SLAPPED

Because of my articles about unions I will not be posting here for a while as I have been SLAPPed. If you don't know what that means it means a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

Unions are for Idiots #2

Since I will be away for a while and I have many friends and relatives living in
Canada I will let one of them sound of in this blog.

The Canadian Auto Workers Union is loosing jobs as everyone now knows, because of the slowdown in sales. Buzz Hargrove their union president has vowed that they will not take any pay cuts to save their jobs as the unions did in the US. Instead they want government subsidies to help them out.

I have no sympathy for these idiots. The estimate is that they are now getting paid $5 to $10 dollars an hour more than their counterparts in the US. For years we were being ripped off by the overpriced and poorly built cars they produced. Did they have any sympathy for us?

With the dollar being near par they should be getting the same pay rate as the US workers to stay competitive. Why should other taxpayers money be used to subsidize the life style of these overpriced workers.

Unions Are for Idiots

Here is an article worth reading.
www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=291546

It reminds me of my own experiences with labor unions. When I was still going to school and trying to earn some money at a summer job in construction the union went on strike for 6 weeks. Of course I was also out of a job. After the 6 weeks they settled for a 5 cent increase per hour.

Let's do the math. 40 hours per week at 5 cents an hour equals $2. We were getting paid at that time $1.50 per hour or $60 per week. The wages lost for the 6 weeks we were on strike cost us $360. Therefore we would have to work more than 232 hours just to get the money back we had just lost. Actually it was more than that because our union deductions were a % of our wages so they went up as well.

Now, I was only 16 years old at that time but it didn't make much sense to me then. It also made a life long impression on me that the union really didn't care about the working man and their problems. All they were interested in was their own cushy jobs and power.