Ronald Reagan: "Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."

reply to post by HaveAnotherOne


Yeah, I have a college degree and you know what? I can't get work with my degree. Funny thing is, my husband makes more than some people that have a Master's degree. Ironic, don't you think? Oh, and guess what, he does use his mind as well. He made over a hundred thousand last year.

reply to post by queenofsheba


Actually quite a few wives stay home, since there is no need for them to work.
'
Sure your husband can provide for his own retirement, but there is no obligation of any business to provide it for them. Thats why its called a benefit.

Health insurance is not a right, nor should it be. It is a benefit, just like a retirement package is.

Those who rely only on their employer to provide for their future are either stupid, ignorant, or a combination of both.

reply to post by HaveAnotherOne


Fortunately, he has an annuity worth almost 200,000.00 cuz we're so entitled and dumb and haven't earned it. You should be on the side of the working class American who earns every cent they make. Are you even from America?

Ronald Reagan gutted the air traffic controllers when they went on strike in the 80's. They were striking because they had to work so many hours at one time that they were exhausted and making mistakes. They wanted a change in their hours.

Reagan just ignored the federal employees' union and fired them, replacing them with private sector employees who would work the same hours for less pay than the union ones.

But hey, we have nothing to worry about now, right? It probably won't be our plane when they make their mistakes, now will it?

reply to post by queenofsheba


I live in Wisconsin actually.

What is the typical "working man"? Those people who hate their crappy job and only do it to get by because they didnt better themselves to find something they actually enjoy?

The barely educated degenerate union twit whose idea of life is sitting around drinking beer on weekends?

Or were you referring to the public sector morons who think they have a right to demand more of the taxpayers money?

Yea, no thanks, I'll pass on grouping myself together with any of those people.

Originally posted by Sestias
Ronald Reagan gutted the air traffic controllers when they went on strike in the 80's. They were striking because they had to work so many hours at one time that they were exhausted and making mistakes. They wanted a change in their hours.

. . .

PATCO president Robert Poli demanded an across-the-board wage increase of $10,000/yr for controllers whose pay ranged from $20,462 to $49,229; the reduction of a five-day, 40-hour work week to a four-day, 32-hour work week; and full retirement after 20 years service.

. . .

The FAA made a . . . counteroffer which included a shorter work week and a 10 percent pay hike for night shifts and those controllers who doubled as instructors. Further negotiations between Poli and Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis sweetened the pot even more. Nonetheless, 95 percent of PATCO's membership rejected the final settlement.

. . .

PATCO strikers made dire predictions about reduced air safety as a consequence of the 60-hour work week put in by their replacements, but in fact limited traffic and the extra monitoring efforts of the 33,000 Air Line Pilots Association members diminished the risk of an "aluminum shower," as controllers euphemistically called an air accident. Before long, about 80 percent of airline flights were operating as scheduled, while air freight remained virtually unaffected.
There wasnt much support for the PATCO strikers. The public sided with the government and exhibited little sympathy for individuals whose earnings were already well above the national average.

Link


Yeah. They wanted to more than double their salary and work less hours.



Those poor poor souls.

This thread conflates free unions with coerced public unions.

They are as far apart as communism is from capitalism.

In a free union, all the employees of a private sector company get together and decide to bargain for whatever benefits they feel they are entitled to. They are limited in what they can bargain for naturally because the company they work for is constrained by a profit margin.

Further, free unions flow both ways. The employer could decide to fire all his workers and replace them if they all strike together.

In a coerced public union, the employer has no profit margin constraints, employees have no choice of bargaining on their own, the employees are forced to pay union dues, and the employer can not fire them if they strike.

Big difference.

Originally posted by queenofsheba
reply to post by HaveAnotherOne

 

Fortunately, he has an annuity worth almost 200,000.00 cuz we're so entitled and dumb and haven't earned it. You should be on the side of the working class American who earns every cent they make. Are you even from America?

edit on 11-3-2011 by queenofsheba because: add line

If he makes that kind of money, why're you worrying about losing benefits? What goes around comes around. One way or another health benefits get payed for. If the company no longer does the health benefits then you do. What's the difference? You should come out equally whether the company pays it or you pay it. I don't get why you're worried. It's the same both ways.

And besides, don't you want to be in control of yoru own healthcare? Would seem like a better deal to me. Who knows what the company is doing in the background. Know what I mean?

The whole thing in Wisconsin isn't about destroying an employees right to defend themselves, it's about destroying overbloated unions that have been given too much power. That's all.

The pendulum swings both ways. You can't pretend that only companies can do wrong!

reply to post by HaveAnotherOne


What's your beef with 'blue collar'?

Once upon a time, it was the blue collar worker who drove this country. Blue collar workers are the ones who work in manufacturing, producing the goods that are the bedrock of the American economy. You know, that economy that made us a rich and prosperous nation. The ones who made a 'middle class' possible.

That is, until the white collars realized they could make more money by cutting the blue collar out of the equation by exploiting the poor and oppressed of other nations.

Did you know that right now, 40% of employed Americans are working low paying service jobs? Some people have no choice to be anything other than blue collar. Go and talk to a great many recent college graduates; they'll tell you where their degrees have gotten them.

