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Return to It's Free-Speech Weekend (locked) How come Nancy Pelosi's businesses are all non-union?
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Unions are great watch-dogs for ensuring member rights are maintained. There are organisations, however (as I am sure you and other posters are fully aware) which do treat their employees with respect, empower them and engage them - keys which are vital to ensuring teamwork is accomplished and folks have an opportunity to advance within their fields.
What is a non-union environment meant to epitomise here?
Just like the Republican party, the Democratic party is a party of people with divergent interests. Pelosi represents one wing of the Democratic party, which really has little in common with the Scranton/Jim Webb wing of the Democratic party.
Not entirely. I just arbitrated for one against an employer whose managers seriously and grossly compromised the health, safety and well-being of its employees. Union:s only desire was to have action taken on the issues. Court decided in favour.
Some (many? most?) have other motives for forming their organisaitions and encouraging strength in numbers, which is why I can appreciate your statement against such kinds.
Instead of "maintained", I would substitute "established". It is not management's mandate to establish workers' rights (some do, some don't). It is, however, the union's mandate to establish a codification of workers' 'rights' (not in the narrow Constitutional sense, but a broader, 'reasonable expectations' sense) Once established these 'rights' are everyone's responsibility to 'maintain'. Last edited by Marlow on Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Workers don't vote to form a union willy-nilly. There are downsides to them, the most obvious of which is paying dues, but it also creates work rules that can get a bit weird. Bottom line, mistrust of management has to be at a relatively high level for a majority of workers. As for unions that have been in place for generations...well, a vote to certify a different union every 20-30 years wouldn't be a bad idea. (And this comes from a guy who first walked a picket line when I was 7 years old, with my father, and been a loyal union member for 14 years.)
If Pelosi's companies had a habit of taking advantage of their workers and used intimidation to influence a union vote, you can bet sites like DailyKos would let people know about it. I see nothing wrong with companies that treat employees well enough that they don't think a union is warranted.
Whatever you're smoking, it's illegal.
Sorry, malmo, I think you're going to find yourself outnumbered on this issue. I've always been a management guy myself, but my parents were union members, and I've always believed that unions, in general, have been a very positive force in our nation's economic history.
I agree with Mighty. In the primaries, when Obama started to stray to far to the right, like with his FISA vote, leftwing media outlets like Moveon.org, the DailyKos and the Huffington Post pounced on him until he got back in line.
Ditto - left-wing blogsters LOVE to do the dirty laundry thing and then take credit for 'putting things in line again'.
So was the steam engine, cotton gin, and internal combustion engine. Unions have no place in a modern industrial society, in fact, they have a negative impact on productivity wherever their suffocating influence exists today - in government, big education-industrial-complex, and the auto industry, for example.
You are painting with too broad of a brush. I was in a union when I worked as a handler of (low-level) radioactive material. The union's main concern was for safety and as long management met the safety regulations, there was little problem. The stereotype of "only being allowed to do one thing in certain ways" certainly did not apply, either. Also, my father-in-law was the owner of a company that made trailers for the military and he ENCOURAGED the unions to come in. He said that since the the goverment worked on a fixed contractual price, it helped to have a fixed and well-defined work structure to bid from. It also allowed an easier estimate of scheduling as well. Yes, there are plenty of union abuses, but I've NEVER worked in a place where there were no management abuses.
Amen! 
How I saved the organisation named above from further damage and risk to its productivity after the arbitration (and have others across EMEA as well)?
After meeting with the Trade Unions to discuss their observations and dissatisfactions - all management-related, empowered line managers with opportunities to better affect merit pay bonuses and promotions; kept them involved in the design and communication of the reward system which made them feel like they had more control over their employees and their development. Surprisingly, very few large organisations do this, resulting in either mis-management, favouritism or bad management. No only did I help the managers do their jobs more effectively, I ensured the organisation both supported and rewarded good people management behaviours, thus eliminating a barrier to their future success. Employees experience there is/was partly defined by their experience with line manager engagement and the HR policies in place. Helped line managers make the experiences more positive, but had to do it from the executive leadership group down. Accountability was shared from very top leadership group down to the guy spinning the wheels, getting his knee pads dirty and punching in/out the time clock. Employees were thankful for the Union:s "concern" and their continued involvement in that process.
Malmo apparently doesn't know what the left-wing bloggers' position in the '06 Connecticut Senate race were, or their current positions on the so-called "Blue Dogs" of the house. US left-wingers, myself included, do not value party loyalty if it comes at the expense of policy. Malmo like to throw bombs and start arguments, which is great from my perspective because it forces me to think about what I believe and why.
I think there's a web-term for that (not that I think malmo is one) He just likes to 'stir the pot'. 
The hypocrisy? Go figure.... I'm not blasting unions in principle, I'm blasting them in practice. There's a big difference there.
I'd say malmo is a hell of a lot more principled than Pelosi. She's a traitor to her country for not having allowed impeachment procedures to proceed. She's worse than a mouthful of nasty blue cheese or other stinky fromages.
Please tell us how you really feel. 
Wow, you're ................... ......... out there... 
Wow, who rattled your cage today? Bush is a criminal and Pelosi a traitor? That's some country we have down here, isn't it? 
Nice trolling, malmo. Start a thread trashing Pelosi for (supposedly) not using union workers, then spend the rest of the time trashing unions. So according to your initial stance, Pelosi is on your anti-union side, but somehow that is a problem for you. Nice way to flip-flop all over the issues. . . .
malmo at his best. Throwing out accusations with no links or evidence. Then when he gets cornered he changes the subject.
I thought the irony of the Pelosi union-busting was obvious here?
Re: How come Nancy Pelosi's businesses are all non-union?
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gotta go with malmo here you americans have never had a situation where unions brought down a govt in limey, we endured that horrendous experience in '79 ruling labour party ( = ~ democrats ) had gained power in '74 on a small ( ? coalition ) majority the party was founded by/for the "workers" ( = unions ) & more-or-less was funded by the unions in '79 there were terrible disputes on public workers pay/conditions/yada & the unions behind the workers eventually declared the "3 day week" - this meant virtually all public workers ( transport/refuse/etc ) worked only 3 days/5 working days, meaning refuse piled up on the streets & army was called in to clear it up ! remember, this isn't banana republic, this is limey ! the govt was impotent - it was going up against the unions who founded/funded/ran it ! the crisis meant "vote of confidence" in parliament govt lost & election was called labour party ( = ~ democrats ) lost & maggie thatcher ( = republican ) came in she had no shackles of union-kowtowing she crushed them ushered in were almost 13y of almost continuous great prosperity for the sceptered isle...
Air Traffic Controllers attempted to stop air travel in 1981....I think they learned their lesson http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... le&id=5236
That's exactly the example I was thinking of. Also, when the American Airlines Pilots' Union declared a strike in 1997, Bill Clinton ordered them back to work. Furthermore, unions in this country are just one of many interest groups in the Democratic coalition, along with Blacks, Trial Lawyers, Feminists, Environmentalists, Gays, etc.
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