Yellow Freight Bankruptcy

[JohnnyO]

Executive bonuses.

Or higher cost of diesel fuel.

Unions are not the same organizations we legitimately needed back in the 20's - 50's. The have become to politically leveraged and the bosses way too rich off the backs of their members in recent times.

Only 7% of the private sector workforce is unionized. Over 50% of the government workforce is unionized. The government must be a horrible place to work.

 

[JohnnyO]

That's I've heard said in more than one conversation,
"We wanted cheap, we got cheap"

China stole most everything they got from us

I've mentioned this before, Douglas MacArthur wanted to take China out after the Korean war, they were our enemy then and still are and he had the plans and the solders there to do it Our wimps in congress said no, and we've been suffering the consequences since
They were behind each war we had including Korea and Viet Nam. They are also working now to remove the dollar from the gold standard, which will leave us totally crippled.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in recent years Richard Nixon has moved higher on my list of worst Presidents.

 

[Fast Eddie]

Food for thought; the 1959 steel strike.

"In the long run, the strike devastated the American steel industry. More than 85 percent of U.S. steel production had been shut down for almost four months. Hungry for steel, American industries began importing steel from foreign sources. Steel imports had been negligible prior to 1959. But during the strike, basic U.S. industries found Japanese and Korean steel to be less costly than American steel even after accounting for importation costs. The sudden shift toward imported steel set in motion a series of events, which led to the gradual decline of the American steel industry. " Wikipedia quoted.

As Pogo sagely observed, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

And in the words of another, 'he who doesn't heed the lessons of history is doomed to repeat it.' [paraphrased]

 

[Fast Eddie]

That's I've heard said in more than one conversation,
"We wanted cheap, we got cheap"

China stole most everything they got from us

I've mentioned this before, Douglas MacArthur wanted to take China out after the Korean war, they were our enemy then and still are and he had the plans and the solders there to do it Our wimps in congress said no, and we've been suffering the consequences since
They were behind each war we had including Korea and Viet Nam. They are also working now to remove the dollar from the gold standard, which will leave us totally crippled.

I believe they accomplished that. The problem was constantly balancing the budget against the value of gold, which in turn, determined the value of the dollar and reigned in spending. Congress thought it was becoming too much work to be held accountable and they ditched it.

Let's try to agree on something: the people in DC don't serve the people of the United States anymore. They go there to enrich and serve themselves: I don't care which side of the aisle you're on. They're all to blame in this.

You can form your own opinion here. I, personally, think it was sad mistake and is what was needed to keep government spending in check.

 

[Fast Eddie]

Or higher cost of diesel fuel.


Only 7% of the private sector workforce is unionized. Over 50% of the government workforce is unionized. The government must be a horrible place to work.

That's a numbers game based on percentage of total population and sample count?

 

[19Walt93]

Hindsight is 20/20 but in recent years Richard Nixon has moved higher on my list of worst Presidents.

He got us out of Viet Nam after Kennedy got us in and Johnson buried us, so he gets a point for that. But if he hadn't opened the door to trade with China they'd be a lot less dangerous. Henry Friggin Kissinger figured trade would encourage them to move toward democracy, obviously he was wrong.

 

[JohnnyO]

That's a numbers game based on percentage of total population and sample count?

Percentage of employees.
In 1950 the percentage of unionized private sector workers was almost 50%.
Government employees were not allowed to unionize until JFK signed an executive order in 1962 or 1963.
Since 1980 union leadership has mostly given up on organizing the private sector workforce in favor of the low hanging fruit of government employees.

 

[Fast Eddie]

Percentage of employees.
In 1950 the percentage of unionized private sector workers was almost 50%.
Government employees were not allowed to unionize until JFK signed an executive order in 1962 or 1963.
Since 1980 union leadership has mostly given up on organizing the private sector workforce in favor of the low hanging fruit of government employees.

Interesting. I'll look that up when I get a chance with interest. With the same token, I similarly believe it's due to the destruction of jobs in the blue collar sector that were sent overseas. White collar jobs aren't usually unionized, except as you point out in the government. Perhaps, one of the the reasons government spending has become completely out of control.

It's not just the government officials we elect to office that draw in union members but the non-elected (and in my mind's eye corrupt) agencies it supports (i.e DOJ, EPA, FBI, etc, etc, etc).

