...America to look like in the future without unions.  It's called "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.  It was written in 1906!!.

it would come down to whether the companies involved, or the local, state and federal governmental agencies, overseeing them, were sincere and effective in protecting the health and lives of the workers. Many people forget that unions are not just about getting the highest wages for their workers, but also in demanding safe working conditions for them.

Union labor or nonunion labor if all costs were equal and the quality and quantity of the work was the same?

environment. But I am biased and make no distinction between the 2 parties.

...if we just got rid of the bosses and the unions entirely, and just used democratic decision making to run the workplace. It's be more productive and efficient.

It's an unfortunate fact of life that without leaders, in either busisness or government, nothing would ever get done.

Just look at government for a simplistic example. Congress, which has no clear leader, often wallows in gridlock for years. Now take the Executive branch of government, a strong POTUS often is able to push through much of his agenda, except of course when he has to deal with  "headless chicken" Congress.

Now of course with government, gridlock can be a good thing, but with commerce and industry, gridlock would quickly lead to bankruptcy.

and let me bring up another point, would you really want an xfean having an equal vote in how your company was run? Broom pushers (no offense Quad) should not have the same say so as people with experience in dealing with complex matters.

I am sure one of your arguments will be that it couldn't possibly be any worse than it is today, my point is, it could be much, much worse.

It sucks, but business needs bosses every bit as much as government needs leaders. Most of the population are sheep, I only need to offer up religion as proof of that, and sheep need to be led.

Ignore most aspects of why unions exist.

the safety and health of workers. Oh sure they are good in writing regulations but they save no one's ass. More bureaucracy with more bureaucrats, creating more bureaucracy to protect their monthly paychecks. Half of them can barely speak English.

1906 was a strong anti-trust adovocate. He started the National Forest system. He fought for Child labor laws to protect children.

economy and go to Texas to see what it is like to work in a nonunion labor state. Both have pros and cons. A union representative can negotiate a salary for you, which for most working class folk is not an easy task. A union rep. have the payroll data, should know the laws, should be skilled in negotiations. I have no problem with that. sportsplayers have agents to negotiate salary and working conditions. Before I work with a company I have my lawyer look over the employment contract.

I have worked in right to work states where the prevailing wage for a laborer is $6.80 hour, Carpenter $10.00 hr and crane operator $15.00 hour. I soon found out however that I could not find a good crane operator or welder for $15.00 hour. For $6.80 hr. I was lucky to have the laborer to show up the next day for work, sober. Hell, I was happy the guy was not on probation. I will not name the state. Let us just say, I was not pleased with the estimators who bidded the job at the local prevailing wage scale. In this particular state I be very careful when buying a building, residential or commercial. Before I buy real estate I want to know who the contractor was. On large construction jobs I like it when I know everyone has bidded on a job at prevailing wage scale of lets say $45.00 hr. In many instances you get what you paid for.

Then again, I do not like it when the union files a grievance against me when I fired a union member for showing up dirty on a piss test or who do not want to submit to pre-placement physicals. I do not like it when a laborer shows a mechanical appitude, some intiative and I like to make him a front-end loader operator but the local operator's union says hell no. I can go on. I have to keep the lousy front-end loader because that is who the union hall sent to me and those are the terms of the MOU. Sure you can ask for a new one but they send a 300 pound overweight lazy ass, who wants to eat donuts all day.

Certain unions provide excellent training schools such as the IBEW, Laborers and Ironworkers. Others do not.

Did I mention Michigan has a double digit unemployment rate and Texas is booming. Is that because of the unions, well it's one factor.

Yes, as crazy as this might sound GaG, I want the broom pusher to have equal say in what happens as the people who deal with complex matters.

While a single individual may have a lot of training to make executive decisions, personal agendas or ambitions often lead them to make very poor decisions for the business as a whole. Using the collective intelligence of everyone I believe would have a filtering effect to prevent this from happening.

But I'll take this a step further. There's no reason why a broom pusher couldn't be trained to do more complex job duties. Not that I want the guy doing brain surgery, but I think the duties of a particular job are intended to give certain individuals great power, and prevent others from having any power at all. Job duties can be reorganized so that everyone shares in the more enjoyable and more crappy duties. If that is done, then everyone comes to the table with the same training, and there's no need for a boss.

You'd lose some efficiency in the training department, but think of how much your average company could save if they didn't have to pay executive salaries or worry about unions.

p.s. comparing Congress to "headless chickens" is insulting...to headless chickens. Shame on you, GaG.

"and let me bring up another point, would you really want an xfean having an equal vote in how your company was run? Broom pushers (no offense Quad) should not have the same say so as people with experience in dealing with complex matters."

 No offense taken. My Boss is  smarter than you.
He often pulls me in the office to get my take .He knows I hear a lot of dirt, without saying a word, while I'm mopping up turds, from  the abundance of mens men,  who don't use proper restroom etiqutte.
Be wise, and listen  to the janitor.  He  might let you know who is calling you the fool in the rest room.

http://www.ukpt.org.uk/public_toilets/public_toilets_Etiquette.htm

Try building a high-rise without them. Try building a jumbo jet without machinists union members. All things being equal I always use union labor. Detroit is a different matter though. I refuse to blame UAW for the flaws of the US Branded auto industry.  The UAW builds lots of foreign branded cars in the US with no problems.

