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Kyrie eleison posted:All of the strikers should be fired for holding the public hostage. How does one define the hostage-takers in a situation where two sides can't agree? Perhaps all of the BART management should be fired for not negotiating in good faith.
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Jul 3, 2013 06:19
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Not all of them. Some administration is usually necessary. But give half the axe and do a 50% cut for the ones who are left and suddenly you've got maintenance budget out the rear end and the possibility of longer-running service. gently caress management. edit: Cultural question here: I've been raised to believe that metal (as in, the genre) is pretty drat racist but have also noticed that (at least here in the LA South Bay--where I lived for the first 22 years of my life) most of the metalheads I know are Latino (which could be confirmation bias). These two notions obviously don't mix, so which is right? Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 06:31
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Haha, what? Think for yourself and come up with your own conclusion.
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Jul 3, 2013 06:40
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How is a genre of music (stripped of all lyrics) possibly "racist" to begin with?
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Jul 3, 2013 06:45
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agarjogger posted:I'm pretty sure companies know this obvious fact deep down, but are hoping that if enough companies pretend otherwise, labor will pretend too. You can't uproot skilled labor from a nice city to a nationally-renowned poo poo one without offering to make them all multi-millionaires. For Texas to strangle California, their companies would have to pay 1.5x-2.0x wages. Since that's loving ridiculous, California is still kicking. But maybe if you can convince people that caring about anything but numerical salary is for snobs and atheists, you can make them move to Texas for a $10,000 bonus, so lets try that. I had this exact thing happen. Company in Dallas wanted to hire me because of my extensive work experience in the film industry in CA, and were delighted that I'd be willing to move there. They weren't delighted when I wanted 50% on top of what I was making in California, they played the usual texas company crap like no state taxes, lower cost of living, in addition to a 50% pay cut vs what I am making now. I ran the math and my actual cost of living would probably drop 10% a month, not the huge numbers they were giving me.... What would convince me? If there was more of the film industry in Texas, but in Dallas its a one studio show, and they were notorious for breaking labor law and other nasty poo poo and get away with it because its workers were timid knowing it was the only gig in town. Here in socal? I can pick up a phone and get a job across the street and keep my kids in the same school, and not have to put up with relocation. Of course, unless it's for an assload of money which will help cover costs if poo poo goes sideways later [good ol' right to work states] Big K of Justice fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 06:45
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Kyrie eleison posted:All of the strikers should be fired for holding the public hostage.
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Jul 3, 2013 07:29
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sincx posted:That is a bit extreme, but the SEIU needs to be careful and not overplay their hand. They're disliked enough already. If this goes on for another week, watch for a "Right to Work" [FOR INMATES] proposition in 2014. 
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Jul 3, 2013 08:08
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Choosing an "objective" article is more or less choosing the article that supports your view of the matter. If you want the story covered from the side of union workers, you can always go to The Nation.
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Jul 3, 2013 13:21
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The accident rate for maintenance employees has gone up something like 40% in the last five years. For those not familiar with workplace safety stats, this is a pretty ridiculous increase.
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Jul 3, 2013 15:01
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"But but you don't understand, those BART workers are so rude and if they were working for any private company (like my engineering firm) they'd be fired for how rude they are and how little skills they have  "
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Jul 3, 2013 16:58
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If I were a transit union leader, I would totally do a fare strike and let the government take you to court over it. Shutting down the system only fucks you over and makes everyone hate you. A fare strike is much better, as it fucks over those who you are striking against without hitting hundreds of thousands of people who just want to go to work.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:01
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Nuclearmonkee posted:If I were a transit union leader, I would totally do a fare strike and let the government take you to court over it. Shutting down the system only fucks you over and makes everyone hate you. This is why fare strikes are illegal. Not 'take you to court over it' illegal; drivers getting pulled off their busses and into police cars illegal.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:21
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UberJew posted:This is why fare strikes are illegal. Not 'take you to court over it' illegal; drivers getting pulled off their busses and into police cars illegal. I'd be cool with getting arrested for driving a bus/train during a fare strike. Pretty sure the passengers would be more pissed at the cops/BART than with the poor bastard who's just trying to negotiate for a better wage/safer working conditions. They going to go fill up the jails with disgruntled transit workers? I guess not enough people are willing to do it when there is the easier (though far less effective) option available. v  v
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Jul 3, 2013 17:29
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Nuclearmonkee posted:I'd be cool with getting arrested for driving a bus/train during a fare strike. Pretty sure the passengers would be more pissed at the cops/BART than with the poor bastard who's just trying to negotiate for a better wage/safer working conditions. They going to go fill up the jails with disgruntled transit workers? It's drat risky, both to the individual worker and to the continued existence of the union itself, to organize illegal activity. Which isn't to say it's never the right answer, just that the stakes here don't seem anywhere near high enough to justify the risk.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:33
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AshB posted:Does anyone know of any relatively objective reads about all this stuff going on with BART? I want to see something that gives both sides some fair consideration, but most of what I've heard from people I know is anti-union chatter. Somehow I doubt the whole thing is so black-and-white. The Alternet article linked upthread covers it pretty well.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:37
