On Nov 14, 6:59*am, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
*"Robert Green" wrote:

money in the open that they used to demand under the table. *It's why CEOs
can get away with $20M compensation packages (thank you, Kurt - I no longer
write "salary")

* * You have learned your lessons well, Grasshopper (g).

and why unions ended up being run by guys with diamond

pinkie rings. *I did see an interesting item one. *It claimed that Teamster
investments never lost a dime until Jimmy Hoffa was booted out. *The Federal
Trustees that stepped in basically eviscerated the pension funds with bad
investments.

* *I got problems with that, from the Vegas experience alone. I think a
lot of that was creative bookkeeping on the part of Hoffa and Pinkie
ring types. (Not that the the Feds did not make it worse).



I think there's an important lesson here. *Movements like the labor movement
that did a lot of good for a lot of people eventually get crusty like old
galvanized pipes running hard water with slow leaks. *Sometimes they are
best rebuilt from the ground up. *There's no doubt that too many people were
promised too many benefits without any planning for how they would be paid
for. *The focus of that fight will doubtless be the municipal and county
worker unions that secured those concessions without securing financing..

* I really don't put a lot of the blame for that on the unions. GM's
collapse, for example, was largely bad management. But it was also
largely bad management of the interaction with the unions.


That seems to be the issue all over the place. Business caved into
all the union demands during the good times but then all the bills
came due and those demands that seemed reasonable when times were good
could no longer be met and the unions have steadfastly refused to
recognize the difference. The one single element most often missed by
unions is that virtually every company and organization faces
competition from other companies and organizations for their
business. Even states and cities are starting to realize this fact,
everyone except the unions it seems. The day when companies could
freely raise their prices to make up for increased union demands has
ended some time back. The same is occuring on the government front
and people are not going to accept higher taxes to support unions that
are asking for higher and higher pensions with more and more
benefits....all the while giving less and less service.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz