"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Did you know that the USPS allows letter carriers to take leave w/o
> pay (but with no chance of job loss) to go campaign for Obama, salary
> paid for completely by the Letter Carriers Union?
I didn't know that, but in general I'd hope that most businesses would allow their employees to go and campaign for their favorite politicians so long as their absence doesn't impact productivity (i.e., they get someone else to cover for their shift or, when viable, make up the time later) or cost the business money.
I bet John Larkin would let his guys go to a McCain rally under similar circumstances... :-)
The employees getting reimbursed by their union is between them and the union, I'd think...
USPS? Or do you leftist weenies just simply gloss over facts?
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
"It isn\'t that democrats are ignorant. Far from it... it\'s just that
they know so much that just isn\'t so" -Ronald Reagan
-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at
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| 1962 | I love to cook with wine Sometimes I even put it in the food
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
You can't ding the USPS employees if the deal is just that the government is a poor negotiator with the employees' union...
In most cases any business with a union ends up that way because of poor management. The various attempts to unionize, e.g., fast food workers or Wal*Mart workers tend to fail, IMO, because in general the employees are reasonably happy with their terms of employment.
I expect they get around that with a "don't ask/don't tell" policy -- the union knows the USPS employees are going to campaigns, but just provides compensation for "personal days" or somesuch, so as far as the accounting goes it's still on the "up and up."
Is this really any different than someone taking a day of vacation to go to a McCain/Obama rally? Other than perhaps the Union has "conveniently" offered to provide an *additional* such "vacation" day (at the Union's expense) right around election time?
USPS is, for some time, actually a GSE. We ought to privatize it, and allow competition.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Liberals are so cute. Dumb as a box of rocks, but cute.
Now you sound like a 'Republican' but liberals don't work that way. Unions are 'good', period, regardless of how good anything else is and they write laws to make it so, some Federal and some State. Like, for example, 'closed shop' states where it's flat illegal to work in a unionized professions unless you join the union, so it doesn't matter one whit how good 'management' is.
And our Union loving friends have proposed a law banning secret ballot voting (precisely because of the 'problem' you describe) so union thugs, who, as the saying goes, 'know where you live', can 'observe' whether you vote the 'proper' way.
And, of all people, even George McGovern has come out against it, which gives you an idea of what has become of, so called, 'liberalism'.
Frankly, I am loath to call 'liberals' liberals because they are anything but. They have simply usurped the word but none of the meaning.
Yeah, I certainly don't agree with that. Historically, many unions were good... these days, it's very much a mixed bag, with plenty of unions doing more to hurt the company they're with than helping their workers.
If I ran such a company I'd be looking the for means to legally dissolve it on a Friday & re-open it on a Monday as a new company... without a union. Anyone who didn't want their old job back -- sans union -- could go and find another one...
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
That seems rather draconian, but of course I don't know anything about the industry -- if they're still producing a quality product and managing to attract employees, more power to them, I suppose. To me paying very little and offering no benefits would suggest that the job doesn't require skilled labor to produce quality output nor that employee retention matters a lot. In fact, it's probably be the kind of job that robots ought to be doing. :-)
Back in the late '80s as a teen I applied to work for a video rental store, asking for $5/hr when the minimum wage was then $3.35/hr. The guy told me no way was he going to pay me that, which at the time just made me mad, since I knew I could typically be at least 50% more productive than the average worker and also had the "computer skills" that -- again at the time -- it was unlikely other teens would have had. In retrospect of course the real problem was that there was no reason for the guy to *know* I really was worth more... or that he necessarily *wanted* someone worth more in the first place. I see somewhat similar behavior in industry today: Many managers, not being particularly skilled themselves, would rather hire three mediocre engineers for $50k/year, rather than two really good engineers who will be more productive than the three at, say, $70k/year, even though the later scenario is better both for the employees and the company.
What happened was that union employees earning, on average, $35/hour plus benefits (equivalent to ~$50/hour), demanded more than INCO could afford to pay. INCO just closed the doors. Specialty Metals won the game ;-)
Fuck the unions.
But vote for Obama... a depression is good for the country.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Vote Barack... Help Make America an Obama-nation
I'll take two "overqualified" $70k/year engineers who can do the job of three $50k/year "decently qualified" engineers any day... at worst, they get bored and leave, at best (and very likely), they'll conjure up even better solutions than what they were originally asked to implement, saving the company even more money.
In actuality, the typical choice is more like "two decently qualified engineers at $70k/year" vs. "three not-quite-qualified engineers at $50k/year": Even if management knows their people aren't quite qualified for the job, they figure tossing more people in will surely fix the problem. There's certainly some truth to this stategy, but it's just not a good one for the long-term health of a company IMO: All the really good guys leave because they don't want to work with all the mediocre guys, who'll hold onto their jobs as long as possible because it's that much harder for them to *find* alternative employment. (The logical extension of this managerial strategy is outsourcing, e.g., your programming staff to some low-wage nation... they may not be very good, but they're so cheap you can hire a whole bunch more of them to "make up the difference!" Some companies believe this is a profitable strategy... but I sure don't. Case in point: ORCAD Capture 15.7, which is now "maintained" in India *broke the ability to copy and paste within the symbol editor!* It took them a handful of months before they released a service pack to fix this, but I just can't understand how any "qualified" programmers could
*ever* break something that "fundamental" *and not even notice!*)
Not that I'm trying to bash Indians/etc. here... plenty of them are very good programmers, and I wouldn't necessarily even claim that on average they aren't as good as U.S. programmers -- I just don't know -- but they definitely are cheaper. And if your management themselves isn't qualified to tell the good programmers from the bad anyway, they might as well go with "cheap!"
This is the same argument I heard a little old lady making in line at the post office yesterday: "I don't like using the automated postage machine, because it puts someone out of a job." Sure, it might, but I'm confident that the economy can grow without limits (it's not a zero sum game!), so there will be new jobs created when the old ones are dissolved. Additionally, those new ones -- while they'll often require more/different skills than the old one -- will tend to be more interesting and less "mechanical" than the old ones.
Life-long learning and being able to jump around a bit from industry to industry is a Good Thing. :-)
After Obama is elected everything will change. Most non-management engineers will be laid off, due to overhead/benefit costs. Then consultants will be contracted. I generally make out like a bandit during hard economic times... but you leftist weenies deserve what you vote for ;-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Liberalism is a persistent vegetative state
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
I'm not sure things are going to be noticeably worse economically under Obama than under McCain, but I guess we'll soon see.
You're thinking the republicans are a shoo-in for 2012 though, eh? Weren't you also claiming some months back that McCain was "clearly" going to be president in 2008 though? :-)
If you get more business in the next few years, I'll be happy for you Jim. Even if you don't support all the same causes I might, you're generous with your wealth, and that's admirable.
I don't think so. I think I was afraid Hillary was going to win. Now I wish it were her rather than Obama :-(
I don't support any liberals ;-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine Sometimes I even put it in the food
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