As trade union member, who has found himself flopping around in a
muddy ditch laying conduit on mant occasions, I find it somewhat
puzzling the vitriol I sometimes hear from even other trades people at
how unions demand a certain wage standard for their efforts.
Not extravagent wages....just a wage package with which to raise even
a modest sized family with some level of comfort in this society.

The most puzzling aspect to all this is the silence of these same
union critics when it come to the salaries of say.....money changers.
What do these people do for us...these manipulators of
numbers...these parasites...these
carrion eaters ? These people who so often profit from misery and
collapse.

Our perspective has become so upside down.

Some will call me envious..."class envy".
I don't think that's it. I refuse to think of myself as a serf/slave.
Rather it is these union haters that are so class conscious.....they
believe in the classes, believe that they are of a lower class. They
don't somehow deserve better, but people like these money changers DO
deserve it.

Many of you union haters are stuck with a slave mentality.


******Shareholders in the securities industry are having their worst
year since 2002, losing $74 billion of their equity. That won't
prevent Wall Street from paying record bonuses, totaling almost $38
billion.

That money, split among about 186,000 workers at Goldman Sachs Group
Inc., Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings
Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos., equates to an average of $201,500 per
person, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The five biggest U.S.
securities firms paid $36 billion to employees last year.

The bigger bonus pool derives from a record $9 billion of fees for
arranging acquisitions and $5 billion for underwriting initial public
offerings and sales of junk bonds, the most lucrative securities,
Bloomberg data show

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...efer=worldwide

subject changed to:
OT: While trade union members are called "communists"
was
While trade union members are called "communists"...

On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:52:35 -0800 (PST), GatherNoMoss
wrote:

As trade union member, who has found himself flopping around in a
muddy ditch laying conduit on mant occasions, I find it somewhat
puzzling the vitriol I sometimes hear from even other trades people at
how unions demand a certain wage standard for their efforts.
Not extravagent wages....just a wage package with which to raise even
a modest sized family with some level of comfort in this society.

The most puzzling aspect to all this is the silence of these same
union critics when it come to the salaries of say.....money changers.
What do these people do for us...these manipulators of
numbers...these parasites...these
carrion eaters ? These people who so often profit from misery and
collapse.

Our perspective has become so upside down.
============
If this resonates even a little click on
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...efer=worldwide
to see entire article
=============
Wall Street Plans $38 Billion of Bonuses as Shareholders Lose

By Christine Harper
Enlarge Image/Details

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Shareholders in the securities industry
are having their worst year since 2002, losing $74 billion of
their equity. That won't prevent Wall Street from paying record
bonuses, totaling almost $38 billion.

That money, split among about 186,000 workers at Goldman Sachs
Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos., equates to an average of
$201,500 per person, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The
five biggest U.S. securities firms paid $36 billion to employees
last year.
snip
Goldman's record earnings and gains at Morgan Stanley and Lehman
mean all the New York-based firms will be forced to pay more in a
year when all but Goldman lost more than 20 percent of their
market value, said Charles Geisst, finance professor at Manhattan
College in Riverdale, New York.

``They're all going to have to fall into line,'' said Geisst,
author of ``100 Years of Wall Street.'' ``If Bear and Merrill
plead poverty, they're going to lose all of their good people.''
snip
The industry's bonuses are larger than the gross domestic
products of Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria. The average $201,500
bonus is more than four times the $48,201 median household income
in the U.S. last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau
statistics.
snip
[What down real-estate market????]
Demand for ``super-luxury'' apartments in Manhattan, those priced
at or above $10 million, also was at an all-time high in 2007,
said Pamela Liebman, chief executive officer of the Corcoran
Group real estate brokers. A 12-room Park Avenue apartment placed
on the market this month sold in less than a week for more than
the $12 million asking price, she said.
snip
============

Let them eat cake......


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
============
Merchants have no country.
The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826),
U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.

GatherNoMoss wrote:
As trade union member, who has found himself flopping around in a
muddy ditch laying conduit on mant occasions, I find it somewhat
puzzling the vitriol I sometimes hear from even other trades people at
how unions demand a certain wage standard for their efforts.
Not extravagent wages....just a wage package with which to raise even
a modest sized family with some level of comfort in this society.

The most puzzling aspect to all this is the silence of these same
union critics when it come to the salaries of say.....money changers.
What do these people do for us...these manipulators of
numbers...these parasites...these
carrion eaters ? These people who so often profit from misery and
collapse.

Our perspective has become so upside down.

Some will call me envious..."class envy".
I don't think that's it. I refuse to think of myself as a serf/slave.
Rather it is these union haters that are so class conscious.....they
believe in the classes, believe that they are of a lower class. They
don't somehow deserve better, but people like these money changers DO
deserve it.

Many of you union haters are stuck with a slave mentality.

-- snip --

When unions are asking for a good living wage to do honest work, that's
a good thing.

But all too often, unions don't promote pay for value -- they promote
pay for a warm body, and damnation for the manager or business owner who
wants to retain and reward the really good people. Not only that, if a
worker wants to improve his or her station by rising above the mediocre
a union environment automatically pits him against all his co-workers.

As witness to this ceiling of excellence in union jobs, of the handful
of people I know who have worked in union jobs, about half have been
threatened with violence for working too energetically.

I can work faster than most of my peers, on more technically difficult
material. I like to have that capability reflected in my paycheck,
without having to go through some bureaucracy to make it happen. I
_certainly_ don't want to have to put up with threats (although mine is
a white collar profession -- it would be interesting to see what form
threats would take in that environment).

So put in my vote for unions being a necessary evil -- necessary because
concentrating power in the hands of big-company management leads to evil
behavior, but evil because concentrating power in the hands of the union
leads to the same evil, only pointed in a slightly different direction
and wearing a different mask.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:52:35 -0800 (PST), GatherNoMoss
wrote:

As trade union member, who has found himself flopping around in a
muddy ditch laying conduit on mant occasions, I find it somewhat
puzzling the vitriol I sometimes hear from even other trades people at
how unions demand a certain wage standard for their efforts.
Not extravagent wages....just a wage package with which to raise even
a modest sized family with some level of comfort in this society.


Not to start an argument but where did the money to pay for that
conduit you were laying come from? And if your conduit was part of a
larger project, where did the money to finance that project come from?

You probably had medical insurance. Lets, for argument, say that your
insurance premiums were $1,000 a year. So you work six months and bust
your gizzard and have to have an operation and it costs $2,000 and the
insurance pays for it. Since you've only paid $500 where did the extra
money come from?

If you can answer those questions you can maybe figure out what the
money changers do.

By the way, you answered your own question about the bonuses. The
company received fees for the 14 billion dollars of transactions that
they handled. Not a bit different then you company laying conduit.
They buy the conduit for $1.00, pay you $1.00 to lay it and charge the
customer $3.00.


Bruce-in-Bangkok
(Note:remove underscores
from address for reply)

GatherNoMoss wrote:

The most puzzling aspect to all this is the silence of these same
union critics when it come to the salaries of say.....money changers.
What do these people do for us...these manipulators of
numbers...these parasites...these
carrion eaters ? These people who so often profit from misery and
collapse.

Well I did think it a bit unseemly that there was bonuses all around after
many financial firms took huge losses.

I still don't care for unions but this is apples and oranges.

Wes