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UberJew posted:It's drat risky, both to the individual worker and to the continued existence of the union itself, to organize illegal activity. I would agree in this circumstance. It's just disturbing to see how the entire structure of the public union-management relationship is explicitly designed so if the union does any strike then it will as a result become reviled by the public and management will be able to put through whatever bullshit they want with public support. The only place I've ever seen this not happen is Chicago. People seemed to mostly support the teachers strike even though it was personally inconvenient for them, though Chicago is one of those few places where unions generally have a lot of power and public support.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:14
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It's really too bad to listen to the debate. Even members of other unions are calling in to say that they got hosed, so BART employees should get hosed too. There's no way the union can win here with a traditional strike. Unless they implement an illegal fare strike, it feels like BART is going to absolutely roll the union.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:24
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I live in Berkeley and basically everyone I know is blaming everything on those greedy union thugs. The only person I've talked to who considered that the workers might have grievances is this old hippy dude who struck up a conversation with me on the bus. Bastion of leftism this ain't.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:32
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Shear Modulus posted:I live in Berkeley and basically everyone I know is blaming everything on those greedy union thugs. The only person I've talked to who considered that the workers might have grievances is this old hippy dude who struck up a conversation with me on the bus. Bastion of leftism this ain't. Man, yesterday I was on a bus to Albany late at night, and there was a lady saying "I'm pro-union, and gently caress the management for taking really long multimillion dollar tours to other parts of the world." That...was pretty much the only one I heard that wasn't anti-union.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:34
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Any thoughts on Steve Westly? I spoke to him recently and he's planning to either run again for Governor or run for Senate in a few years, when his kids are more grown up. Not from California though, don't know how he's seen there.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:38
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Shear Modulus posted:I live in Berkeley and basically everyone I know is blaming everything on those greedy union thugs. The only person I've talked to who considered that the workers might have grievances is this old hippy dude who struck up a conversation with me on the bus. Bastion of leftism this ain't. NIMBY liberalism at it's finest.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:41
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UberJew posted:NIMBY liberalism at it's finest. Yeah Berkeley is more liberal than it is leftist, and making GBS threads on unions because you were inconvenienced is about as liberal as it gets.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:13
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I've only heard "Well, I mean, they have the right to strike and all, but don't you think that's a lot of money for sitting in a toll booth?" and not much in support of the strikers at all.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:18
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Muck and Mire posted:I've only heard "Well, I mean, they have the right to strike and all, but don't you think that's a lot of money for sitting in a toll booth?" and not much in support of the strikers at all. That's why management provided false information on prevailing wages. But saying that an intentional deception is false would be taking a side and violating journalistic integrity!
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Jul 3, 2013 19:23
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The union needs to fire whatever moron is doing their PR. On the news they are putting a senior BART press spokesperson talking against what looks like a union guy chosen at random who has only recently memorized his awful talking points and doesn't look at all comfortable on camera.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:29
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Cultural question here: I've been raised to believe that metal (as in, the genre) is pretty drat racist but have also noticed that (at least here in the LA South Bay--where I lived for the first 22 years of my life) most of the metalheads I know are Latino (which could be confirmation bias). These two notions obviously don't mix, so which is right? Going to jump on this topic real quick, and hopefully give you guys a break from all this BART talk. Without trying to derail too much, sorry I'd like to voice my opinion on this matter. This is sort of a pet issue of mine, as someone who grew up with Metal, it wasn't until I was an adult that I had to deal with the common perception that it was racially prejudiced. Most of the racist, White-Supremacist bands were actually Hardcore Punk during the 70's-80's, not Metal, and while those two things grew out of the same era, they have very different affiliations from sub-genre to sub-genre, not even taking into account that they are comprised of completely different people with different opinions from band to band. Much the same way that you'll get drastically different opinions from Nine Inch Nails and Creed, despite the fact that they were both lumped into the Alternative Rock genre. If you're really interested in specifically the Latino, Metal fascination, then Fear Factory's Dino Cezares is a good jumping off point, as he was one of the first on the scene to really establish a positive racial identity to his music. Though the early days of metal focused more on occult topics, today there is a lot of metal that discusses a lot more diverse, and intellectual topics such as philosophy, the environment, war, death, etc. It's not a music centered around any one political viewpoint, and you can see that by delving into the various messages, lyrics, motifs of different bands such as Mastodon, The Ocean, Gojira, even more mainstream bands such as Metallica. Today I'd like to believe that Metal exists outside of any racial construct, with new bands springing up from all over the world and instilling their music with their own experience and culture. To me, Metal represents what Rock did in the 60's and 70's with people seeing the music and re-tooling their sound to personalize and hone their own voices. While I'm sure you can still cherry-pick a couple bands with an Anti-Racial agenda, I'm of the mind that they're the exception and not the rule. Finally, there's actually a pretty interesting book written by a Black Female Punk/Metalhead growing up in NYC who described her experiences during a more chaotic time; What are You Doing Here?!" Now that I've thoroughly exausted this topic, we can get back to the real problem with society, those damned entitled unions who think they have a right to fair wages.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:42
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Kobayashi posted:It's really too bad to listen to the debate. Even members of other unions are calling in to say that they got hosed, so BART employees should get hosed too. There's no way the union can win here with a traditional strike. Unless they implement an illegal fare strike, it feels like BART is going to absolutely roll the union. But Solidarity  I'm so tired of unions getting poo poo on all the time.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:13
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Van5 posted:But Solidarity Well it's as if this is accidental. You've got decades of propaganda and legislation working towards this goal. Kyrie eleison posted:Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever Case in point. 
