UAW Strikes
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GarageAlchemist;187482 wrote:
without the minimum wage very expirenced workers ( say 20 years with one company) would lose their jobs, because they could hire some noob out of college for less than half what they have to pay the old guy, because the old guy has (hopefully) been getting raises for 20 years.I had a different response written to this, but now I'm not sure what you're even talking about.
is the guy who's been there 20 years making minimum wage or not? If he is, what were all those raises he got? Minimum wage raises?
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GarageAlchemist;187482 wrote:
without the minimum wage very expirenced workers ( say 20 years with one company) would lose their jobs, because they could hire some noob out of college for less than half what they have to pay the old guy, because the old guy has (hopefully) been getting raises for 20 years.Not if he is more qualified, works hard, and is efficient. In any business your employees are the most valuable part of the business. They can make you money or they can lose you money. If the employer understands this the old guy with experience have nothing to worry about. If they don't, than that is not a company you would want to work for.
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RE-Enema;187486 wrote:
Not if he is more qualified, works hard, and is efficient. In any business your employees are the most valuable part of the business. They can make you money or they can lose you money. If the employer understands this the old guy with experience have nothing to worry about. If they don't, than that is not a company you would want to work for.I agree w/ Jeff here. Yes, it does happen that "old-timers" get pushed out by n00bs from time to time, and sometimes it is because of what they get paid...but if you've been in an industry for 20 years, odds are you are making more than minimum wage as it is so Heath's argument is pointless. Sometimes the 20 year employee is getting paid more than what they can hire a qualified rookie...and the seasoned guy gets let go. The employee failed to show a value to his employer that made him irreplaceable. Perhaps the new guy has more ambition, enthusiasm, strive....or knows new and more efficient techniques making the old guy obsolete. All of these scenarios (IMHO) point to the employee as being at fault for not keeping up to date on his trade and advancing his knowledge and advancing his worth to the company.
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tjamz;187490 wrote:
I agree w/ Jeff here. Yes, it does happen that "old-timers" get pushed out by n00bs from time to time, and sometimes it is because of what they get paid...but if you've been in an industry for 20 years, odds are you are making more than minimum wage as it is so Heath's argument is pointless. Sometimes the 20 year employee is getting paid more than what they can hire a qualified rookie...and the seasoned guy gets let go. The employee failed to show a value to his employer that made him irreplaceable. Perhaps the new guy has more ambition, enthusiasm, strive....or knows new and more efficient techniques making the old guy obsolete. All of these scenarios (IMHO) point to the employee as being at fault for not keeping up to date on his trade and advancing his knowledge and advancing his worth to the company.Instead of firing the guy why not offer him either termination of pay cut. Let him have a say in his fate. If the guy does a great job but they think he's getting too much rather than letting a good employee go you'd think they would give him an option at least.
It could boil down to the fact that the upper echelon of most companies has no damn clue what the actual worker bees of the company do.
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thrash;187480 wrote:
why? based on what?I respect your opinion, because it is not much different than how theoretically I'd like to see it work. I don't think it would lower product costs all that much though. Lets take a small town ND worker. MANY people in rural ND work for min wage (or start at min wage...I know many CNA's that barely get $7/hr after years of service) because that is all the employers are willing to pay for many positions. These people still have to be able to afford gas/clothes/groceries/housing. Often times they pay more for these things than we do in more urban areas (even housing...Rugby, ND housing is higher than Fargo in many cases...throwing out the highest end of Fargo and lowest end of Rugby....$150000 gets you a nicer house in Fargo vs Rugby.) So, by your theory, EVERYTHING in Rugby should be cheaper than Fargo since wages are lower there. Doesn't hold true though.
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StangerBanger96;187491 wrote:
Instead of firing the guy why not offer him either termination of pay cut. Let him have a say in his fate. If the guy does a great job but they think he's getting too much rather than letting a good employee go you'd think they would give him an option at least.It could boil down to the fact that the upper echelon of most companies has no damn clue what the actual worker bees of the company do.
Because not all companies can afford to create a position and/or offer a great severance package. Most people have too much pride to take a pay cut. To bring this topic full circle, this is part of the reason people look to unions for job protection.
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tjamz;187493 wrote:
Because not all companies can afford to create a position and/or offer a great severance package. Most people have too much pride to take a pay cut. To bring this topic full circle, this is part of the reason people look to unions for job protection.If Unions weren't so greedy and corrupt they might be worthwhile.
Like I said before, where else can an employee up and leave their job and slander the company they work for and not expect to get fired? That's bullshit. Strikes are bullshit. If you don't like it then GTFO so the company can hire someone in your place that'll work for less and do probably just as good a job. They SAY they police their workers but in reality they don't...I know because I have relatives who are Union workers and are completely worthless. That and the fact that "uneducated" Assembly line workers make more than college grads gets to me too. It hinders a free market which usually runs best with as little intrusion as possible.
