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New Overtime Rules Have Short Shelf Life
rwiedower writes "So the House just voted to scrap the new overtime rules that went into effect August 23. The vote was 223-193. Were the new rules designed to shaft IT workers from getting overtime? Or were they merely designed to streamline outdated rules?"
So break up your union, watch half your friends get fired, then bend over and take a 50% paycut.
Do you mean the people I have to deal with on a regular basis that make my job more difficult because they don't do theirs? Your own job depends on theirs and your attempts to educate them and their supervisor about about their refusal to work are ignored. Real nice.
Unions and striking are about standing up to capitalists who have disproportionate power, and unions help prevent the middle class from becoming the lower class.
Unions are about protecting people who don't do their fucking job and making sure they continue to get paid for it. Maybe it's not that way in the Industrialial Unions out there but it certainly is that way in the professional union I belong to.
Better conditions for the union members, everyone else be damned. I suppose I'm just ignorant, but most of my union experiences are something along the lines of this:
(At some random trade show)
*Drive up with van to giant but empty unloading area of convention center - the big drive-thru thing in the front, not the loading dock in back..we know that's off-limits*
Security Guy: You can't come in here.
Us: But it's the unloading area...
Security: No it's a "loading area". No UNloading allowed. Union rules...
*park van in garage two blocks away, put all our crap on a cart to roll in, reach front door*
Security Guy: Whoa, you can't bring that in.
Us: Why?
Security: Only union guys can push carts. If you can't hold it in your hands, you can't bring it in.
Us: Uh ok, so can we get the union guys to take it in?
Security: No. They can't do that.
Us: Mmmkay...
*Spend next 45min using 3 guys to guard the piles over the two blocks between the garage and the convention center and as we take each item one by one across the whole convention center by hand*
Maybe it's just me, but that convention center thing happens every fucking time and it pisses me off to no end. I mean, I'm all for making sure the cart-pushers have their jobs. But what's the point of having unionized cart pushers if they won't push the goddamned carts????
Most of my other encounters are similarly pedantic (i.e. a picture falls off the wall, but nobody can put it back because only a unionized drywall worker is allowed to use a hammer on the wall and none is available for a week)
I just wanted to share this message to the Libertarians who read these pages:
Libertarianism is a very convenient political philosophy to have if you live in a country with abundant natural resources, plenty of land, and the world's largest military to maintain the hegemony.
In other words, if the cards are already stacked in your favor, yeah a "free market" is a good thing. Nevermind the slave labor who built this country or the former inhabitants who have mostly been ethnically cleansed.
For every winner, there's got to be a loser. Libertarian reader, you are like George Bush: Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
Thank you for reading.