I like "Right-to-Work" laws a lot.

I understand that sometimes good people get cut. But to me your job security somes when you make yourself an invaluable asset to the company. Want to keep your job? Make sure that they can't afford to lose you. Job security is being the best of the best at what you do.

...Vbron...

i wonder, if being the best of the best at what ever you do is the only way to maintain your job, then only 1 person per corporation is safe. that means out of the 3000 people i work with, if even one of them is better than me, or takes one less sick day than me, i am screwed. i totally agree that if you aren't pulling your weight, or not performing up to expectations, then you get the can. but i also think that a corporation or business should be required to give notice to employees that they will be having layoffs. did micron call is 1500 workers a month in advance and say "hey, we're kinda tight on money, we love your work but we're gonna have to let you go." giving said employees time to scramble and find another job? i doubt it. highly doubt it. even then a month isn't much but at least its something. big corps have no respect for the people that make them what they are. thats where unions come in. i don't know much about them but i think that the concept is right. organizing the people that get used but are the most needed. i guarantee that if those 1500 people had been organized things would have been different. tell me what you think about this idea: corp realizes that it is losing money and needs to downsize, corp calls head of union and says hey, no matter how we spin it we're losing cash and need to lay off some folk. union boss calls a meeting and says yo, corp is losing money, and there will be some layoffs eminent in the next 3-4 months. we would recommend looking for another job now, to alleviate the situation. workers go out and over time find other work. they quit company A after they have settled in at company B. company A is fine, because it needed to lose people any way. workers are happy because they aren't jobless, and union is happy because they didn't have to strike. sounds like a win win to me, is that so hard?

I come from Emmett , Idaho . (Boise Cascade Sawmill) --- One of my many wifes came from Glens Ferry , Idaho . (Union Pacific turn around)
Both of them shut down , for years you could barely give a house away in ether community .
Both by the way highly unionized . Think for a minute what would happen if you had been one of the men who got laid off ---------- you spend you last severance check , your insurance is so expensive you have to drop it --------- Anyway I'm sure you get where I'm headed .

Reddog

red dog,
i think i get where you are headed, but maybe not. after re-reading my previous post i realized that it does sound pretty pro union. let me admit that i am quite inexperienced in dealing with either a pro union or anti union work place, as i have worked mostly for small companies during my working life. the idea that i portrayed is simply how i think that the micron boise issue could have been dealt with. i think that the company did a great disservice to the hard workers there by simply canning them with no notice. perhaps my inexperience is enough to keep me from making insights into this topic, but maybe i can prompt some more debate to help educate me.. why do people have unions if they are so bad? or are unions a blessing to the american people and the downfall of corporate dictatorship? i'd appreciate you helping me understand.

In a lot of ways unions are good for the working man , even if he doesn't belong to a union . As in a rising tide raises all boats .
If company "A" makes widgets and they are a union shop , then company "B" who is not a union widget shop must compete for employees by paying higher wages .
Right about here the non-union people will start pulling there hair out saying that unions cause inflation . To some extent they are right BUT the cost of a gallon of gas (for example)is the same for a union member , making good money , as it is for a guy making $10 an hour .

Reddog

This is neither a pro or an anti union statement. I think the real issue here is over inflated executive compensation. Does an executive who makes maybe 2 imporant desicions that may or may not impact the profitability of a company really deserve to be paid 1000x what the person who actually makes their products makes? This is a situation almost uniquely american. Japanese executives don't make exorbitant salaries like they do here and their companies are killing ours in every market they enter. When was the last time you heard of a Swedish or Finnish CEO looting a company? They don't make as much as their american counterparts do. I think that american corporations have really lost sight of the goal of a company, and that is not to enrich the few, but to enrich the many. If one of micron's exec's would have taken a slight paycut, we could have kept 100-200 hourly workers. It's not like a person can't live on 100k a year anyways. As was stated previously, a rising tide raises all boats.

for the good old days before unions. You remember; no weekends off, no holidays, no vacation, no sick days,14 hour days for subsistence wages,no insurance...ah, the good old days. Oh yeah...you could also put your 9 year old to work in the coal mines. Sweet.

IMO, Rev. Dave comes through with another stellar post. I'd add that we screwed up when we made it legal for coporations to move their offices offshore, thus reducing their obligation to American taxes/workers/regulations, while enabling them to continue to enjoy all the benefits of America. "We" being somebody else, cuz nobody asked me if it was okay.

What matters is what you let yourself get into.

Whatever is was you allowed it. It's your turn to fix it whether for yourself or the entire company.

So much talk and so little resolution.

restrict an economy more than they can help and hinder the ability of a community or a region or even a nation to provide a stable economy and it goes sideways into an ever sliding economic zone that begins fragmenting wildly until the economy is sucked around from country to country and I understand currently simultaneously sucking through sevaral countries all at once.

Capital is hyperventilating everywhere. The problem is not simplistic yet it bears to witness that the mangerial style of business overruns the business end--the workers.

I'm not going to do any good to make a long thesis of this. There's a disconnect everywhere. I don't know what all to do for it but it all doesn't work very well.

How do you get everybody in so that they work and benefit the other divisions or suppliers more equitably? Why should labor costs slip around like an amoeba in a petri dish? It's a fact that raw supplies and hazardous situations force market chaos and change. You still have a Chrysler hollering for the 147th time they are bankrupt, American or not. Somewhere in the equation isn't a job-for-life or a temp zone living. Somewhere is work that means life for everybody somehow tied to that job.

Whatever that is. Find a shoebox that fits.

Some of us have nothing to worry about. My concern goes to the elder ones that are still working in the same place as they did for the past 30 years. Imagine that all this new technology is gonna take their jobs away just a few years from retirement. What will they do then?
---
Johanna Bartley, Key Account Manager in charge for the Exhibition Stand Contractors.

Will have to retrain?

EVERY crappy SUV needs a Tape Recorder Blonde to talk about "the ride".

Will snow cones and scones be made completely AUTOMATIC thus ending the careers or fair workers and causing massive grief?

Will computers replace carny workers, making gyp games human free with digital flim-flam?