UNIONS...With them or against them?

Yep, the fire will come to Oregon too.....all in good time friend. The fires are already spreading, and as soon as they try to put it out another state will break out.

It just seems a bit ridiculous that the groundskeepers for our school district get $574 per month in their retirement funds and $1500 per month for family medical. My small family business is barely scraping by. We can only afford medical insurance premiums for the employee only and must fund our own retirement plans.

STOP TRYING TO DIVERT SHILL

Goldmansacs could wipe their ass with the combined income of all the unions x10.

What about being with or against the banks that are seizing houses of people who aren't even mortgaged with them or people eating out the trash while a few rich families own 90+% of this country's wealth??

Yes Goldmansacs is a problem. I am also enraged that the wealthy get wealthier while the small business struggles. They say our country was built on the back of small business. My main point is that the states want to do more for their employees while the rest of us are trying to maintain what we have. Why should we fund someone elses retirement and health insurance when we can barely fund our own?!

Anyone have any thoughts on their state or unions in general?

Do you really want to understand the facts. At one point unions were good for the individual. This was a very long time ago, and now complete monopoly and huge money machine. If you could get past all the indoctrination we could actually have a great discussion. Its a needed lesson that most americans are in a great need of.

GET RID OF THE UNIONS AND NOT CAPITALISM! I have much more to say on history and current events. This Union thing is about much deeper problems that America is about to face. This is about a new social justice network that is in high gear, trying to portray its useful platform in protecting people. I can assure you it is only going to put a choke hold on small business and the individual. It is a major step in the Elites plans for control of the masses and for that matter America.

They push this thru the demonizing of Capitalism and the evil corporations. Yes they're are evil corporations. However they really are more like Oligarchies. This is not capitalism, in capitalism nothing is to big to fail. This is very important to understand if you are truly looking for the facts behind this massacred party. When we discuss Unions and why they are nothing more than a platform to implode the system from capitalism to Socialism.

Trust me the elite will benefit greatly in controlling the system in this way. Socialism assures them to have complete control. NO COMPETITION! Remember who is in charge and funding comes from the Fed. Yeah the Fed and the massacred party gets better. So you see that this is definitely about control, and it goes to the highest parts of our so called REPUBLIC. This is a inside job and they use people to push they're agenda.

This is the same people that are pushing the GREEN MOVEMENT. Wait it was first called "GLOBAL WARMING" and know "CLIMATE CHANGE". People wake up you are being lied to. This is all about Control!

No one is funding my retirement or health care, f##Kem.

I agree there was a time and place that unions did a good thing. But now they are out of control. The biggest ones in each state are the "Public" employees. When every other business is trimming the bottom line, why is is out of line to ask the "Public" employees to contribute to their own benefit package?

Our family business funds the employee portion of health care. We are all on our own for retirement. And yes, several of my employees have a higher wage than I do. We work in construction and the employees in the field are worth every penny!

Screw unions

I lived and had a business on the coast in ur neck of the woods - tuff place to make a living - The good jobs were in the public sector, it seamed that there were more government owned vehicles on the road then private company owned.

Here's another thing...prevailing wage in construction projects. You would think "Prevailing" means the average wage. No, the workers that make $16 - $18 per hour must be paid the equivalent to $42.82 per hour on government funded jobs. They do allow benefits such as paid time off, health insurance premiums, and retirement benefits to be calculated into the prevailing wage. That is still a big difference between average wage and prevailing wage.

Agreed. It seems much of the land is owned by Federal or State governments. I also believe 16% of the working population works for some government entity.

UNIONS YES !!!

$70.00/h

______________________________

UNIONS $70.00 An hour = DEATH OF AMERICA AND ITS FREEDOM

SELF LOATHING SCUM

Our school district is a good example of unions gone wrong. The kids currently go to school 172 days per year. They want to close the budget gap by cutting 35 more days off the calendar - not cutting benefits to emloyees. I suppose it's the new math they teach now days.

The feds own a lot of land in the west, almost all of Nevada:
here r the top states, and a link to a map. 69% of Alaska is a lot of land. Gotta go crash.

State land owned by the Feds.

Nevada : 84.5%
Alaska: 69.1%
Utah: 57.4%
Oregon: 53.1%
Idaho: 50.2%
Arizona: 48.1%
California: 45.3%
Wyoming: 42.3%
New Mexico: 41.8%
Colorado: 36.6%

[link to bigthink.com]

Something tells me it is not a good thing to be in the top 5.

At first I thought it read:
Unicorns: with them or against them?
lol
Why not try to get back the TRILLIONS of dollars stolen by the Goldman Sachs, et al, banksters, to pay for everyone to make living union wages?

No shit! How about a job where you bankrupt half the nation and get a ridiculously large bonus for doing it!! I don't think my conscience would allow me to do that.

Yep, at one time unions were good for the employee. Those days are long gone. Now it's just another corrupt money hungry business. The unions don't give a rats ass about their members.

I have never witnessed such a horrid waste of money than that of Teamsters local 24 during the '08 election. The mailings, solicitations, phone calls...OMG, it was never ending! My SO is in the union, not me. I used to yell at them on the phone...quit wasting union dues on this and do something good for the employees!!!!

I had to report their scam health insurance to OH board of insurance and Atty General to get claims paid. When my man was seriously injured at work, the union would not help him one little bit with workers comp or the company. However, even tho he got laid off during the injury, b/c he was injured, he was not permitted to opt out of the union like all the other laid off ppl. He was injured, laid off, AND had to keep paying union dues each month...to a union that refused to help him out!!!! Oh yeah...nice right?

Lets not forget what happened when the airline I worked for in the early '90's. We voted in a union. The airline began laying off full time union employees and hiring 2 part timers @ half pay and no benefits to replace us. Yeah, that worked out well and the union did nothing to stop the process and keep our jobs. And the pilots union was even worse. They let the company seize the pilot's pensions. Oh, yesterday you HAD $100,000 pension, today it's gone! Thank you for 30 years of wonderful service!

I won't even get into the crooked ass mining unions my father's business has to deal with in the 70's, 80's and early 90's! That was straight up legal extortion!

So NO, I do not favor unions these days. Yes, I do know the history and in the beginning, they were beneficial. NO longer true. Our local school district is asking us to renew an operating levy in May and then wants us to approve an additional HUGE levy in November of this year. OH Hell NO! I love my kids but We are not getting raises and cost of living adjustments. Why should the teachers? I'm not voting yes for anything until they get rid of the retired/rehired double dipping Admin and teachers! And I won't vote for another levy until I get the guarantee that the money goes to the kids. 85% of levy income goes to salaries!!!!! I'm done!

It's nice to know that even the people that have belonged to the unions are as unhappy with their performance as the rest of us. I think we all want the same thing...to be treated fairly for our productivity on the job.