I immediatley found these two sources. One politically bias, another not so much:
Explaining the erosion of private-sector unions: How corporate practices and legal changes have undercut the ability of workers to organize and bargain | Economic Policy Institute (epi.org)
Union Members - 2022 (bls.gov)

Unbiased search: private sector unionization over the years in america - Google Search

 

[sgtsandman]

Or higher cost of diesel fuel.


Only 7% of the private sector workforce is unionized. Over 50% of the government workforce is unionized. The government must be a horrible place to work.

I can’t speak for local and state workers but I can for federal workers, at least the ones who work for the DoD and the military.

The bureaucrats and officers who run the DoD and the military would indeed run roughshod right over the civilian work force if they could. Of course both answer to the man in the White House and those policies change with every administration.

Generally speaking, regardless of party affiliation, have tried to use and abuse the civilian workforce like they can with the military. Slowly but surely the politicians and the bureaucracy has eroded things as time has gone on. In the aircraft maintenance sector, in many ways it is a hostile work environment. Everything is over controlled, regulated, and kept under the leadership’s thumb.

That is why I said before that the union has been able to somewhat curtail that but it is a fight that is slowly being lost.

I’ve worked worse places, like for what was US Airways but I’ve also worked for better.

It used to be a decent place to work with good pay and decent benefits. That has changed a lot over the decades both on the military and civilian side. Recruiting and retention numbers are reflecting that and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

And like I also said before, it hasn’t been just one political party. Both have have had negative effects over the years starting with Bush senior. Reagan was already out when I got in. So I can’t say if things got better, worse, or there was no change under his administration.

 

[JohnnyO]

Interesting. I'll look that up when I get a chance with interest. With the same token, I similarly believe it's due to the destruction of jobs in the blue collar sector that were sent overseas. White collar jobs aren't usually unionized, except as you point out in the government. Perhaps, one of the the reasons government spending has become completely out of control.

It's not just the government officials we elect to office that draw in union members but the non-elected (and in my mind's eye corrupt) agencies it supports (i.e DOJ, EPA, FBI, etc, etc, etc).

I immediatley found these two sources. One politically bias, another not so much:
Explaining the erosion of private-sector unions: How corporate practices and legal changes have undercut the ability of workers to organize and bargain | Economic Policy Institute (epi.org)
Union Members - 2022 (bls.gov)

Unbiased search: private sector unionization over the years in america - Google Search

Couple things....
1. Blue-collar union jobs (that Democrats pretend to support) have been largely chased out of the country. For the last 40 years anytime the Democrats had to choose between trade unions and the Greenies, they sided with the Greenies every time.
2. Unions successfully lobbied the government to regulate things that used to be the unions' job. This took the heavy lifting off the unions but then many workers don't see a need to join a union.
3. There is a practical limit to how much money a private sector business can pay its employees. I used to own a small business and have personal experience with this. I was limited to how much I could pay my employees (and myself) by how much my customers would pay me. Makes for a lot of work at the negotiating table for both sides.
4. There is no practical limit for paying govt employees. The unions donate work and money to elect politicians who will give them what they want and there is no real opposition. State and local governments will simply raise taxes and the Federal government can simply print more money. Hence, low-hanging fruit.

Also when I was a young college student I spent a summer working in a steel mill so I have personal experience with what @sgtsandman mentioned. When I got back to college my grades were a lot better the next year. Paid well but I didn't want to do that the rest of my life. Which turned out to be an unfounded fear because within five years most of the steel jobs in western PA disappeared.
BTW, I have a degree in economics, an MBA, taught macro economics, micro economics, marketing, and labor-management relations on a part-time basis at different colleges for 20 years, have a partial writing credit for a college economics textbook, and ran my own small business for 21 years writing real paychecks for real people and real checks to the government for real taxes every month and every quarter. I describe myself as a highly-educated redneck.

 

[Bill]

Couple things....
1. Blue-collar union jobs (that Democrats pretend to support) have been largely chased out of the country. For the last 40 years anytime the Democrats had to choose between trade unions and the Greenies, they sided with the Greenies every time.

