Trucking And Unionization...

Not everyone that thinks like me is a loser. I'm kind of a loser. I have positive qualities. I'm smart, I'm strong, but I'm also depressed and unmotivated, and for some reason becoming a truck driver is very hard for me. I'm probably going to fail my English class because I can't find the motivation to write all my essays. (I got 100% on the essays I did turn in.) The woman I live with, however, has owned her own business, and she thinks like I do. She has also worked as a project manager for Nasa, IBM, etc. She makes more money than anyone here most likely. Also, I did work for a guy that was the CEO of a company that was far more socialistic than I am. I liked to troll him with right wing ideas just to get him going, lol. He never did try to hire me again. (I cut a tree down for him.)

Come to think of it, Brett Aquilah might think in a similar manner to me on this topic, and he's definitely not a loser either. (We certainly don't agree about everything.) Just pretending we're all losers isn't going to work. Even Bernie Sanders is a millionaire.

I don't understand why people act like it's somehow moral to not care what other people are making. Living the, "high life" is frivolous, and you'll note that guys like Bill Gates don't do that. If I had a ton of money, I'd use it to rescue animals or something - I'd find far more meaning in that.

Davy,

You're smarter than I thought you were. Anyway, I calculated it last night with Dollar tree. The CEO's compensation, divided by the all employees, came out to about $50/year for every employee. It's definitely not a huge factor... at least with the first company I tested. I would argue that the total burden of management will notably effect piecework compensation, however.

Also, I'm curious. What was/is your business?

Who knows when you'll see this. I still have to get all my comment approved, and sometimes they never do... especially at night.

I for one don't see it as jealously. I would ask though, who are you to determine what is or is not "right" when it comes to someone else's pay?

Why should hard working people struggle to make ends meet, and get subsidies for their food and medical insurance from other hard working tax payers, while the CEO of the company, and a handful executives, make unfathomable amounts of money? I'm not saying they shouldn't be paid more money than the regular workers, but it has gone to absurd levels. It's not good for our society, it's not ethical, and I'll gladly vote for people like Bernie Sanders until something is done about it.

That's who I am.

And I'm happy for the people around here making 6 figures as a truck driver. It means the American dream hasn't died for them.

Because that's the way life works. Always has and always will. Any and every person unhappy with their place in life has all the power to change their place. Most are too lazy and unmotivated to put forth the effort. They trudge through life always doing the bare minimum to get by, owning the bare minimum, making the bare minimum often content to add the "subsidies" as you call them (welfare as I call them) to help ends meet and having more kids than they can financially support. Even when confronted with an opportunity, say college, they tend to procrastinate when it comes to doing their assignments if they do them at all. Often they take loans to pay for their schooling which they fail to complete or settle with a worthless degree then complain about not being to get a high paying job or how unfair it is they must repay the "predatory" student loans.

You say you are happy for those of us making six fugure incomes however if you are only making $35,000 driving and I am making $250,000 driving you will complain how unfair it is even though I am putting forth more effort, accomplishing more and taking the financial risk.

You talk of your lord and savior Bernie Sanders, a politician worth well over $3,000,000, if he lived the ignorance he spews from his pie hole he would give $2,500,000 of his wealth and one of his houses to help the poor but yet he does not. You mention Bill Gates and his not living an extravagant lifestyle, the man's worth $136,000,000,000. Everything he does is extravagant. Why do you not complain of his vast wealth and demand he and Bernie give away 99.5% of their wealth to people that are unmotivated and contribute the least to society? Rather than expecting those that do the most give to those that do the least, why don't you advocate for those that do the least to do more?

Just like with trucking where you are the captain of your own truck and solely responsible for your outcome both financially and mentally, we are all responsible for our place in life and its outcome, we have the ability and the tools necessary to change what we don't like but as I said most of us are to lazy, stupid, unmotivated etc to be willing to put forth enough effort for meaningful change. Its easier to sit around blaming the rich guys, the educated guys, the white guys, the black guys, those with more than we have etc than it is to look long and hard at the reflection in the mirror to see who is really responsible for how our lives have ended up. Redistribution, welfare and government given freebies are just another way to keep those that won't do for themselves just happy enough to keep from putting forth the effort and just content enough to not see the generational damage being done to them by big brother.

As far as CEO pay, no it should not be that high in most instances but sitting back whining about how unfair it is accomplishes nothing. Concerning yourself over another person's income compared to your own accomplishes nothing. Don't like it? Do something to put your income on their level, not bring theirs down to yours. There will always be the haves and the have-nots, the world could not survive if we all had or all had-not. Maybe not fair but it is how it is and how it must be. We can't all work minimum wage jobs and we can't all be executives.

