Prevailing-Wage laws do not say that the job has to be manned by union labor, just that the labor force has to be paid the prevailing wage. A non-union contractor could win the bid and bring all the scabs they want in to do the job. But as we all know, the scabs cant compete with UNION labor in production or quality of work.

Don’t hate us just because we are the best at what we do. Union jobs get done right, on time, the first time.

One of the few companies surviving this economy is Walmart.

In economic terms, they are anti-cyclic, which means they garner a larger market share during economic slowdowns than during periods of economic growth.

For example, more women buy their clothes from discount stores instead of boutiques because their budget is tighter.

So-called “prevailing wage” laws are horseshit! When spent at all, taxpayer money should be spent at the lowest possible level. There is no benefit to overpaying for work that could be done more efficiently and at a lower cost. This is simply one more example of Congressional Democrats paying off their supporters and expecting our children and grandchildren to foot the bill.

Davis-Bacon wage set by Department of Labor is absolutely tied to the prevailing union wage in the locality of the project. Competent government procurement officers do not award contracts on bids that are exceptionally low compared with other bids/offers, but are required to obtain a detailed bid verification. If construction is so much more difficult than auto building, why is so much of it performed by illiterate illegal aliens? Get real – all this does is artificially raise the cost of projects and ends up as a sop to unions – see also Project Labor Agreements in the latest version of the stimulus bill Granny Botox let us peasants look at.

Look for the Union Label …

It’ll be on the item that costs 2-3 times more than the other ones.

axx, I too worked in a union shop as one of my first job out of high school. My first experience with an inflametory strike meeting convinced me I didn’t belong with the union people and I never worked for a union again.

So-called “prevailing wage” laws are horseshit! When spent at all, taxpayer money should be spent at the lowest possible level.

Obviously you have no business experience. When a job is bid and a contractor comes in with a bid that is much lower than the rest of the company’s bids, they obviously missed something in the bid. If you let them try to do the job, at some point they will realize what they missed and try to get an “extra” to compensate for there loss. Barring that, they will just abandon the job rather than lose there ass. At that point the owner has to re-bid, and find another contractor to take over. This not only cost more but puts the whole job behind schedule.

That or his men are getting paid so little that they obviously have no idea what they are doing. There is a reason the best people get paid the most. They are more qualified, better trained, and actually give a fuck about the job, not just when there are going to get there next crystal fix. When you see a contractor come in with a bunch of mutts that look like they just came from the food bank, or crack house….. they probably did.

Davis-Bacon was a gift to the unions and was primarily a play to ensure that black, non-union labor couldn’t undercut the predominantly white unions.

Obviously you have no business experience.

On the contrary, when a developer client is in need of financing for his project, such as an office building or a strip center, the competence-to-cost ratio of a perspective GC and the bid he submits is at the very heart of the project. The banks and other lenders I deal with have no illusions that a union electrician, for example, is any more competent than a non-union one.

Your “example” might make a great inspirational poster at some union hall, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world of actually getting a job done… and done right.

As for “card check”, that too is horseshit. The only persons who oppose secret ballots are those who are afraid of losing.

There is nothing democratic about Democrats!

Sorry, I’m a professional, I don’t need a union.

Hmmm, white collar…..probably cant replace a light bulb. Oh well, the union mechanics need work also.

Now there is a great comparison to a skilled trade job. Some punk ass tour guide compared to building a nuclear power plant.

it’s called being a “docent”. if you ever find yourself somewhere near a book, perhaps you can look it up. i didn’t claim to be a tradesman, it was simply an example of how unions and attitudes such as yours are killing innovation and stifling the workplace. but thank you for making my point.

What, did you get in trouble for weed waking during your lunch break? Or being you just got out of school you were going to show them how to “main stream” shit. What a doofus.

i don’t now, nor have i ever smoked weed. thank you for projecting that image, however. you might not be aware of this, but when most young people who are driven and have a work ethic start a new job, they often go out of their way to do a good job and go above and beyond. being of a union mentality, i realize that this is probably a totally foreign attitude, and apologize for affronting your tiny worldview.

oh, and i forgot to mention that for all of this, i got to pay as well. union dues. i worked about 4 hours a week to cover them.

money well-spent, actually. it gave me my first taste of just how backwards unions are.

my conversation here with you and the way you’re treating others isn’t doing a hell of a lot to change my mind on the subject either.

Ill bet even a moron like you could install a headlight in a car.

Are you sure old Monkey Butt knows head from tail lights?

After all, why should unionized workforces get preferential treatment over workforces that choose not to unionize?

that’s just rhetorical, right?

there is a well-known attention whore around here who claims that conservatives drop to their knees in front of the rich.

with unions, we know who liberals drop for.

one of the above groups gets things done and provides jobs.

the other obstructs progress and artificially elevates salary levels to well beyond normal levels, among a myriad of other offenses.

(slaps forehead)

Not another union arguing session with Buzz. Someone, PLEASE save us.

Nonsense. example: Toyota and Honda in japan are non union and kicking our auto union ass in quality and quantity

We are talking about construction jobs, skilled labor, igit. Ill bet even a moron like you could install a headlight in a car.

oh, and i forgot to mention that for all of this, i got to pay as well. union dues. i worked about 4 hours a week to cover them.

Dude, you were only making like two bucks an hour? Because here is what the truth is.

Union dues vary among industrial, craft and public sector unions, which are the fastest-growing group of union members. On average, where unions use a fixed structure, dues for industrial unions were $33 a month; for craft unions $31 a month; and for public unions, $23 a month. About 38 percent of industrial and craft unions have variable dues that are related to earnings.

my conversation here with you and the way you’re treating others isn’t doing a hell of a lot to change my mind on the subject either.

I would never try to change yours or any others minds here. That would be a futile exercise.

new Freghtliner(sic) condo for his safe driving from Owner-Operator magazine. 3 million miles, no accidents, and no tickets!!! Go ahead and try and call them a liar,

Notice he didn’t say he didn’t have a accident. And OK ill call them stupid for believing him. I will never believe that someone can drive for six hours a day EVERY day for 30 years and not put a dent in a truck, period, ever.

Unions exist to fix the price and supply of labor at higher than market levels. They harm the economy and inhibit economic growth.

You must stay in the office dont you. I just did a school last winter where the contractor missed that ALL walls were block and not steel studs,

And you missed that? I think you should have stayed in the office and let a real man oversee the project. You probably were sitting on your union ass drinking coffee when this was happening.

Get out of your cube and come see how the real men do a job.

You make this ridiculous and erroneous statement without any knowledge about what I did. Amoung other things I did, I managed people that wouldn’t let some dipshit thing like you described happen. Turns out they were all non-union. One thing for certain is that I would never have you on my staff.

One of the few companies surviving this economy is Walmart.

Non union Walmart. The saviour of the middle class.

God bless Sam Walton

Middle class? the average person makes 13,700 a year at walmart. That is well below the poverty line of 17,000.
Yea, God bless walmart, that’s why the poor slugs that have to work there, because walmart has driven all the Small business out of town and have to work there always look so chipper.

Fuck yea, that’s how it works pal.

True, in the Dem culture of corruption. Since unions are corrupt, it’s a good match.

Funny how 8% of the nation can get not only a President elected, but stack the Senate and the House with a overwhelming majority.

The very definition of tyranny; minority rule, the Dem model of govt.

buzz,

We are all aware of your lack of comprehension skills. My comment was aimed at how Wal-Mart has saved the middle class billions of their own dollars by offering them the products they need and want at a greatly discounted price. And they do this fantastic professional job without caving into the greed of today’s typical union thug mentality.

Wal-Mart employees like their jobs and their pay. They are paid equal to any other retail position in the market. No one is holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to work. We all have a choice where we work. Your union propaganda on Wal-Mart has been debunked long ago.

I live in a small city metro area of half a million people. We have at least four Wal-Marts in this area and thousands of small retail businesses. Your message is all union lies.

One of the few companies surviving this economy is Walmart.

Non union Walmart. The saviour of the middle class.

God bless Sam Walton

imagine how it will be when 30% of the nation is union

yeah. i’ve seen calcutta already. no thanks.

Try to find anything in walmart made in the united states…… good luck.

You’re just a unionist crybaby because people don’t want to buy your expensive bullshit.

Freedom to spend our money where we want it really sucks for you, huh?

Buzz, shut it before you embarrass yourself further. Most any of the people you’re arguing with can exert and work themselves before 9am harder than you do all month. Most do. You have not the slightest clue what you’re talking about.

Union electrician? Most of the ones I’ve dealt with were gutless prissy whiny nancy boys generally. Especially the union chest thumpers. Not to mention retards who could not follow directions if they were stapled to their dicks. I used to get paid $20/hour just to reterminate coax cabling union electricians screwed up all to hell despite the local cable techs showing them proper connector application three to five times a month. I know, I used to teach those dipsticks myself for Comcast, Charter, Cablevision, etc.

It was so much fun to stand there, taking up the time of some overpaid numbnuts so he wasn’t collecting a dime, showing him for the twelfth time in two months, the simple act of using a pre-loaded and pre-adjusted cutting tool your average home do-it-yourselfer figures out by themselves in one minute from reading the back of the package. For cryin’ out loud, it’s not like I’m teaching you doofuses about signal reflections and dielectric compression effects much less quadrature amplitude modulation. I expect someone at least of the intelligence of the average customer to understand that. And they do. I had to teach them the technical readout pages for their digital cable boxes and what all of it meant and they learned in five minutes. Why can’t union electricians use something no more complicated than a potato peeler right to save their lives?

I never ever wondered why the dumbasses were always union. The non-union guys actually knew what work was, humped it for a living, used their brains all day. They had no intimidating union negotiators and agents to bully and frighten people into hiring them. They had to win their employment and income the whole way through and they were absolutely never the stupid ones.

Of course, doing time as a machinist (like my father) and carpenter (like my grandfather) and dealing with union morons did help open my eyes early on as if the first two jobs I held that weren’t on a farm or in sales at sixteen weren’t enough being union retail jobs. Unions were SOOOOOO effective that we made minimum wage to start and got a really big (that was sarcasm) raise to 30 cents more after ninety days IF the union decided to take us on. If they didn’t, because it was a closed shop, the store was obliged to cut that person.

I quit and went to a non-union department store where I got double minimum wage just for walking through the door. Told my dad, and he spent about five hours going on about the machinists’ union and all their chicanery, double-talk, backstabbing. You don’t even want to know about all the teachers I befriended over the years who had nothing good to say about the teachers’ union and the scummy dirty way they felt about being part of it all.

Dirtbags like you Buzz, dishonor the real downtrodden hard working people who had no other choice but to unionize AT THAT TIME. The laws are different now, and the union need, like that of many temporary social constructs, is passing fast, and those of you who keep seizing on it, harping on it, expose yourselves more and more as wanting pay you cannot possibly justify in any economy.

I can justify a CCDP making $86,000/yr. based on the customers he makes happy by making their network needs solvable. I can’t think of a single way to justify an electrician making $60,000/yr. who does LESS work than the non-union guy down the street who makes $70,000/yr. because he doesn’t rest on someone else making it secure and cushy for him but goes out and wins the business rightly. Like the non-union guy down the street from me who bought a second house as a rental property. Did I mention he’s an immigrant?