Out of college I worked at a Department of Engergy facility. Not too long after I started, the union called for a strike at about 3:30 in the afternoon.
The first thing they did was block all the access roads into and out of the facility.
I don't think unions in France are worse. Companies left to their own shift all the jobs they can to cheaper country X. Somebody has to keep the shareholders and company board from squirreling away, or outright stealing all the profits. Why not the ones that make the product, or supply the service??? Not only the shareholders have all the rights to profits in France and some other places. Shareholders are no more essential to making a profit than are the workers who make the product or service possible to profit from.
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"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)
P.S. You don't think Dow is getting out of the glue business do you? Admittedly I'm not sure in this case, but I would feel free to imagine that a new glue manufacturing plant has recently come on line in country X.
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"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)
I don't about glue business specifically but Dow is getting out of a lot of businesses right now. The Rohm and Haas/Kuwait thing has really damaged their business.
Never heard about that one. OK, so it looks like on the surface I could say the French workers might have thought they were being forced to take a hit for a badly timed accquisition in a greedy attempt to corner the polyethylene market by virtue of using expected future windfalls from expected high oil revenues brought on by the peak excursion to $145/bbl spot price. Now their "lame" excuse is, "We don't wanna' do it 'cause we really didn't have the money anyway" ???. Its really Kwait's fault. So, if Dow just "stuck" to producing glue they all might still have their jobs. Who's fault was that? Was that the fault of the French union?
There's a different perspective here where it is very common to see past the "If its good for GM its good for America" lines. Companies and workers have a (perhaps an unwritten) contract where each agrees to fulfill as best they can their obligations to the other. Even temporary hiring that might enable companies to make money at the cost of some disruption in the lives of its temporary work force is seen as unresponsible towards the long term objectives of the state and the wellbeing of the population. Emphasis is placed on maximizing and securing the stability of both parties rather than simply maximizing shareholder profits at the expense of benefiting society as a whole. Least that's my opinion.
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"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)
I have no interest in debating the value of socialist business models here.
My point was that it is ridiculous that French union workers seem to be allowed to routinely kidnap their bosses to demonstrate their displeasure with something with no concerns of being held responsible.
The information concerning Dow is only the fact they have been hit hard by the economy and their merger with R&H.
Hey maybe sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
I guess the Boston Tea Party is all but a distant memory in the Library of Congress these days.
Fine. But it seems EQUALLY rediculous to me, if not more so, that companies are allowed to lose 86 BILLION, still pay their managers 10 billion, ask the government for 200 Billion bailout and get away without paying their workers one cent. Don't you think that 24 hour kidnapping pales in relation to that?
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"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world’s energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies)
All those unions have failed miserably, indeed. Otherwise, how would it be possible BigInch to be right on his assessment. How on earth those unions let the companies and their managers to perform the highway robbery and let them use the workers plight to blackmail the government for bailout. Something went really terribly wrong. And I don't think they will wake up any soon.
