In a message dated 12/20/2006 9:35:47 AM Pacific Standard Time,
BearTranserv@aol.com writes:
Of course it's my opinion that the labor unions are more to blame than
management ... which maybe only shows there is plenty of blame to go around.
I think it's both. I worked for a multi billion dollar transportation
company a few years ago and when the dock workers in LA signed union cards I
was
part of a team sent in to stop the unionization effort.
We interviewed a couple of hundred workers and the biggest gripe they had
was that during peak season it was hard to work over eight hours without a
break. No kidding.
I've worked on union docks too, and productivity is lowered to the level of
the slowest worker there. Most of the unionized freight companies have
disappeared. UPS is the largest exception, but since they are the largest
single
block of workers in the Teamsters now, the union pretty much cooperates
with
the wishes of management, and management is willing to pay well for
productivity.
Robert B. Houston
Texan in New Mexico
I spent several years in management of a large international corporation and
I too was and was trained at annual seminars on combating (legally)
unionization attempts. We learned the most effective way to not have unions
was to
pay fair wages and to always be fair to the employees.
Ten years ago, my son bought a 400 person company out of bankruptcy. He told
me the first thing he would be doing would be to get rid of his only trade
union in a specific product area (sheet metal ducts for office buildings) in
order to reduce costs..
A year later, he said he was about to go into negotiations with the same
union for higher wages. He said he was going to advocate even higher wages than
they were asking. He said there were two distinct trades involved: sheet metal
and pipefitters.
He said so long as his management kept the correct numbers of the correct
trades on a job, no competition could come close to them for labor cost.Even
with higher wages, their efficiency and productivity made the net cost lower.
His competition were all using nonunion universal workers at a much lower
wage and efficiency.
He has become a great union supporter, but will argue that management has a
responsibility to assure the correct trades are on the site in sufficient
numbers.
Best,
Mike Moore
=== This list supported in part by The Vintage Triumph Register
=== http://www.vtr.org
|