplier"?

I am sure all of you have seen local union companies going bankrupt, even the President of the United States has commented on the out of control wages in the auto industry. In this economy can we really afford for this to continue?

 

IMHO, the post is simplifying it too much: Let's be honest and say that a multitude of things have led to America's downturn, be they labor-, economic-, social-, industrial-, or financial-related aspects. However, such views are based on the assumption that America has been "superior" or "doing it right" to begin with. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with either of these statements; I'll simply state that it can't be pinned down to one factor.

 

The republicans are whats killing America with their less government which is fine with me but they do away with the ones that are keeping their buddies honest and during Bush no one was watching the cookie jar. As far as unions go sure they have gotten some nice wage/benefit packages for their members but what can they do when they go to the table and management says we don't have any money and the union asks to see the books to prove it cause they just gave their CEO a huge multi million dollar bonus which can only mean they are doing well and so their must be plenty of money to go around. Sound familier?

 

My 2¢, this thread won't last long.

 

Ditto

 

Just gonna watch
where this one goes!

 

Post 1 was borrowed from another forum and it turned into a good thread with zero arguments. I do not see why the same can not occur here.

My personal experience in a short summary:
I grew up in a coal town in KY and some of the mines were union and some were not. Several relatives worked in both and all always said to me that the union mines did pay a little better but with the strikes and the union fees and the stress that they ended up making the same or less but were miserable at work because it divided the company into two distinct groups (them and us, management and employees).

Just from what I see on the news and witnessed growing up I honestly feel that unions are a bad thing for everyone. Yes you may make more $ on the short term but you risk losing your job when the company goes bankrupt or moves their locations to China or where ever. I also have personally witnessed how angry and violent a lot of union people get, that is never a good thing.

 

I think its too complex of an issue to boil it down to one factor. While its a big factor in some industries like cars, its not so much in others. Unions are no where near the strong influence they were 30 or 40 years ago. What I think is more important is that we, as consumers have forced manufacturers, union and non-union both, into going over seas for production. We demand lower prices and don't care as much about quality as we did in times past. Walmart's success is a poster child for this.

 

That is an excellent post and very true. I do agree with you 100% on the walmart issue, they are killing small businesses and we as consumers should see that and try to spend at least some of our money with small businesses. I owned a few small businesses a few years ago and I know how the big corporations can come in agressively and kill off the little guy. I know this from experience unfortunately.

On a lighter side, if you ever watch south park did you catch the episode about walmart? They had a hysterical and very clever episode about our addiction to walmart. If you have not seen it I reccomend giving it a watch lol.

 

If you search the forum you will see all the UNION threads and know why I stated what I did. These threads do nothing but start confrontations and flaming. I am surprised that you wouldn't know that when you started it and you have already stated your disdain for unions in other threads so I question your motive of starting this thread.

Personally I don't care one way or the other about unions or the opinion that they killed America. America died in 1959 in Clear Lake Iowa. Everyone knows that.

I will make sure this one stays civil or it will close.