Obama '08?

Untrue Okie.

Go take a stroll through southern Cali and go to any of the numerous grocery stores. Plenty of union there. They thrive in REAL competition amongst each other, unlike with giants like Wal-mart coming in, demanding money, treating its employees like trash, and creating costly creating eco-hazards then acting butthurt about the employees wanting better benefits or the fact that they benefit from horrible labor methods from China.

Take a trip to a grocery store in SoCal okie.
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You are going to insist on being an idiot about this aren't you. The birth certificate HAS been released and is a matter of public record.

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If unions bargain for such high wages and benefits that their employers are no longer able to compete in the marketplace, and their company goes broke, thus leaving them without a job, what would be the possible answers as to why the union would do that?

Here's one. They force the politicians to either face up to the unpopularity of having large companies laying off thousands of workers in a key electoral location or to bring in import restrictions on foreign competitors. If the union leaders call for import restrictions it is possibly what their plan was all along having sensed that the politicians would be forced to choose them. Not unlike playing poker.

That then requires some kind of subsidy and subsidies to one industry automatically damage all other industries. Thus the auto industry, say, ends up top dog in the industrial status league and has more power in political circles.

Why the hell should the management have all the power in a company?
Cycloptichorn

Yaknow, perhaps the reason unions tend to vote Democratic is the fact that Republicans such as yourself openly call them socialist crooks and treat them with contempt.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Why the hell should the management have all the power in a company?
Cycloptichorn

How about because they own and run the company, cyclops? That would be a pretty good reason.

And nobody was holding a gun to your head to force you to work for anybody, if you don't like it. I quit a job like that once, to the surprise of the owner. He wanted to know why, and I told him I found a job with better hours and better pay.

Go own your own company and try it for a while.

I do have contempt for union thugs that have personally threatened anybody I know. Maybe you admire them? I don't.

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I do have contempt for union thugs that have personally threatened anybody I know. Maybe you admire them? I don't.

You're a liar, and I don't believe you, Okie. I think you made this up. And even if they did, why does that affect all union members?

I'll tell you this much - I've walked a picket line before, it ended with us getting more money and actual sick time (instead of none), and if you had tried to scab, I would have attempted to bash your f*cking head in just like the other guys who tried to break the picket line; it's an American tradition and not one to be ashamed of.

Cycloptichorn

When you call somebody a liar without one iota of evidence, you have crossed the line.

Are you so emotionally weak that you are so totally helpless to help yourself without some group to bail your sorry soul out? I feel sorry for you, but this last post of yours has lowered what respect I have had for any reasonable dialogue on any subject here on this forum. Pathetic, cyclops. Instead of providing any reasonable argument in favor of unions, you have instead provided your own personal example of why unions are not to be admired.

The feudal system (coal companies being the "Barons of the Manor" and coal miners being the serfs) made it possible for the miner to live in housing consisting of rough lumber with no indoor plumbing and to do his necessary shopping at the company store where he might purchase on credit. He was paid in a "play money" called "scrip" which was exchangeable only at the company store. He was required to furnish his own tools and blasting powder, which he purchased at the company store.

If he were married, the needs of a growing family usually outstripped his ability to provide for them on the wages he earned, thus most of them were perpetually in debt to the company store. Most married miners had a little kitchen garden to produce some of their food needs. When his wife had need of obstetrical attention, or if there were family illnesses, the company doctor was called in, and the miner had that expense deducted from his wages. more than one miner, at the end of a pay period, would pick up an empty pay envelope because his indebtedness had taken all he earned.

A miner's sons would often follow him into the mines. The sons had grown up with mining and it was all they knew. It is not uncommon in these MINE REPORTS to see not only fathers and sons killed in a mine explosion, but to see many brothers perish, too.

The daily living conditions of coal miners "pre-Unions" is so well known that historians need only consult older family members for more details. Mr. William O. Williams, now deceased, had worked in the mines of Logan, Boone, and Kanawha Counties, also in Pittsburgh, Pa., for 40 years and spoke of coal mining, as he had known it, as being "The meanest life in the world". He spoke of bad air, miners being trapped behind smoke and being Unable to get out, pins not holding and causing the slate to fall, water seeping into the mine shafts making working conditions damp and cold, and the sheer physical agony of working in a narrow seam of coal all stooped over, or laboring on his knees in a puddle of water for the entire duration of a shift.

