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Why do we need unions? It seems to me like unions protect the lazy people who like to think their better than their job, and hold back the hard working people that realize it takes an individual effort to move ahead. If you are a good worker, you dont need a union, because you are the best thing since sliced bread to your boss. And if you are a crappy worker, you should be fired, no politics, see you later, gone, fired.

We are currently going through a recession, and unemployment rates are rising faster then ever and right now in Toronto for example we have people striking around every corner....for BS reasons! The Toronto city workers are currently on strike....again, because even though they have no education and can be replaced by those unemployed who would love a job, they walked out leaving the city to rot under a mountain of garbage because they want to keep the right to roll over their unused sick hours. I work one of them weird jobs...you know where when you dont come in you dont get paid, so I guess it seems foreign to me. This is an addition to the the LCBO workers threatening to go on strike, because they don't want students to be hired part time anymore. Im sorry but if your job can be done by a student, or anyone who can use a calculator, then either stop complaing or go to college and get another job, one that requires you to know, or to do something not every person over the age of 15 can do. I sound harsh, but I thought life was about working for what you want, and unions are destroying that ideal and creating a culture of shitty employees that dont have to try, becasue they have the giant safety net which in turn is straining the hell out of our large business, and at the end of the day may leave many more people without jobs than with. The union will prove to be an ironic venture.

   

Dreamworld 101.

   

explain, a union can take over a company and hold it ransom. We did need unions, but more and more they are doing the opposite of what they should, abusing their power. I hear this most from people in unions...so why do we all need to have unions, and how come most people dont have unions but just low end employment does?

   

What am I missing here? We're in the midst of a recession that was in large part due to the freer market elements - like the crappy marketing/product decisions at GM, greed by banks, lending institutions - and we're worrying about unions?

I'll be waiting for your next rant against corporate welfare because that should be railed against as well.

Oh...and so far i haven't seen how this is "ironic"

   

a union is the same as an ISO quality system

they both strive to replace arbitrary decisions and discriminatory practises with policy and procedurre.

   

Like cops, nurses, teachers, electricians, professors? They're "low end employment"? Wow, you must make ridiculous coin if these guys are at the low end of the pay scale

   

There's pro's and cons to unions just like everything else in life. Thanks to the media however we all ways seems to here the negatives such as unions striking for stupid reasons. Yes many union jobs offer benefits and wages that private non unionized workers will never see but at the same time the unions also indirectly benefit many non unionized workers by setting standards in our industries. If it weren't for unions to begin with you may not even have had the right to take sick days off with out being docked pay. How about vacation pay, over time, accepted standard hours for work weeks, health care benefits, minimum wage levels .... etc, etc, the list goes on and on. These are all direct benefits that many non unionized workers enjoy because of standards set by the unions years and years ago.

Bashing unionization is a kin to someone saying we don't need a military because there hasn't been a war on our soil in over a hundred years. It ignores the fact that many of the benefits that non unionized workers now enjoy are due in large part to the battles fought and won by the unions a long time ago.

I'm not a supporter of people getting paid ridiculous amounts for trivial work tasks but at the same time I'm also not a fan of companies such as Wal-Mart making ever increasing profits off the backs of their employees and then screaming poverty when the employees argue for better wages and/or better working conditions. Unions have also played a big part in lifting many workers out of what would have been working poverty and raised them to a decent livable income level.

Ask employees at Safeway and at Walmart who they would rather work for, Safeway who's members are unionized or Walmart who's employees are not. I think you'll find out rather quickly maybe unions aren't that bad after all.

   

Touche, and your are 100% right, this is the smallest of all those issues you mentioned. I'm just tired of people taking companies ransom especially when they are in no position to complain. Right now we have a major issue on out hands with garbage everywhere, because the city workers dont agree with one very small thing, and because they are in a very special position as were the ttc unions they screw an entire city over just so they can have their way. The ttc strike alone cost the city tens of millions millions a day. Im just sick of it. The teachers struck for two weeks when I was in grade school, over a week when I was in highschool, an entire year of work to rule, taking all extras away from students, and they struck when i was in college and was paying them to stand on the picket line and not teach me. I just think there is a better way of negotiation.

   

Ahh...so this is purely self-serving! How delightfully self-centred of you - it wasn't the government, the school or a combination it was only the teachers/instructors because it inconvenienced you? Brilliant.

   

You should come out West. We have these big blue and sometimes green trucks that drive around and pick up our garbage.

And we have people that if they don't like their job, they quit and get another.

Think about that next time you are tempted to use the term 'red neck'.

   

Well no one is a fan of city / government workers striking particularly when it impacts the general public and when it's over something that to many seems trivial. However what I find is that the reason many of the public workers unions set out demands that to seem to the general public ridiculous is that they are just following the lead of the non unionized executives and bureaucrats above them. If your outraged by what the guy picking up your trash is entitled too just wait until you see what his boss makes.

   

Unions are GREAT. You can pretty much never get fired even if you are not doing the job you were hired for. You can show up and leave whenever you want and not get docked pay or fired. You can strike whenever you feel something is unfair. I only wish I was in a union then I could do nothing and get paid and if anyone said anything to me, go right to my Union Rep and bingo, no more people bugging me. I have to find a union job. Go on strike so I can bank sick time. Isn't sick time for when you are FUCKEN sick...I say fire all the union workers and hire the guy who has no job and willing to work hard for what they are paying him to do. Did you know that Honda in Canada gives bonuses monthly for good attendance. They don't have a union and the workers are pretty happy. I know because I have a couple of friends working there and when the union showed up and said, come on join the union they Honda workers told them to go fuck themselves as they have a great deal going and they didn't want the union to fuck it up......

   

Um, don't forget the Upper Canada Law Society, the Royal College of Physicians and the League of United Dentists, or whatever the hell they are. The first two are some big-league "unions" that simply don't ascribe to that label.

   

There are so many fallacies above that I scarsely know where to begin.

Do you really think unionized workers can come and go as they please and not lose pay? You don't believe that, do you? There are disciplinary procedures in any collective agreement. Unions don't want to protect bad employees any more than management does. There concern is that the collective agreement is followed in all areas, including discipline.

The LAST thing unionized workers want is a strike. It's never a money-making prospect and the money lost on strike is NEVER regained. They use strikes only as a last resort. In practise, most strikes are initiated by management, not union.

I don't think you have ANY clue about what sick time is. If a collective agreement has, say, 20 sick days per year, that doesn't mean everyone gets to phone in sick 20 times and if they don't, they get paid for those they don't use. It's more complicated than that. Maybe you should read a collective agreement.

Honda and Toyota have been able to keep unions out, but it's not because any workers told the CAW to "fuck off". That's an outright lie.

I can't teach you an introductory course in Labour Economics here, but you'd do yourself a great favour to enroll in one before you shoot your mouth off about something you clearly have no working knowledge of.

   

I am part of a union and my view on a union is that its job is to prevent the employer from taking advantage of the workers ie work overtime without pay. Not keep workers who are not worth their weight in shit (my work has 2 of those). Or demand outrageous wage increases.

Unions have their place, but they are overstepping their place in many work places.

   

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