It's much more complex than that. Things like imports from Japan where reinvestment in tooling to keep technology updated is more important than short-term quarterly profits. While American electronic manufacturers continued to make table top radios with five vacuum tubes in them the Japanese streamlines manufacturing of solid-state radios the could be put in your pocket. While American car manufacturers insisted upon doing little more than changing grills and bumpers on the same vehicles from year to year for marketing purposes and not improving on all the annoyances that came along a few years later because they counted on the annoyance of high maintenance to persuade people to buy another vehicle, the Japanese took a different approach in that at some point when the vehicle is old the person who bought it would buy another one from them because it had few problems over the years. Then the increases in oil prices in the 70s came along and the American car manufacturers had very little to offer for fuel efficient vehicles. The imports from Japan filled that gap. The American manufacturers responded by doing things like taking an import made by Mitsubishi and calling it a Dodge Colt. Then there were trade agreements which resulted in dumping products on the American market. This resulted in a variety of manufacturing casualties wherein imported products where sold for less than the cost of raw materials. This is why you seldom see tools made in the US and why you can't buy brake discs made in the US or Canada. The competition simply put those companies into bankruptcy proceeding and were eventually picked up the vulture capitalist investment groups that then sold the tooling to make those parts to China so they didn't have to do much more than collect royalties on Chinese manufactured junk that used their name.

2. Unions successfully lobbied the government to regulate things that used to be the unions' job. This took the heavy lifting off the unions but then many workers don't see a need to join a union.

What things? Do you mean minimum wage, the requirement that employers allow people to use the restroom, get a drink of water, have a unpaid lunch break long enough to get something to eat, and have working conditions that aren't so hot that they kill people? These are not unreasonable expectations.

3. There is a practical limit to how much money a private sector business can pay its employees. I used to own a small business and have personal experience with this. I was limited to how much I could pay my employees (and myself) by how much my customers would pay me. Makes for a lot of work at the negotiating table for both sides.
4. There is no practical limit for paying govt employees. The unions donate work and money to elect politicians who will give them what they want and there is no real opposition. State and local governments will simply raise taxes and the Federal government can simply print more money. Hence, low-hanging fruit.

There's always a limit to any kind of expense. The issue is what is reasonable and what isn't reasonable depends on a lot of factors. It's not reasonable to expect a fast food worker to be paid $30 an hour. It's also not reasonable to expect the same employee to work for $3.00 an hour because the employer's business model doesn't generate enough revenue to pay employees. At that point the employer needs to take a look at their business model and figure out if they need to relocate because the rent is too high, the location isn't good, or just maybe it could be something like there just isn't enough demand to sustain a VCR repair shop anymore because people are watching videos on cell phones now.

There's also a limit to paying government employees. Each department is budgeted a certain amount of money and quite often each department has to justify their budget line by line. Also, the government doesn't run off of printed money. That's done for the banking sector and increase money availability. They might send everyone a check for $500. That's done more to persuade the public's political opinions and to get people to spend money on stuff they don't need. And believe it or not, state and local governments are accountable to the voters. The state legislature can pass tax increases, but the voters can rescind those taxes through a referendum. The issue here is that, unfortunately, most Americans don't understand a thing about civics, and are unaware of their ability to show politicians who should be in control and instead go out and protest and counter protest, which accomplishes nothing.

 

[rusty ol ranger]

It's much more complex than that. Things like imports from Japan where reinvestment in tooling to keep technology updated is more important than short-term quarterly profits. While American electronic manufacturers continued to make table top radios with five vacuum tubes in them the Japanese streamlines manufacturing of solid-state radios the could be put in your pocket. While American car manufacturers insisted upon doing little more than changing grills and bumpers on the same vehicles from year to year for marketing purposes and not improving on all the annoyances that came along a few years later because they counted on the annoyance of high maintenance to persuade people to buy another vehicle, the Japanese took a different approach in that at some point when the vehicle is old the person who bought it would buy another one from them because it had few problems over the years. Then the increases in oil prices in the 70s came along and the American car manufacturers had very little to offer for fuel efficient vehicles. The imports from Japan filled that gap. The American manufacturers responded by doing things like taking an import made by Mitsubishi and calling it a Dodge Colt. Then there were trade agreements which resulted in dumping products on the American market. This resulted in a variety of manufacturing casualties wherein imported products where sold for less than the cost of raw materials. This is why you seldom see tools made in the US and why you can't buy brake discs made in the US or Canada. The competition simply put those companies into bankruptcy proceeding and were eventually picked up the vulture capitalist investment groups that then sold the tooling to make those parts to China so they didn't have to do much more than collect royalties on Chinese manufactured junk that used their name.



.

Difference is that table top tube radio built in 1961 will still be functioning 50 years later.

Allowing massive floods of asian imports have done nothing but flood the market with cheap consumer goods...american companies could either cut quality, cut wages, or fold...and thats what many of them did.

So now instead of going to the store, buying something, and expecting more then 2 or 3 years from it is absurd...regardless of cost.

