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The best piece of advice of all: 'Quit your whining'
Just to add on...These programs were implemented in the best interest of the employer, not the employee! Talk to your employer, even Mickey D's has employee benefits they offer. Here is the list taken directly from your employers website:
* Vacation
* Holidays
* Anniversary Splash
* Sabbatical program
* Summer Hours
* Leave of absence
* Alternative Work Approach
* Adoption assistance
* Child care discount
* Educational assistance
* Matching gifts program
* Employee Resource Connection
* Auto and home insurance group discount program
* International Fitness Club Network
* BeyondWork Internet discount program
* Profit Sharing and Savings Plan (includes our 401(k) feature)
* MCDirect Shares
* Mc$ave
* Credit union
* Financial planning services
* Base pay
* Incentive pay
* Company car program
* Recognition programs
* Medical
* Vision supplement plan
* Dental
* Flexible spending accounts
* Short and long term disability
* Employee and dependent life insurance
* Accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D)
* Travel and business travel accident insurance
Quit your whining!
N:
Is this where we should cue the "Dueling Banjos" music from "Deliverance?" Who gets the Martin guitar?
-- DCH
You are doing it again!
Response to Chris D. in Ann Arbor. First off unfortunately since you just want to badmouth me based on me being non-skilled, I am a SKILLED electrician at Ford. This invalidates your 2nd assumption automatically. If we don't have the benefits, then how can that be used to determine over-compensation? When Ford established these programs for their upper level, mid level and low level management no one complained. When they allowed SKILLED and non-skilled workers to use these facilities (some require out of pocket expenses with NO DISCOUNTS) then you whine? Yes other companies support child care sponsored programs,there are over 1000 and still counting. These are NOT FREE to the employee!
* 3M
* Adobe
* Allstate
* Alston & Bird, LLP
* American Express
* Amgen
* Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts
* Boeing
* Bristol-Myers Squibb
* Carnival Cruise Lines
* CBS Corporation
* Chick-fil-A
* Cisco Systems
* Eli Lilly and Company
* EMC Corporation
* Ernst & Young
* The European Commission
* The George Washington University
* GlaxoSmithKline
* Intuit
* J Sainsbury plc
* JFK Medical Center
* Johnson & Johnson
* JPMorgan Chase
* Johns Hopkins University
* Marriott International
* Mattel
* Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
* Merck & Co.
* Morrison & Foerster LLP
* NBA
* NBC Universal
* Northwestern Memorial Hospital
* The PGA TOUR
* Procter & Gamble
* Ropes & Gray LLP
* SC Johnson
* Staples
* Target
* TIAA-CREF
* Time Warner
* Toyota Motor Manufacturing
* The Venetian
* Viacom
* Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children
These are just a small sampling.
Me=1, you=0! Don't make assumptions. Do some research and base your argument on facts.
This is just the kind of "uninformed" sentiment that makes people hate whiners.
'So who is doing something to help out their industry?' The UAW, of course
Talk to the regular workers on the shop floor. Yes, some of us are not the entitlement activists that you think UAW workers are. In 2005 we each had given on average $10,000. In 2007 UAW members took a 50 percent cut in pay for new hires and also we gave up another $10,000 COLA and wage freezes. In 2009, $15,000 in givebacks, we gave up our break time and agreed to receive no overtime compensation for working over 8 hours a day, we also agreed to give up our unused vacation time and 2 major holidays and again no COLA.
Ford Motor had put up for collateral the Ford logo, and we the workers, had outright sold our mantra that was the core belief of our institution. We went along with the union leadership to sell out future generations that was bought by our predecessors with blood. Long gone is "Equal Work For Equal Pay" and "The UAW, FIGHTING FOR ALL WORKERS!" and "A Fair Days Wage, For a Fair Days Work."
To "do our part" we stuck it to the next generation of workers: low wages, no cost of living ad,justment, no pension, no health care in retirement. The propaganda wing of the Big Three (Daniel Howes) wants us to feel sorry about their debts, but at the same time want us to take concessions for their mistakes. If you remember in the 90's Ford ask us (UAW) to work harder to stop Toyota from passing them as the #1 USA automaker, so we gave them record profits and investors record profit shares.
In return, they misused the funds and then decided our opinions were no longer popular to what the buying public want. They stop collecting ideas, eliminated moral supported bonus programs, and stop asking for our help. Now they hire lame columnists that are suppose to make us feel sorry about their slow comeback because they are not debt free as GM and Chrysler. Once again you could not ask questions, you could not input your ideas to help nor take notes and reply to what you heard. Ford cried for government help but when they realize the books would be open to the public and the government car czar, they begged us hard working UAW members to take more concessions. They needed a way to continue business without financial exposure. We gave back our hard earned programs such as Education reimbursement, Child Care centers, and fitness centers design to help us reduce stress and injuries on the job. So who is actually doing something to help out their industry? Surely Daniel Howes isn't.
N:
"Hire?" "Propaganda?" Lots of big words, empty charges and predictable complaints there. Only thing missing is reality. As in cold, hard economic fact. The simple reality is that it's not about what UAW members have given -- or not given -- that is the yardstick now, as the Detroit Three drift toward a collective market share of something like 45 percent of the U.S. market. The issue is parity with the competition. A monopoly -- of labor, of production, of whatever -- cannot set prices in a market place, even in Detroit, once it's no longer a monopoly.
The brothers and sisters of UAW-Ford are free to reject the latest round of contract concessions. They're free, even as they decry the demise of "equal pay for equal work," to also rejecting the union's post-war "pattern bargaining" because adhering to the pattern in the post-bankruptcy world would pose a theoretical obstacle against striking. But positions freely taken don't necessarily get a free pass.
Elections -- all elections -- have consequences. It's just a matter of what and when.
-- DCH
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