Brett, I need to disagree with your assertion that we can't blame unions for lazy people. I have been in a union, as a line worker, where I was told by multiple other union members (including leadership) that I needed to slow down, not be so active, that I was making others look bad. I have been in a supervisory role over Union employees, and seen the lengths that they go to to prevent the turds from being held accountable. Arguing that identifying someone who " allegedly " doesn't pull their share of the load is "micromanaging, heavy-handed, unfair, clearly an anti union tactic." I heard all of them. The contract was simply there, in their minds, to extract pay and benefits from the employer, and to keep a lid on accountability for lazy individuals. The Borg Collective became my private moniker for it.

I have also been told by an IBT recruiter, directly to my face, at a meeting where the Teamsters were trying to organize my former employer's drivers, that the teamsters protect their own members, even if they are hassling another that produces more output. "You have to be a moron to get fired from a Teamster job" which clearly indicated to me that 1)they know that there are worthless shirkers in their membership, 2) they will continue to collect money from said shirkers, and 3) they are going to do nothing about people that don't work and fully support peer pressure to bring all workers to the same mediocrity level (which they encourage, because bottom line is the union line, which (in my experience) is the lowest common denominator.

Folks, thank you for pointing out to me that there are lazy union workers. I can assure you I knew that. There are also tons of lazy non-union workers, and tons of people who won't work at all if they can help it. None of this has anything to do with whether unions are helpful or harmful to lower and middle class workers.

We have a lot of smart people here with a lot of strong opinions, but I'm still waiting on that data. Where is the data that says, "See, when we took away the power of the unions the lower and middle classes benefited." Where is that data?

Remember, we're talking money and economics here. There's enough data that it's leaking through the cracks in the sidewalk. You can't avoid it. So if not one of you can point me to any data showing that unions were actually hurting the middle and lower class, I have to wonder why that is.

Someone mentioned those top executives deserve more because they're taking more risks. Really? What risks do you think they're taking? Sitting in a boardroom in meetings all day doesn't seem that risky. Knowing you'll get paid a multi-million dollar severance if you get fired for being incompetent doesn't seem that risky.

Are any of you getting a $10 million bonus if you get fired?

They're laughing their asses off at you guys who "don't care what a CEO is making." Do you know what that sounds like when someone who is living paycheck to paycheck while doing all the actual work says they don't mind that the CEO is making 400 times as much? It sounds GREAT is how that sounds to the CEO! How could it get it any better? They get the lion's share of everything, and they get the blessings of those who barely get enough to pay their bills.

By getting rid of the unions, we really taught those CEO's a lesson they'll never forget!

Where is the data, guys? I've heard a million anecdotal tales that all amount to nothing.

"I saw some lazy union workers!"

"My company uses a non-union shop."

Great. Now how about some data to show we're better off without unions? It's economics, folks. If you can't come up with data to back your opinions, you really must question their validity.

Workers are making less than they were several decades ago when adjusted for inflation and CEOs and upper management are making 400 times what they were making back then, and you guys are happy with that? Do you think that's what winning looks like? Because I can assure you that's exactly what winning looks like to the CEOs.

Brett, the interesting thing is the OP referred to possible federal involvement in encouraging unionization. The "why" of that has faded away in favor of pro or con on unions, and now a discussion on whether unions are or are not good for lower and middle class entities.

The current majority of congresscritters stand behind, and in support of, multiple socialist agendas and candidates. The data is in your everday news. Everything from govenrnment is free, or should be according to the majority. Why do corporations resist unions in our modern OSHA / DOL / OGA alphabet soup regulated society? Because they increase costs to the company, which affect profit. That results in a need to balance the income / expense stream, or become less profitable and less able to withstand unforeseen spikes ($4.40 fuel, 30%+ increase in meat pricing, etc). Raise prices?... . Reduce employment costs...? Who, then bears the brunt of that, the higher paid union member? Or, perhaps the non-union low to middle class worker? I submit that in our modern society (USA only, I won't pretend to care about our northern, southern, or across the pond neighbors) the ones most affected by union driven cost increases are those who choose NOT to live on the dole, to try to pull themselves up on their own.

Do I have links from Wikipedia, Google, The Guardian, US News & World Report, some federal GSA study? No. But I do have 60 plus years of life in this world, with the ability to see and extrapolate from what I see. YAMMD. Peace.