I also make multi million dollars decisions on a regular basis, I am not going to give the same weight to a roughnecks opinion on where to locate a well, or how large my expansion budget should be this year than I do my lead petroleum engineer who actually headed up the petroleum engineering division of a mafor university, or my accountant who has been doing oil field accounting since before you were born.

No, not all opinions are created equal, and I give more weight to the experts I hire than I do the guy that drives my water truck.

I do apologize to "headless chickens" everywhere however, my remarks were unnecessarily harsh and for that I apologize. rofl

...I didn't say it's a good idea to ignore the advice of experts. Obviously, not everyone can know everything. However, there is a difference between someone being an expert, and being, as a former President once put it, a "decider".

I don't know the details of what you do for a living GaG, but suppose you make the wrong decision, and you lose a few million dollars? Would you have to lay some people off? Were they the ones responsible for that bad decision?

The US Constitution is set up to require super majorities for an amendment to pass. The reasoning is that the bigger the gamble, the more people should agree that it's a gamble worth taking.

In nature, herd animals use supermajority "votes" (for instance, how long to drink water from a pond, in open view of predators). They're gambling with their own survival, and yet democratic decision making is still taking place.  

The point being, is that no matter how skilled anyone is at making decisions, the old adage that "two heads are better than one" applies.

Would you suggest that a guy who parks the cars at the MGM grand should have the same input on a multi million dollar expansion as the CEO?

It's a ridiculous concept, and I can't beleive I am even debating the subject.

BTW If I make a multi million dollar mistake,it's my money and my decision. To argue that the people "downstream" have a stake in that decision is akin to asking your newspaper delivery boy for permission to move as your moving will impact his livelyhood.

If and that is a giant "if" all things were equal, I would have to say that non union would be preferable. My reasoning is that the very act of creating and maintaining a union is money wasted if all parties were negotiating in complete good faith.

This of course only happens in fantasyland, but I take it, yours was a hypothetical question. lol

...but that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not saying that broom pushers should be brain surgeons. What I am saying is that if trained, many people can do many different things. And if you have someone who is capable of doing many different things just sweeping floors, do you not waste that person's natural talents?

Can you imagine running a company, and you always have this threat of a work stoppage or slowdown? And sometimes it even happens when a particular union is fine with their contract and working conditions, but they strike and slow work in sympathy with another union in a completely different industry.

Even though I'm in hi-tech and unions are non-existent, I still have to first discuss performance, then document, then call HR, then document again, and finally terminate. If they were represented by a union, I'd never be able to get rid of the poor performers.

Maybe in certain private industries, i.e. old line manufacturing where education, skills and competencies are not necessary, unions might have a place. I could not even imagine companies like Apple unionized. Innovation, speed, adaptability are not what I consider to be union attributes (lol).

if someone proves they can do more than sweep floors they should be given more responsibilities until they reach their full potential. The current system already allows for that.

That said, the broom pusher should not have any input on higher matter until and unless he has proven himself worthy, but of course at that point he will no longer be simply a broom pusher.

and under our current system, the broom pusher has many opportunities to better himself, if he is too lazy or not smart enough to advance himself, than pushing a broom is exactly what he should be doing.

willy"And if you have someone who is capable of doing many different things just sweeping floors, do you not waste that person's natural talents?"

If you have a broom pusher who does his job well, he has a natural talent  not  easily replaced.Count your blessings and keep him sweeping.Thats what my boss does. All his stalls are clean,thanks to me.
Allowing employees to rampantly interject their obtuse ideas, instead of doing the job they were trained to do and hired to perform, equals chaos.
Sometimes when  I'm working late mopping the floors and everyone's gone home,I will use my master key and read comments in the suggestion box. Thats always worth a lot of laughs.

So WW how do we get from here to there? Getting rid of bosses and unions is not what the op was about.

If your cash is on the line then you are in charge or you had better be. I am in total agreement with you GAG.

Well guess what, we have the Unions, but thanks to them, NO FRIGGIN JOBS!!!

The economy has changed, suggest you update your reading material.

...but if it's a job everyone can do, then why is it made into a "specialized" task?

Wouldn't it just be more efficient to just have the other workers just take turns sweeping the floor?

Consider this: suppose instead of hiring a janitor to clean the bathroom, you just have everyone else rotate on bathroom cleaning duties. Say, once a month every employee cleans the toilets at the end of the day.

Now, if that was the case, what would the incentive be for those workers to keep the bathroom a little less disgusting? If you've got to clean up your own mess, how big of a mess are you going to make?

That's funny given that virtually all the new technology in the digital recording industry is coming out of Europe or Japan these days.

not saying union labor is great or that non-union labor is better. I like the IBEW and the Ironworkers. Most are professional and know their trade. Operators on the other hand be it crane, loaders, scrappers etc. well, I rather train the operators myself, my way. I like taking a young kid, who is a hard worker, eager to learn, listens to direction, has good reflexes and teach him/her myself.

TER is fantasy-land.... Happy New Year

I dont know what unions you deal with but I fire union people with no problem. In most public Unions striking and work slowdowns are ilegal.

I prefer to train my techs in house also. I am required to pay prevailing wage on some projects and when that happens I use union labor. In general I do not hire union labor unless I have a good relationship with the local's BA. Rules were made to be bent.