Dan Wasserman of The Boston Globe is one of America's most refreshing editorial cartoonists. His visual skits - sharp, sly, humorous and memorable, choreographed in one to six frames - show no mercy.
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Caricatures by Kerry Waghorn by Kerry Waghorn
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Comments (15) (Please sign in to comment)
Michyle Glen said, 6 months ago
LOL ahh Did specific demands frighten the Management.
Better get used to it.
echoraven said, 6 months ago
@Michyle Glen
They’ll just continue to outsource.
coraryan
said, 6 months ago
Perhaps they don’t want to be unionized – I never saw any sense in unions myself, never belonged to one, never wanted to. Waste of money. They only protect the incompetant and lazy workers.
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@coraryan
A guy asked me the other day why there was a NAACP but no NAAWP.
I told that there were, in fact, many NAAWPs but that they were known by a different name; Labor Unions!
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Of course his head exploded.
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You never belonged to a union but that doesn’t mean you didn’t benefit from the advancements for working people that they made.
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But in typical “Me Generation” form you don’t see the need to pay for anything that someone else is stupid enough to do for you.
Libertarian1 said, 6 months ago
@Dredpiraterobt$
You are indeed correct. In the 30’s there was a definite need for unions. Now they make up 7% of the private work force and are outmoded. Their goal is to screw the other 93%. Teacher strikes, transportation strikes, newspaper stikes etc. Just who do you think gets harmed. Clue- not the 1%. Unions don’t care. As long as they get theirs damn the 93%.
Why are so many jobs shipped overseas? We are no longer a manufacturing economy. We are a service economy. And as you learn in Econ 101 the law of supply and demand takes over. Many many more willing workers than jobs available. Why that occurred is the subject of a different debate.
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@Libertarian1
Aside from the fact that most of what you consider to be “factual” in your rant is bologna… Your conclusions are just as wrong.
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We DO need unions today. The Management side of the equation is forcing more and more of the risk down onto the worker while giving him none of the reward for taking on that risk.
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Example: Why are Health Care Insurance Premiums going up so much? Answer because there is no "Free Market’ in the healthcare industry. The consumer has no way to shop price. The consumer has no collective bargaining unit that can stand up to the legal departments of their employer or their insurer. The Consumer has been divided and conquered.
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Increases in costs are just passed down to the path of least resistance, the hapless consumer. When was the last time a Doctor took a cut in pay? How about the rest of us? and not only are we getting less pay, our pay is being cut into by the rise in our share of the insurance plan payments (which means how much we’re paying the providers and the management of the insurance companies!
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How is it the Union’s goal to screw the “other 93%”? When you bid on a contract, everybody has to bid including the costs of benefits that the unions provide it’s members.
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Union Joe has a pension plan, and a healthcare plan and a disability plan. Freelance Pete doesn’t provide those benefits for his workers, so he could bid the job lower, because he doesn’t really care if his worker gets disabled, not his problem. He doesn’t care if his worker retires as a ward of the state, not his problem.
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Health care is a responsibility of the breadwinner to provide for his family! Not an option!
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If Freelance Pete and Union Joe compete on the level playing field, sometime Pete wins and sometimes Joe wins. Nobody is “screwing” anybody.
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Understand it Libertarian1, the corporations are trying to strip you of every shred of the “safety net,” and what do you think they’re going to say then? “You need to take less! Or there is no job!” And what are you going to say? You’re going to say “Well at least I have a job!” because without it you are out on the street! Dead in a month of starvation!
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Try reading “The Grapes of Wrath” and figure out whether you are a Joad or a member of the Co-op. If you’re not on the co-op board right now, you never will be!
1opinion said, 6 months ago
@coraryan
coraryan said, “They only protect the incompetant and lazy workers.”
Does that include police, fire(wo)men, etc…
I have know of some unions that tried to hang on even after they were no longer necessary. (movie theatre projectionist union picketed theatres that started using automated equipment and xenon bulbs which replaced changing reels every 20 min. and carbon arc lamphouses.)
Libertarian1 said, 6 months ago
@Dredpiraterobt$
Don’t understand your logic. No competition in health care insurance premiums? As a libertarian that is one of the battles we have been fighting for years. We believe in more and m,ore competition. Health care premiums and right to work laws. But what does that have to do with unions? Just because company A is unionized doesn’t mean there will be meaningful competition in insurance premiums. We should be able to buy insurance from any state. Nothing to do with unions.
I personally took a massive pay cut the day Medicare was passed. I realized that when I treated a senior partner of a major NYC law firm. He billed at $750/hour. I got paid $32 for 15 minutes.
Closed jobs are not a competitive playing field. Prevailing wages are not a prevailing playing fiels.
ronald rini
said, 6 months ago
When you can tell me why at schools which are mostly union employees drive toyotas and hondas that are non union made we should care what they say and if you go to the rallies and when most of the people there wear made in USA clothes I will jump in and support them.(and most of the stuff in thier home is made in the USA) Till then they are a bunch of kettles calling the pot black
Tigger
said, 6 months ago
@Dredpiraterobt$
The Union cost all Hostess Employees their jobs.
