Also, be assured that if Honda employed workers from the Valley, I'd tell you to support them also. The point is to support your local establishments that drive your local economy. I'd like to see your list of workers that are paid appropriately in your eyes...how is it YOU determine the value of other's labor?
Jenny, I'm sure that you are the hardest working person in the Mahoning Valley. Turned down your benefits from your employer because you feel it's your responcibilty to pay your own healthcare costs and retirement, to assure that the company will have no committment to you in the future. Probably told your boss that your overpaid too...and donated the portion of your pay that you feel is excessive to hungry children that work in sweatshops overseas for pennies a day in deplorable conditions. I bet your manicurist complains about the hell you put your nails through working as hard as you do...and your pilates coach says you should be a model because your body is a temple chisled from your hard labor...
The auto industry's current dilema has less to do with contracts and pensions than does the bucket seat that is under your backside. Everyone in the Mahoning Valley driving a Honda, Toyota, KIA, Nissan, Mazda, Isuzu, etc...has their hand on the knife that's held at the auto industry's throat (and our local economy).
Go ahead and direct your contempt at the employees of GM, Delphi, and their Unions if it makes you feel better. Reasonable folks understand that their fair wages and benefits have supplied EVERY business in the Valley with commerce for three generations. A lack of loyalty by Valley residents for the past three decades to the primary manufacturing industry in their backyard is what disappoints me the most. We felt betrayed when American companies stopped purchasing steel from our mills for cheaper overseas alternatives...yet we cruise in the latest foreign born mid-compact and point fingers at eveyone else.!
So while your cruising along Rt.224 in that foreign car and you are a retailer, own a service oriented business, or operate any other business in the area, think about where the last dollar you placed in your register came from...because there are going to be fewer of them in the future.
The Employee Free Choice Act does not take away a workers right to a secret ballot election. Under the proposed legislation, WORKERS have the ability to choose the Union formation process-elections or majority sign up. Under the current law's provisions, if a majority of persons in the workplace want to form a union (50% + 1)the company could recognize them WITHOUT an election...but they rarely do. Which gives the COMPANY the choice to have an election or not. This is not how democratic elections are held for political office in which you made the comparison.
As far as first contract mediation goes, if employer's would make a true effort to bargain in good faith with their organized workers, this would be a non-issue. The Employee Free Choice Act would only mandate arbitration if requested by the workers when there is a failure to reach an agreement after 90 days. Currently, stalling and bad faith bargaining by the company in first contract negotiations is rampant and only one-third of workers ever manage to obtain a first contract.
In addition, do not look at corporations in the vaccuum of your own operations. Though you and your workforce may have a positive and productive relationship (which would be commendable), do not turn a blind eye. Good hard working employee's and their families are struggling to get by while injustices are taking place. The disparity between corporates and the shrinking middle-class is ever increasing. There is intimidation, coersion, harrassment, sub-standard safety conditions and copensation in the workplace today. Employee Free Choice Act gives the right to organize back to the worker.
Finally, I am a proud product of the Mahoning Valley myself. The people of Youngstown and its suburbs are as tough and hardworking as they come. Please do not try to corelate the demise of industry in the Valley on Unions or its members; or suggest that only non-union employers have made a ecomomic contribution in the past 25 years. Disinvestment in this country has been going on for the past 25 years not because of employees (union or non-union), it is greed. Decisions made to increase stockholder profits as opposed to community growth. A well paid worker puts his/her money back into the economy of the place where they live. They take pride in the products that they produce because we see they are used and purchased by their community and its people. What have stockholder's done for Youngstown? Our Nations economy? Forced outsourcing overseas to companies with: poverty-waged workers, no hours of work standards, no safety standards, no pollution standards, no child-labor laws, low quality standards, no interest in abiding by international copyright laws
Delphi workers carried their weight, earned their keep
Also, be assured that if Honda employed workers from the Valley, I'd tell you to support them also. The point is to support your local establishments that drive your local economy.
I'd like to see your list of workers that are paid appropriately in your eyes...how is it YOU determine the value of other's labor?