Time to wake up from the American Dream, buddy.

reply to post by jonnywhite


Hi jonny,
Yes, you're right. It would be so much better to have the money in cash than what they take out. As it stands, we pay 80 percent and they pay 20 percent. And it's money they take out so we would be better off if that was in our pockets. So, health care is not "free" nor an entitlement for us. I'm not worried really but it is hard to take when people out there bash union employees. We are fine and good and I am very, very thankful for that. The climate today is so divided, there are people who are really struggling and can't afford groceries, let alone health care. I don't understand how fellow Americans who are contributing to society and earning what they work for are such a threat, We're not on welfare nor taking advantage of the system. A decision you make for employment when you're in your twenties because you have welding skills and can earn a decent, honest living is now under fire. There is so much hate out there for union members that's it's become scary and I don't get it. The whole Wisconsin situation with the teachers is just the beginning. I understand the perspective of the tax payers, thinking they are sick of paying taxes and then more taxes, but those same teachers are also paying taxes. Heck, I live in MN where state taxes are really high but what is the solution, really? Go back to the way the Native Americans lived, where everything was free and the concept of buying/selling land was such a foreign concept that it was unfathomable to them? These times in America are difficult, make no mistake about it, but we should unite rather than divide and right now, we are so divided.

reply to post by Lemon.Fresh

PATCO president Robert Poli demanded an across-the-board wage increase of $10,000/yr for controllers whose pay ranged from $20,462 to $49,229; the reduction of a five-day, 40-hour work week to a four-day, 32-hour work week; and full retirement after 20 years service.

Wow! What huge salaries! That's almost enough to support a family of four at poverty level. Even the top rate means that each member of the family, after social security, taxes and benefits are deducted, is allowed about $8,000 per year! Pigs wallowing in a trough of luxury! That's almost as much as your average CEO spends for lunch!

Ok, maybe you're a recent graduate who has tried to enter the job market only to find yourself making minimum wage with no benefits. Or maybe you're a worker who is rapidly slipping from the middle class into poverty (and most of the middle class is) and so you are also working for a third-world salary and working conditions. And maybe you think that those lower-middle-class and lower class wages are something you would just love to have yourself. In that case I'll cut you some slack.

What I'm trying to say is, there once was a large and thriving middle class for whom those salaries are quite low. That middle class is now rapidly shrinking and those in poverty are growing by leaps and bounds. Pensions after 20 years were once the norm, and again, air traffic controllers should not work until they are exhausted as that can cost lives. 32 hours of total alertness and coordination is about as much as the average human can perform at optimum level. Just like a surgeon can't cut continuously for eight hours a day.

Instead of envying those workers who can actually survive on their pay and trying to bring them down to your level, you should probably form a union and fight for those kinds of wages yourself, which will help restore the middle class to its former glory.

reply to post by Someone336


Blue collared workers were once needed. Now they are not.

They have went from being the pride of the nation to basically a bunch of uneducated scumbags. Think construction workers. Yea, you get the idea.

Nowadays blue collar is synonymous with trash.

Originally posted by centurion1211

Originally posted by beezzer
reply to post by mc_squared

 

Nice, but it was taken out of historical context. No where did they have a deficit like the one we are facing today, no where did they have the outrageous "packages" that they have today.
It's the same as looking at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and saying how horrible nuking someone was, without looking at the ENTIRE historical context.

Shame! For taking a great man like RR and using his words to defend something that has been bastardized 30 years after the fact.

The pro-union people in Wisconsin have lost.

Now all they have left is cherry-picking quotes out of the past and starting witchhunts against the people they feel are responsible.

Ya think?

I think we are going to have a good old fashioned revolt, a class war and settle the issue that way.

You think the Unions have gone away?
I seriously doubt it.

reply to post by HaveAnotherOne


So what do you do over there in Packerland, yes I miss Brett but go what's his name...you did win the Superbowl and heck ya, I was on your side.

Originally posted by HaveAnotherOne
reply to post by Someone336

 

Blue collared workers were once needed. Now they are not.

They have went from being the pride of the nation to basically a bunch of uneducated scumbags. Think construction workers. Yea, you get the idea.

Nowadays blue collar is synonymous with trash.

Be honest now. Most of you bashers on this thread hate teachers and blue collar workers because they generally vote liberal. That's why you want to take away their salaries, their benefits and their rights as citizens.

Studies show that the more education a person receives (and I believe that includes those who are educated in the school of hard knocks) the more politically liberal they tend to be.

Except in Texas and on ATS.

Originally posted by mc_squared

Saw this on the Daily Show Moment of Zen tonight, had to share:

Ronald Reagan speaking about unions and collective bargaining in reference to the Polish Solidarity movement in 1980:

fast forward to 7minutes 31seconds here

But restoring the American dream requires more than restoring a sound, productive economy, vitally important as that is. It requires a return to spiritual and moral values. Values so deeply held by those who came here to build a new life. We need to restore those values in our daily life, in our neighborhoods, and in our government’s dealings with other nations of the world.

These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. The values that have inspired other dissidents under Communist domination who have been willing to go into the Gulag and suffer the torture of imprisonment because of their dissidence. They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. You and I must protect and preserve freedom here or it will not be passed on to our children and it would disappear everywhere in the world.

The people of Wisconsin just watched a piece of their freedom get stolen away by the NCO (New Corporatist Order) today and yet the FOX News-bots have naturally rushed in to defend and celebrate this injustice.

It never ceases to amaze me how many FOX News-bots there are these days (especially on a conspiracy website no less) but how's that cognitive dissonance feel like when your own Republican Jesus speaks out against the brainwashed ideologies you're being spoonfed?

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Send this video to every GOP watchdog group as well as every GOP subgroup and tell them that this is what your God Reagan said and to follow because your God told you so.