The Union cost the Madison Tennessee Peterbilt Plant their Jobs.
The Union cost the Triumph Aerostructures members pay to by cut by 1/2.
Now tell us how great Unions are
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@Libertarian1
I didn’t want to bring up the Libertarian thing, and I don’t have the time right this second, but…If you have been fighting for free markets in medical industry for years how can you not see that it doesn’t exist?
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The free market isn’t the individual against the corporation because there is no way for the individual to win (there’s a reason David and Goliath’s story made the Old Testament, because that’s about how often David wins those battles!) Even Adam Smith said this about the concept of free markets.
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I’m pressed for time, but I see that your understanding of my post is quite tangled (could be the way I write) and I promise I’ll take to time to untangle it (we may still disagree, but at least we’ll understand what we’re disagreeing about.)
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@ronald rini
Pots and kettles: So if you are French you can only eat French bread?
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That’s how much sense your rant makes.
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@Tigger
I’ll take a look at your examples and get back to you.
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But I wouldn’t thik that the examples will prove what you think they do.
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Nor do I think your examples negate the concept that Unions have been the equivalent to a NAAWP over their existence.
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@Libertarian1
The insurers and the providers are on the same side of the table. There was a time when one’s employer was on the same side of the table as the employee because the employer paid for the insurance. However, the employer has stepped away from the table and just passes the increase onto the employee.
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The employee has no way of fighting for a lower cost. The employee is on his own against e for with no incentive to adjust his business paradigm. How exactly is there supposed to be a “free market” under those conditions?
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This is what is so very wrong with “Libertarianism” it doesn’t recognize the reality of the situation.
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The union itself MAY negotiate for insurance rates (when we were covered by the Teacher’s Union, we had a slightly lowered rate.) If you worked for a company and that company had a strong Union then the union could say to the employer “You can’t pass these insurance costs onto us employees” in which case the employer would have to turn to the insurance company and say “I won’t pay these higher rates”, and the insurance company would have to say to the hospital, “We’re not paying you $70 for an asprin!” To which the hospital would say to the drug company “We’re not paying you $100 for that pill!” which in turn would make the drug company say to Canada “You have to pay more for that pill that we were selling you before, because the US consumer has decided to stop subsidizing your healthcare!”
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Why are we subsidizing Canada’s healthcare? Because their health care system is collectively bargained for. Ours isn’t and so the Pharma co.s overcharge US citizens instead of pricing evenly around the globe!
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Here’s some reality, if the rest of the world is collectively bargaining and we’re “Libertarian” we’re going to get the smelly end of the stick EVERY TIME! (and they are and we are and we are!)
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Buying insurance in any state… No thank you! I live in NYS and in NYS (ask anyone who sells insurance) the laws are much tougher. And when Executive Life of California failed, Executive life of NY was “sold” to Met Life of NY and every policy holder that held was made whole (not that they continued to get 13%, but they got their money + 3% interest back) outside of NYS, they lost 100% by the close of business, day one!
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If it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep my own state insurance pool. The rest of you guys are on your own.
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As to your comments about the “level Playing Field” I get the feeling that you don’t understand the bidding process. You might want to look into it.
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We tried “Libertarianism”; Twice, no less! Once before the 20th century and once at the end of the 20th century. The first time it resulted in a stagnant world where the reward was great for the lottery winners who made it and the reward for not making it was a painful life and probably an early, gruesome death.
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Then came the busting of the trusts and unionization of the labor force and the rise of the middle class (which drove the wealth of the robber barrons stratospheric!). Then came Ms. Rand and her puppy dog Alan Greenspan, who practiced Libertarianism until it nearly killed us several times. Then his legacy, the economic crash of 2007. (He was not Fed Chairman at the time, but those chickens that became Roosters were his!)
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But you still haven’t commented on how the unions are 7% trying to screw the 93%.
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You made the claim, now please have the courtesy to back it up.
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Thank you.
Dredpiraterobt$ said, 6 months ago
@Tigger
“The Nashville Business Journal quotes a Peterbilt official as saying the plant’s permanent closure is due to falling demand for new trucks and not because of labor problems.”
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“However, a UAW official says the union believes the company is moving the work to Denton, which is a nonunion plant.”
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So you agree with the Union guy AND the Management guy!
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Peterbuilt (they make Paccars) locked out workers in June of 2008. Remember what the world was like in 2008? This is a fail for you Tigger.
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Aerostructures was a company savaged by the Carlyle Group. With players like these and with the record of venture capitalists leveraging a company and then trying to force the cost of paying for the leverage on the employees… I’d say you need to do a whole lot more than just parroting the line to convince a non partisan observer that it is labors fault.
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Hostess; there is no point in even bringing Hostess up. the management of Hostess never wanted to be in the bakery business in the first place. Hostess was a corporate raid, plain and simple. The union was “the Falling Man” in that it was either die in the fires of Hostess going up in flames or leap to a certain death, and then to be blamed for causing Hostesses death.
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So your three examples are bogus.
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And they don’t address all that has come to the advantage of workers everywhere.
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I side with labor! I side with the working man! Why don’t you?