August 12, 2009 at 7:01 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Delphi workers carried their weight, earned their keep
Jenny,
I'm sure that you are the hardest working person in the Mahoning Valley. Turned down your benefits from your employer because you feel it's your responcibilty to pay your own healthcare costs and retirement, to assure that the company will have no committment to you in the future. Probably told your boss that your overpaid too...and donated the portion of your pay that you feel is excessive to hungry children that work in sweatshops overseas for pennies a day in deplorable conditions. I bet your manicurist complains about the hell you put your nails through working as hard as you do...and your pilates coach says you should be a model because your body is a temple chisled from your hard labor...
August 12, 2009 at 12:41 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Delphi workers carried their weight, earned their keep
The blame game...how we can overlook the obvious!
The auto industry's current dilema has less to do with contracts and pensions than does the bucket seat that is under your backside.
Everyone in the Mahoning Valley driving a Honda, Toyota, KIA, Nissan, Mazda, Isuzu, etc...has their hand on the knife that's held at the auto industry's throat (and our local economy).
Go ahead and direct your contempt at the employees of GM, Delphi, and their Unions if it makes you feel better.
Reasonable folks understand that their fair wages and benefits have supplied EVERY business in the Valley with commerce for three generations. A lack of loyalty by Valley residents for the past three decades to the primary manufacturing industry in their backyard is what disappoints me the most. We felt betrayed when American companies stopped purchasing steel from our mills for cheaper overseas alternatives...yet we cruise in the latest foreign born mid-compact and point fingers at eveyone else.!
So while your cruising along Rt.224 in that foreign car and you are a retailer, own a service oriented business, or operate any other business in the area, think about where the last dollar you placed in your register came from...because there are going to be fewer of them in the future.
Zoom, Zoom
August 11, 2009 at 11:35 a.m. permalink suggest removal
Preserve the secret ballot in union certification elections
Red Angel,
Again, It does NOT do away with a secret ballot vote. Refer to the bill and READ IT...FoxNews is not a good source.
February 20, 2009 at 12:06 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Preserve the secret ballot in union certification elections
Mr. Rhoads,
The Employee Free Choice Act does not take away a workers right to a secret ballot election. Under the proposed legislation, WORKERS have the ability to choose the Union formation process-elections or majority sign up. Under the current law's provisions, if a majority of persons in the workplace want to form a union (50% + 1)the company could recognize them WITHOUT an election...but they rarely do. Which gives the COMPANY the choice to have an election or not. This is not how democratic elections are held for political office in which you made the comparison.
As far as first contract mediation goes, if employer's would make a true effort to bargain in good faith with their organized workers, this would be a non-issue. The Employee Free Choice Act would only mandate arbitration if requested by the workers when there is a failure to reach an agreement after 90 days. Currently, stalling and bad faith bargaining by the company in first contract negotiations is rampant and only one-third of workers ever manage to obtain a first contract.
In addition, do not look at corporations in the vaccuum of your own operations. Though you and your workforce may have a positive and productive relationship (which would be commendable), do not turn a blind eye. Good hard working employee's and their families are struggling to get by while injustices are taking place. The disparity between corporates and the shrinking middle-class is ever increasing. There is intimidation, coersion, harrassment, sub-standard safety conditions and copensation in the workplace today. Employee Free Choice Act gives the right to organize back to the worker.
Finally, I am a proud product of the Mahoning Valley myself. The people of Youngstown and its suburbs are as tough and hardworking as they come. Please do not try to corelate the demise of industry in the Valley on Unions or its members; or suggest that only non-union employers have made a ecomomic contribution in the past 25 years.
Disinvestment in this country has been going on for the past 25 years not because of employees (union or non-union), it is greed. Decisions made to increase stockholder profits as opposed to community growth. A well paid worker puts his/her money back into the economy of the place where they live. They take pride in the products that they produce because we see they are used and purchased by their community and its people. What have stockholder's done for Youngstown? Our Nations economy? Forced outsourcing overseas to companies with:
poverty-waged workers,
no hours of work standards,
no safety standards,
no pollution standards,
no child-labor laws,
low quality standards,
no interest in abiding by international copyright laws
NOTICE THE IRONY?
Curt Hess
3rd generation union-worker
February 20, 2009 at 11:43 a.m. permalink suggest removal