Are unions really necessary anymore?

[Babel-17]

Apologies for resurrecting this ancient thread. I do feel though the following article articulates very well some of the issues on which I did such a terrible job of expressing myself and couldn't document.

Sadly, I think registration is needed but it's painless.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/national/21OSHA.html?hp

A Trench Caves In; a Young Worker Is Dead. Is It a Crime?
By DAVID BARSTOW

Published: December 21, 2003

INCINNATI — As the autopsy confirmed, death did not come right away for Patrick M. Walters. On June 14, 2002, while working on a sewer pipe in a trench 10 feet deep, he was buried alive under a rush of collapsing muck and mud. A husky plumber's apprentice, barely 22 years old, Mr. Walters clawed for the surface. Sludge filled his throat. Thousands of pounds of dirt pressed on his chest, squeezing and squeezing until he could not draw another breath.


Soon after, an investigator from the coroner's office called Mrs. Marts. He could not have been nicer. Such a tragedy, he said. But by then, the first insistent questions had begun to form. Her son had often spoken about his fear of being buried alive. He had described being sent into deep trenches without safety equipment, like the large metal boxes placed in excavations to create a sheltered workspace.

"Was there a trench box?" she asked the investigator. He paused, she recalled. "He says, `Ma'am, no safety procedures were followed. None.'

 

[Sxotty]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/national/22OSHA.html?hp

A similar vein, study showing that over 90% of cases of worker deaths taht are determined to be caused by willful breaking of osha regulations do not result in any sort of prosecution.

 

[DemoCoder]

And of course, in 100% of the cases, it is the company ordering the workers to cut corners? Oh no, workers never think they can perform a task quickly and skip alot of mandate "procedure", checklists, etc Everyone LOVES following long safety checklists and all the prep work before a job.

It's not even "big evil corporations" anymore. Most work is done through small contractors who run their own firms. My brother is a contractor who does construction work. He is responsible for following OSHA regs himself, since he owns the proprietorship.

When I had a new DirectTV satellite dish installed last week, it was not DirectTV install guys who came, but two hispanic brothers who started their own install contracting firm, and get work parceled out by DTV. If one of them fell off my roof, it would not be DTV's fault, but theirs. I noticed they weren't very strict with regards to the way they climbed on my roof.



There are 25 million businesses in the US, only 5 million of them are corporations, and only 100,000 of them employ more than 100 people. Over half the country is either self-employed, or employed by a small company. Unions are a moot point. They will never come back to the strength they previously had because the nature of the marketplace has changed. The majority of non-farm labor is no longer industrial, and the majority of farm labor is heavily automated with machinery now. Government regs are too burdensome and costly for small 10 employee shops/shacks.

White collar workers don't need the imposition of stupid union rules, and with the exception of RSI, ergonomics, and "sick buildings", there aren't many things to theatren us. Pay is already far above average as are benefits.

Sorry, socialism is dead. If any employee of mine in a startup tried some union bullshit, he'd be out the door. He has 25 million other companies to work at if he wants, and if I want to run a barebones startup with minimum burnrate, regulation, or amenities, tuff sh*t. Want the slim chance to get rich and cash in those options? Leave your collectivism at the door.

 

[Sxotty]

Demo I don't even know if you were responding to those articles or not. As what you wrote had almost nothing to do with them. Whatever you were responding to though I can see it was very important to you.

The articles are not about evil coorporations, they are about willful negligence, in other words knowing something is a hazard, knowing that it is illegal, not doing anything about it, and somebody dies. In which case almost all cases >90% result in no prosecution.

California has some of the strictest laws about worker safety and pursues them to a greater extent than any other state. It is fairly ironic you report your location as there