02-06-2012, 12:52 PM
Brakie Wrote:I have worked union and lived better then I did working nonunion where your job depended on the whim of the company..
[/quote]Perhaps but,you should talk to some of those folks that served that company for 20-30 years and was shown the door so the company could fatten their pockets on minimum wage workers with no benefits that can be fired for any reason.They have a big employee turnover-most quit within 60 days and move on to better paying jobs..
Some of those long time employee lost their homes and was to old to start fresh.
How does one justify corporate greed?
Nobody will miss that company if it closed tomorrow.[/quote]
There is another side to that sort of corporate attitude as well Larry. Before I retired I worked for a dealer for a transport refrigeration company. They closed a union pant in Southern California, and built a new non-union plant in another part of the country. The savings in wages in that "right to work" state wasn't enough to suit them, so they also only hire temporary workers at close to if not minimum wage and no benefits. They even hire many of their engineers by the job. I can tell you that their new system made a lot of work for me and the rest of the techs at the dealership, because the quality done by temporary non-skilled workers is non existent. Typically we would find cold solder joints all over the piping, or leaks where the solder didn't fill in all the way around the joint. We would have a problem with some newly designed electronic component and call for technical assistance only to be told, the engineer who designed that piece left once the design was complete and no one has any idea how it works! I am thankful that I am retired and that my pension comes from the Union pension fund and is no longer from company funds.
I think in the case of Caterpiller-Emd that the Muncie shop is probably a union shop. As far as railroads disappearing-only from states that don't have the industry to support railroads.