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Jul 3, 2013 22:39
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Zeitgueist posted:Well it's as if this is accidental. You've got decades of propaganda and legislation working towards this goal. I know but still, It just the act of killing your neighbors cow is so spiteful.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:44
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Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever
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Jul 3, 2013 22:46
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Kyrie eleison posted:Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever While I don't disagree with the Union's ability to strike, or the reasoning behind it, it strikes me as kind of right to say that they're out of date. Seems like strikes were more effective when the populace was generally able to accept the argument that workers agitating for better pay/rights/etc was a noble effort. Since most workers nowadays are of the "Why the gently caress do YOU get paid better/have more benefits/work less than I do?" mentality, what approach (if any) could a union take to seem less like they're out to screw everyone else? Or maybe the problem lies with the idea that people have grown up believing that anything the unions fight for is greedy (while employers/companies are benevolent in their actions)?
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Jul 3, 2013 22:50
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Van5 posted:I know but still, It just the act of killing your neighbors cow is so spiteful. This is a good article on why this is ending up as a union vs. union issue: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/bart-strike-shows-privatizations-dark-side.html Basically, any one in the Bay who makes significantly more than the striking Bart workers (and whose sales tax monies would end up financing any wage increases) are completely insulated from the effects of the strike because they have their own, exclusive ways of getting around. All the tech workers have shuttles and all the finance/law types live in Marin and drive or take the ferry. Thus, these people (who also happen to have the most influence) have zero incentive to give in to the Bart unions. Thus, it's the lower-middle commuting class that's the most affected. They have little political power, so they can't make Bart management give in to the strike even if they want to. And they make the same as or less than the Bart employees, so of course they'd be pissed. Hell, I bet a lot of them do wish that all these striking workers get fired. Plenty of people would kill to be a fare collector even at $40k + health.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:51
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FilthyImp posted:While I don't disagree with the Union's ability to strike, or the reasoning behind it, it strikes me as kind of right to say that they're out of date. They're out of date in the sense that unions have been hamstrung by legislation for decades, and the media essentially repeats whatever story anyone anti-union says as if it's fact, following decades propaganda. But since there isn't really an alternative, I don't know that they can ever be out of date.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:53
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Kyrie eleison posted:Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever Except for the fact that striking has worked thousands of times before you mean 
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Jul 3, 2013 22:57
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If it becomes 'common sense' that strikes don't work Management has an incentive to negotiate in bad faith because the Union doesn't have the option of a strike, thus it becomes more likely that the Union will need to actually strike to achieve an equitable contract, since threatening it is ineffectual. Which is to say that Management believing this: Kyrie eleison posted:Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever Is exactly why there's a BART strike on.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:00
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UberJew posted:If it becomes 'common sense' that strikes don't work Management has an incentive to negotiate in bad faith because the Union doesn't have the option of a strike, thus it becomes more likely that the Union will need to actually strike to achieve an equitable contract, since threatening it is ineffectual.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:06
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Van5 posted:Except for the fact that striking has worked thousands of times before you mean The "organized labor is out of date" line is essentially "I don't agree with the concept of organized labor and will not attempt to make a self-fulfilling prophecy".
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Jul 3, 2013 23:07
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Zeitgueist posted:The "organized labor is out of date" line is essentially "I don't agree with the concept of organized labor and will not attempt to make a self-fulfilling prophecy". I'm sorry but what would be a self-fulfilling prophecy in this instance?  I got confused.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:12
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Van5 posted:I'm sorry but what would be a self-fulfilling prophecy in this instance? What I mean is that people who say "unions are out of date because they don't work" are people who never wanted them to work, and don't care if they do.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:16
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sincx posted:This is a good article on why this is ending up as a union vs. union issue:
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Jul 4, 2013 00:00
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