Asian stuff is subpar quality...period. Look at the quality of all the shitty sweatshop autoparts thats flooded the market the past 5 or 6 years.

Yes japanese cars back then could of been considered more reliable then their american counterparts...but that was due to unions and union workers not giving a shit. The cars themselves were fine had they been assembled by a caring workforce.

Not to mention japanese vehicles lack robustness. Go compare an 85 nissan/datsun whatever they were then to an 85 ranger...or those dually "1ton" toyota chassis cabs that uhaul and motorhomes were built on, and compare that to an american truck of the time.

Allowing basically un checked asian imports into this country has done nothing but kill jobs, fill everyones house with cheap plastic shit that needs replaced every 3 years, and allowed the uprise of china

 

[JohnnyO]

It's much more complex than that. Things like imports from Japan where reinvestment in tooling to keep technology updated is more important than short-term quarterly profits. While American electronic manufacturers continued to make table top radios with five vacuum tubes in them the Japanese streamlines manufacturing of solid-state radios the could be put in your pocket. While American car manufacturers insisted upon doing little more than changing grills and bumpers on the same vehicles from year to year for marketing purposes and not improving on all the annoyances that came along a few years later because they counted on the annoyance of high maintenance to persuade people to buy another vehicle, the Japanese took a different approach in that at some point when the vehicle is old the person who bought it would buy another one from them because it had few problems over the years. Then the increases in oil prices in the 70s came along and the American car manufacturers had very little to offer for fuel efficient vehicles. The imports from Japan filled that gap. The American manufacturers responded by doing things like taking an import made by Mitsubishi and calling it a Dodge Colt. Then there were trade agreements which resulted in dumping products on the American market. This resulted in a variety of manufacturing casualties wherein imported products where sold for less than the cost of raw materials. This is why you seldom see tools made in the US and why you can't buy brake discs made in the US or Canada. The competition simply put those companies into bankruptcy proceeding and were eventually picked up the vulture capitalist investment groups that then sold the tooling to make those parts to China so they didn't have to do much more than collect royalties on Chinese manufactured junk that used their name.

Agree, I wasn't going to write a term paper about it. Where me and sgtsandman live, the blame for evaporation of the steel industry, loss of hundreds of thousands of good paying middle-class union jobs, and the loss of literally one-third of our population, can be spread equally between management, labor, and government regulations on labor, trade, and environment.

What things? Do you mean minimum wage, the requirement that employers allow people to use the restroom, get a drink of water, have a unpaid lunch break long enough to get something to eat, and have working conditions that aren't so hot that they kill people? These are not unreasonable expectations.

Pretty much everything covered by OSHA, EEOC, and ObamaCare used to be done by collective bargaining. The workplace is so regulated by the government that there isn't much need for a union.

There's also a limit to paying government employees. Each department is budgeted a certain amount of money and quite often each department has to justify their budget line by line. Also, the government doesn't run off of printed money. That's done for the banking sector and increase money availability. They might send everyone a check for $500. That's done more to persuade the public's political opinions and to get people to spend money on stuff they don't need. And believe it or not, state and local governments are accountable to the voters. The state legislature can pass tax increases, but the voters can rescind those taxes through a referendum. The issue here is that, unfortunately, most Americans don't understand a thing about civics, and are unaware of their ability to show politicians who should be in control and instead go out and protest and counter protest, which accomplishes nothing.

Locally in the Democrat primaries, the only election of any consequence, the politicians are all in a race to promise the most for the city and county workers unions to get their support. I forget what state it was, but an incumbent governor was speaking to a public employee union and was caught on video saying "I'm going to (state capitol) to fight for YOU!" Umm, okay, but at contract time the union will be negotiating with you, the governor. So who are you fighting with? A former mayor of Pittsburgh should have gone to jail for cutting a sweetheart deal with the firefighters' union in exchange for their support. What he did was a RICO violation. But I live in one of the more corrupt states in the nation so maybe my opinion is skewed.

 

[Blmpkn]

Asian stuff is subpar quality...period. Look at the quality of all the shitty sweatshop autoparts thats flooded the market the past 5 or 6 years.

No.... SHITTY Asian stuff sucks. Some of the world's highest quality goods come from asia..

 

[sgtsandman]

No.... SHITTY Asian stuff sucks. Some of the world's highest quality goods come from asia..

Mostly Japan but Korea has gotten a lot better as far as vehicles go. The Philippeans has been pretty decent for rifle scopes, though Japan is better.