Deadly methane gas, being odorless, was a silent killer °ree;of many miners" but far more miners died of black lung, a disease where the air sacs of the lungs are destroyed from breathing coal dust- Mr. Williams said that the coal companies for many years, until legislation forced some changes, refused to recognize black lung as a valid medical disability caused by working conditions. Many company doctors would diagnose respiratory disorders as nearly anything but black lung. One coal company doctor had told Mr. Williams, "Breathe coal dust! It's good for you!". At the time of his death in 1983, he was receiving benefits for black lung.

In many instances, miners were trapped by economic conditions into this particular vocation and, once in it, few could see their way out of it. Mouths had to be fed, bodies had to be clothed and housed, and the wage earner must do what he must to accomplish this.

As the reader will note from these REPORTS, many miners who perished left widows and orphans. It was the rare miner who had or who could afford, life insurance policies.

Harsh working conditions, and inability of miners and coal companies to negotiate and make changes, led to militant unionizing efforts, which were eventually given the stamp of approval by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Before unions became "acceptable", there were many harsh skirmishes between opposing factions. To this day, in Kanawha County, one may still find bunkers where gunfire was exchanged in this deadly struggle to improve working conditions for coal miners.

Even with improving working conditions, mining was still dangerous work. Experienced miners learned to be cautious, and the REPORTS OF MINE INSPECTORS indicated that experienced miners were far less likely to die in an accident than novices. Not so surprisingly, more mining accidents happened on Monday than on other days of the week. Those statistics, and many other interesting facts, are not included in the enclosed materials, but the reader is encouraged to see the original books if he wishes to learn more.

Each death reported herein is a story in itself, whether it be the story of the son of a former landowner who becomes a serf, or whether it is the story of an immigrant who has come to America to seek a better way of life, only to meet Death face to face in the bowels of the earth.

Many miners trapped underground during explosions did not have their bodies recovered. The mine shaft was sometimes Permanently sealed off, and somewhere inside another "statistic" sleeps until the resurrection. An in-depth look at these REPORTS reveals that some miners were not even known by name. "Italian #14 , for example, perished in a Kanawha County coal mine, and only those who spoke his native tongue might have known who he was.

The story of coal mining in the early days of this century is in many ways a solemn one, but the relentless desire of the miners for a better way of life has borne fruit as we see safety features in mines rigorously enforced, children of miners receiving university educations, and the miner himself being paid a living wage so that he might enjoy some of the fruits of his labors.

Diest TKO wrote:

You are going to insist on being an idiot about this aren't you. The birth certificate HAS been released and is a matter of public record.

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If the link I posted has any credibility, there is a vast difference between a birth certificate, and a Certificate of Live Birth. Just curious, Diest, thats all, I am curious. I seem to remember you were far more curious about Bush and 9/11, a subject that was totally without any credible evidence, while this weird issue seems to me to have some credence. After all, we do have Obama's relatives claiming he was born there, don't we? Maybe you think they are all lying?

Look Cyclo-- you are supposed to show, or at least try to, that my explanation that those rights arise out of the efficiencies of mechanisation and the Christian ethic and without both of those the unions wouldn't even exist. It's not many posts back. You are not supposed in a discussion to keep repeating that mantra about the unions doing it as if that post doesn't exist. You can start sounding like a character in Pinter with that.

I have no use at all for unions. I have had relatives personally threatened, and their families as well, by union thugs. No use, Diest, no use at all for thugs. I would rather have freedom, freedom to work wherever I wish to work. I have never belonged to a union, and I do not feel like I have missed out on anything.

Pathetic, cyclops. Instead of providing any reasonable argument in favor of unions, you have instead provided your own personal example of why unions are not to be admired.

You apparently care not a whit about personal freedom, it appears to me, only what serves yourself and fellow union members.

No okie. I have never had any Bush 9/11 conspiracy theories. I was not "curious." I have a rational brain, and I knew that Bush's involvement in 9/11 at maximum was just negligence. That's a "maybe" as well, I'm nobody to say that 9/11 would not have happened to Gore or something like that. No dramatic plot theories from me.

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