The only intrusion I waver on is the minimum wage issue...It'd be interesting to see how the market adapted to an abolishment of the min. wage. It'd also be interesting to see how bad the president in office at the time of that happening lost his next election bid (if they were still in their first term).
Another thing that really gets to me is when a company is floundering such as Northwest and they try to bargain with the Union to do pay cuts so the company doesn't go under. It pisses me off that the Union assholes have the nerve to fight the pay cuts because they don't want to work for much less. Take the fucking pay cut or risk losing your job completely because your company goes under. I'd rather work for less than be unemployed and looking for a job because my Union made the company go under due to their unwillingness to budge on pay/benefit cuts.
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tjamz;187492 wrote:
I respect your opinion, because it is not much different than how theoretically I'd like to see it work. I don't think it would lower product costs all that much though. Lets take a small town ND worker. MANY people in rural ND work for min wage (or start at min wage...I know many CNA's that barely get $7/hr after years of service) because that is all the employers are willing to pay for many positions. These people still have to be able to afford gas/clothes/groceries/housing. Often times they pay more for these things than we do in more urban areas (even housing...Rugby, ND housing is higher than Fargo in many cases...throwing out the highest end of Fargo and lowest end of Rugby....$150000 gets you a nicer house in Fargo vs Rugby.) So, by your theory, EVERYTHING in Rugby should be cheaper than Fargo since wages are lower there. Doesn't hold true though.I never said that goods will be cheaper in one area than another based on the prevailing wages in the two areas. Obviously this is false for certain kids of goods. In general, I'd expect the prices of some things to be higher in rural areas because the smaller market necessarily has less competition, and the cost of transporting goods/services to that small market cannot be amortized over a large number of customers. It naturally depends on the labor cost component of the product under consideration. Locally produced beef in the midwest at a mom & pop resturant is almost certainly cheaper than beef in a larger city. In the former case, the labor cost is lower and the transport / processing costs of the materials (cows) are lower.
What I've said is that having a price floor on labor hurts those least able to be employed. It creates unemployment. I've also said that abolishing the labor price floor CAN allow a company to reduce prices. But I already allowed that the company might choose to do other things with that freed up money (like invest in additional capital equipment, or spend the money on hookers and blow -- whatever).
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what i was saying happens to teachers all the time, there has been one guy there for 20 some years, their pay goes up yearly, by the time 20 years is up, they cost almost twice as much as someone that is starting on the bottom of the pay scale.
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StangerBanger96;187494 wrote:
The only intrusion I waver on is the minimum wage issue...It'd be interesting to see how the market adapted to an abolishment of the min. wage. It'd also be interesting to see how bad the president in office at the time of that happening lost his next election bid (if they were still in their first term).Yes. Take away the bread and circuses and the state-created dependants will get unruly.
Another thing that really gets to me is when a company is floundering such as Northwest and they try to bargain with the Union to do pay cuts so the company doesn't go under. It pisses me off that the Union assholes have the nerve to fight the pay cuts because they don't want to work for much less. Take the fucking pay cut or risk losing your job completely because your company goes under. I'd rather work for less than be unemployed and looking for a job because my Union made the company go under due to their unwillingness to budge on pay/benefit cuts.
You're already too smart / ethical / whatever to join a union. There's no incentive to take a paycut -- if the company tanks or the position is otherwise eliminated, the unemployment benefit you'll receive is based on your pay at the time of termination. Since union labor already has the culture of dependant entitlement drilled into them, there's no reason for them to jeapordize the artificially high unemployment benefits they'll collect once their employer tanks completely.
That said, I don't think unions are the biggest problem in the airline industry. I haven't studied it much, but I suspect a big part of what's going on are some side effects of FAA rules, and the continual subsidy/bailout of certain airlines by the government. Why is it that Jet Blue and Southwest are highly profitable and their customers love them?
Hopefully the dinosaurs in the aviation industry will fold and a variety of upstarts not shackled with bad labor and worse managers will fill in the gaps. Absent intervention (like bailouts), the market will tend to correct sub-optimal investments of labor and capital and we'll all be better off for it.
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GarageAlchemist;187500 wrote:
what i was saying happens to teachers all the time, there has been one guy there for 20 some years, their pay goes up yearly, by the time 20 years is up, they cost almost twice as much as someone that is starting on the bottom of the pay scale.So what does that have to do with the minimum wage?
Either the person with 20 years experience is doing 2x good a job as an entry level person, or they aren't. If they aren't, they probably shouldn't be making 2x as much.
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thrash;187501 wrote:
Why is it that Jet Blue and Southwest are highly profitable and their customers love them?
