I just thought of another good union story. I was subbing at this facility, right, and one of the residents there spilt a cup of soda on the floor. "That's no biggie", I thought. But when I went to get a towel to clean it up, one of the other therapy people came up to me and said, "No, we have to call housekeeping. The union says that only housekeeping can do cleanups."................................................................................................I mean, can you frigging believe that shit? What kind of an idiotic way to run a facility is that? We learn all through our education the importance of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to service delivery and this frigging union cabal tells me that I can't even clean up a God damned spill. Unbefrigginglievable.....................................................................................................P.S. And just in a general sense here, businesses in this ever-increasingly competitive world HAVE TO BE nimble, adaptable, etc.. They simply cannot get bogged down in all of this trivial shit.......................................................................................................Look, folks, I'm not saying that there isn't a place for unions. They may be good for representing people who've been falsely terminated, making work environments safer, and maybe, MAYBE, securing a better wage. But when they go into a facility and try to tell a businessperson how to run his or her business, they really and truly need to take a powder from that ASAP.
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Will: What kind of an idiotic way to run a facility is that?
Sounds like a smart policy to me.
You can't clean up a spilled soda with just a towel. The floor would be sticky afterward. It's a good thing the union insisted on that policy, instead of letting people who don't know WTF they're doing do a shitty job.
Yeah, you can do it ith just a towel. a) You wipe it up. b) You wipe it a second time with the towel moistened. And c) You use a dry towel to dry it up. O.K., so 2 towels. But it's hardly rocket-science. Unions are such a nuisance.
The argument is not about how to clean up spilled soda. It is about having someone do a job they are trained for, not having someone do the job they are not trained for.
Your example is a trivial matter...except for the case where even a spill is not cleaned up properly, and subsequently someone falls and injures themselves costing the company many times the cost of cleanup in medical and possible legal bills.
Doing a job right the first time is almost always cheaper in the long run. Many jobs require special training. That training costs money and some companies would rather hire cheap labor without the training so save a few bucks. It hurts them in the long run, but when you are only interested in short term gains, cheap labor is attractive.
"cheap labor is attractive"
Indeed. Why overpay money to someone who asks a lot more and quite often does a worse job.
My comment had nothing to do with overpaying anyone. Read it again, dmarks.
So, Jerry, we're supposed to hold up an activity 10-15 minutes to wait for some fat, lazy slob with a mop and a bucket of dirty water to do a job that I could do (better) in 45 seconds? What kind of inefficient way to run a business is that? Remind me not to hire your firm.
"fat, lazy slob"
Wow! So that's what you think of someone who does manual labor, someone who cleans up after messy people.
How elitist of you.
I feel sorry for you, especially on Labor Day. Have a little more respect for working people.
Unions are prejudiced against union members, and show them great disrespect.
Why else are they so strong on denying the right of workers to join unions or not?
I can assure you, at this particular facility and on that particular shift, my depiction is exceedingly accurate. And they couldn't get rid of the guy. Why? WHY? BECAUSE OF THE UNIONS!
We've had over 30 facilities go under in CT over the past decade or so. And they've pretty much all been union facilities. How in the hell does does that help workers (never mind the patients and their families)? I'm sorry, but unions have no place in a health care setting. They gum up the works, create inertia, and, in the event of a lengthy strike, potentially harm the patients and their families.............And just for the record, I've spent my entire adult life in human services (special education, rehabilitative services, case management, corrections). The gold standard for service delivery is the interdisciplinary approach; therapy works with nursing, recreation works with dietary, etc.. It isn't this regimented territorial bullshit that this union was trying to impose on them. You folks want a union? Fine. Start one at the tire dealership down the road.
So Will, which benefits are you willing to give that unions have brought you? Child labor laws? 40 hour work week? Your higher wages? Your benefits? Your vacations? Your retirement benefits? Where do you think the majority of workers would be without the advantages that unions have worked for? You really think companies would have provided these benefits without unions pushing for them?
"You really think companies would have provided these benefits without unions pushing for them?"
Well, yes. In the real world, people get these benefits by earning them.
What the unions have pushed for is wiping out entire industries. Coal mining, steal, automotive. etc. That's what happens when companies aren't allowed to pay the actual value of the work.
LOL!
Jerry: LOL!
I agree. dmarks comments are indeed laughable. This is what someone who knows absolutely nothing of history says.
They are comments from someone who knows all about the history of the struggle between unions and workers. And yes, I admit, I side with the workers when their interests come in conflict with the unions.
And yes, the vast majority of people in the United States owe their livelihood and benefits to the rewards of their own work. Nothing to do with unions at all.
You are extremely contemptuous and condescending against working people to claim otherwise.
Ask the average working person if he owes one thing to the Teamsters organized crime family member threatening to "Take out" political opponents, and he will laugh at you. As will the 90% of working people who say "union no".
In the real world, people get these benefits by earning them.
Most of the history of the struggle for said benefits and rights in the USA and around the planet would beg to differ.
Jerry, I'm not saying that the entire union movement was bad. That would be silly. But a) times change, b) circumstances change, and c) sometimes movements and organizations do in fact overreach (I'm sure that you'd agree with me that tea party movement has). Like I said before, if the unions focused more on work safety, representing individuals wrongly terminated, etc. and less time on trying to micromanage every little piece of inertia like they do, the workforce as a whole and the business community would be far more competitive as a result, IMO.......And, dude, all of those long-term care facilities (most of which work on a very small margin) going belly up up here. Not good.
Times and circumstances do change. 40 years ago (time change) union membership was much higher and things were much better for the average worker. Salaries were increasing and one worker could support his/her family.
Would you rather have a non-union job or no job? A lot of those people from those facilities that went under unfortunately ended up with the latter.
# said:
"Most of the history of the struggle for said benefits and rights in the USA and around the planet would beg to differ."
Actually, people typically "Struggle" for and gain benefits by working for an earning them. Those who get them by ill-considered means (unions) don't count for or matter much.
Laying about instead of working punctuated by threats of violence against real workers (striking) is counterproductive.
dmarks lives in a fantasy world. He thinks if someone works hard enough for something the wealthy elites will hand it over enthusiastically.
The workers #37927 refers to DID work for and earn benefits, but the wealthy elites refused to pay up... because they wanted the money for themselves.
And they continue to steal from workers that which they have earned. And dmarks supports this. He says underpaying workers is really paying them "fair value" wages.
What dmarks doesn't realize is that it is people like him who are useful idiots for the wealthy elites.
To refute what dmarks says, all you have to do is look at the increase in wages over the last 30 years. The top few percent have done very well. The average worker not so well.
Either what dmarks says is wrong, or the average worker is a deadbeat.
There are other possibilities, too, Jerry. a) The rest of the world is finally catching up to us (i.e., crawling out from underneath our thumb) and b) our educational system is failing us big time.......Now, are there some political solutions available to us to correct these things? Perhaps. But let's just make sure that the cure isn't any worse than the disease before we implement them.
Here are the benefits workers get without unions to protect them.
"...a Philadelphia woman has lost her job for taking time off to undergo a medical operation that helped save her son’s life."
Jerry, didn't you read what I wrote at the very beginning? I said that if unions stuck to such things as protecting workers who are wrongly terminated, I wouldn't have near as much of a problem with them. It's when they try and run the business and gum up the works, that's the stuff that I can't stand.......And I ask you again, how well did the unions protect the workers of those 30 plus convalescent homes (that work on a very small margin and that haven't seen an increase in their Medicaid reimbursement rates in 3 years) that ended up shitting the bed in CT? It doesn't sound to me like they did very well for those workers.
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