But I do have 60 plus years of life in this world, with the ability to see and extrapolate from what I see

Well, I have 50+ years of life in this world with the ability to see and extrapolate from what I see, AND I also have mountains of DATA to back what I'm saying. So that's the difference so far.

I realize a lot of you guys are busy driving and don't have the time to just sit around gathering data sources, but I'm hoping someone can come up with something. You wouldn't catch me trying to sell an economic opinion to people with no data to back it up. In fact, I wouldn't even consider making an argument if I couldn't find any data to back it.

If anyone comes up with anything I'll be excited to see it!

Here's another thought. You mentioned that higher wages would produce higher costs, which would punish the lower and middle classes. When you pay a CEO $15 million/year, do you think that's driving down costs? Do you think that's helping the lower and middle classes?

Henry Ford famously paid his workers double the going rate, so that they had the money to buy his cars!

What they're doing is siphoning money away from the workers and sending it to upper management and to the corporate bank account in the way of higher corporate profits. To produce a strong, healthy middle class you would want more of that money going to workers, and less of it sitting in corporate bank accounts or being used for stock buybacks.

Let's see......how much damage might we do if the workers got paid a little more? Let me show you a little cash on hand data from some corporations:

15 Companies Stockpile $1 Trillion In Cash

Just 15 non-financial companies in the S&P 500, including mainly tech giants like Apple (AAPL), Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL) and IBD Long-Term Leader Microsoft (MSFT), are sitting on cash and investments of more than a $1 trillion, says an Investor's Business Daily analysis of updated data from S&P Global Market Intelligence and MarketSmith.

This massive cash pile accounts for nearly 40% of the $2.77 trillion held by all the companies in the S&P 500. S&P 500 companies now have enough cash to give $8,320 to every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

Meanwhile, companies are likely to pay out $729 billion in buying back their own stock in 2021, says Silverblatt says. That's up 55% from the paltry $520 billion companies spent buying back stock in 2020. But, it's still less than the record $806 billion spent in 2018.

So you guys believe that paying the workers more would cause prices to go up, but I disagree. Companies are holding trillions of dollars in off-shore bank accounts and spending hundreds of billions to buy back their own shares instead of giving more to the workers so we can spend it on more goods we truly need.

For comparison's sake, if you combine the cash on hand for the S & P companies ($2.77 trillion) and the cash value of their stock buybacks ($729 billion), it amounts to about $3.5 trillion dollars. What is the total value of all products produced in the United States each year (our GDP) - $12 trillion.

So combine the cash on hand and stock buybacks of the largest 500 companies in the U.S. and it equals 30% of our entire GDP! I'd sure love to see some of that go to the workers who are actually producing the goods and services.

Keep something in mind, also. None of this has anything to do with Socialism. Fair pay for workers is not Socialist. I'm not promoting the idea that anyone get paid more than their fair share, nor am I promoting that anyone get money for nothing. I'm just saying that when you create a massive divide between the upper 1% and the rest of us, you hurt the entire economy and especially the lower and middle classes.

Davy,

You're smarter than I thought you were. Anyway, I calculated it last night with Dollar tree. The CEO's compensation, divided by the all employees, came out to about $50/year for every employee. It's definitely not a huge factor... at least with the first company I tested. I would argue that the total burden of management will notably effect piecework compensation, however.

Also, I'm curious. What was/is your business?

Who knows when you'll see this. I still have to get all my comment approved, and sometimes they never do... especially at night.

I had an interior trim and door installation, stairs and rail company. We did new homes, both custom and production builders. It was fairly small, we ranged from 2 to 4 subdivisions. The prices are difficult to match. The dynamics of it have changed with suppliers offering install labor at a loss or break even in order to secure the supply contract. We ran the opposite way, the supply side was a necessary evil to get the install contract. I finished up two multi million subdivisions and got out.

Prior to that, I did fire and water damage restoration. Usually large and high profile fires. For a time I was the director of operations at a large restoration company. We did the restoration of pike place market in Seattle, the Lutheran unity church fire in Seattle, the IRS northwest division federal building flood, a lot of big commercial stuff. But I've suffered through a litany of standard residential claims too.

I had a previous business doing insurance restoration and large scale additions, design/ build. Annual revenue of 1.2 million at it's peak. I worked long hours, blew up a marriage, sold everything to keep the company alive, but in the end learned a tremendous volume about business the hard way with that.