I know Southwest is successful for 2 big reasons. They buy gas futures and had a hunch prices would spike soon so they bargained with gas companies to supply them with gas at the price it was like 6 years ago...this agreement ends in a year or 2 I believe. Another reason is they don't use hubs. They have direct flights and don't have to pay astronomical prices to get hubs in some major airports that other airlines pay out the nose for.MisterCMK;187504 wrote:
Lets say that they abolish minimum wage and the average wage a person makes drops due to pay cuts. That person will have less income available and will spend less money causing less sales/revenue and possibly resulting in further pay/job cutsThe reason it works is because as the average pay drops, the price per good produced drops as well. This in turn causes the retail prices to drop (theoretically) because free market competition forces it to. If you try to keep selling at the inflated price then places like Walmart put you out of business because you're selling your product for $100 even though market value is $80 and thats what Walmart sells it at. Thus the avg consumer makes less but the products in the market cost less to produce and thus sell for less.
Minimum wage increases just drive prices up so we're right back to where we were before. Everyone makes more due to the hike but this pay raise also means companies have to raise prices on their products to continue profiting. Thus the entire market just does one giant shift upward and no actual change is made. You think you make more, but everything costs more so you really make the same.
Kinda like back in the day cars cost $5000 brand new and annual income was $20,000. Now cars cost $20,000 brand new and you make $80,000 annual income. No real difference in ratios and percentages but you feel wealthier because you have "more".
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MisterCMK;187504 wrote:
Lets say that they abolish minimum wage and the average wage a person makes drops due to pay cuts.The maximum pct of people that this might happen to: 2% of the work force
That person will have less income available and will spend less money causing less sales/revenue and possibly resulting in further pay/job cuts
The worst case is that this person joins the ranks of the unemployed or who are on some sort of aid program. As mentioned earlier, the # of unemployed people are already larger than the # of minimum wage earners. The economy and a variety of business can already cope with an unemployment rate considerably higher than the percantage of people who could POTENTIALLY be negatively impacted by a minimum wage reduction.
You also discount entirely the impact of labor done beneath the minimum wage rate. Think of all of the work currently not getting done because it is illegal to pay someone less than minimum wage to do that work. Whenever there is commerce, the economy is energized and the standard of living for everybody in aggregate is improved. A specific individual may perceive that they are getting a shitty deal temporarily, but the long term and aggregate effects are that everyone is better off.
Like i said -- the minimum wage is a price floor. Price floors in every other type of commodity screw up the market. You have gluts and shortages, people cannot accurately forecast needs, and a host of other issues. I don't see why people think labor should be different.
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This is kind of getting off topic, but I wonder how many people here are actually making the minimum wage? I'd think in general that the mostly young crowd on this forum would be more likely to be in a position to be stuck in a minimum wage job than the national average. It looks like the minimum wage is $5.85, don't you make a lot more than that starting out at a fast food place?
DaveH
'94 Supra- 7.77 @ 176mph -
DaveH;187534 wrote:
This is kind of getting off topic, but I wonder how many people here are actually making the minimum wage? I'd think in general that the mostly young crowd on this forum would be more likely to be in a position to be stuck in a minimum wage job than the national average. It looks like the minimum wage is $5.85, don't you make a lot more than that starting out at a fast food place?When I was 15 (4 years ago) I started at $5.25 at McDonalds...10cents above minimum wage. 1 month later when I turned 16 I got a $1 raise so i was at $6.25. When I quit I was making $7.85.
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StangerBanger96;187539 wrote:
When I was 15 (4 years ago) I started at $5.25 at McDonalds...10cents above minimum wage. 1 month later when I turned 16 I got a $1 raise so i was at $6.25. When I quit I was making $7.85.But the real question is, where would have you started at w/ no minimum wage?
The reason I ask is because so many people at age 14+ want to own a car. At sub-min wage it would be extremely tough to afford one which would hurt both the potential owner and local businesses. Sure their parents could MAYBE buy them one, but what does that teach the kid in terms of financial responsibility? At minimum wage, at least the beginning driver can get into an entry level car...sub $3000 if their parents co-sign or if they save up their money and buy one outright. The next question is, does the kid need a car? Maybe yes, maybe no...depends a lot on the situation. Completely abolishing the minimum wage will have a HUGE impact on the economy...for the worse. Less money earned = less money spent.
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tjamz;187544 wrote:
But the real question is, where would have you started at w/ no minimum wage?To answer that with a sense of whether or not the amount was enough you'd also have to know what kind of effect a no-minimum-wage market would have on prices of goods. If it meant I started at $2.50 an hour but clothing cost $10, Abercrombie cost $30, Windows XP Pro cost $60, GT42's cost $300, my car cost $2500 (insert whatever you currently like and divide the price by about 1/3 to 1/2) well then...I wouldn't really complain probably.
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