oooh aaagh dirty hippie government socialist commies!!!

controlling the internets and sesame street!

dear god will someone please think about the children?

Exactly

"The campaign to regulate the Internet was funded by a who's who of left-liberal foundations."..."(They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers's Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.)"

you know, the same people that fund the Evil Crazy Scary Commie Socialist Dirty Hippie Kids Show uh...what was the name of that again?

Oh yeah. SESAME STREET.

Mailinator was made for sites like this.

nt

Yah and they're all bullshit. You haven't read the fine print on those puppies, have you?

You still haven't figured out the difference between a lousy 401k and a defined benefits pension, have you?

Probably because the latter as all but ceased to exist outside of the unions.

Yah, and we do it on our own time, as well.

Everyone does. Consequently, skills briefly worth a quarter mil aren't worth that for very long.

How does union membership change that?

Well, you'd be more fun to talk to if you'd stop insinuating that any union talk must mean I'm a bad programmer or poorly educated. I am neither.

But of course, you're starting to struggle with the substance of the argument, so you start attacking the person. Fox news much?

Anyway, here is how it works with the classes. First off, you're an apprentice for five years before they set you loose on a job on your own. You have some work (for a lot less money than a journeyman) and some classes -- for free.

Now this "someone has to pay for it" is absolutely true. Union dues might seem like a burden to someone on salary -- but think of the contractor.

How much does that contracting outfit get? Much more than your union dues. When I was fresh out of grad school, I got thirty-five bucks an hour, and that was back in the early 90's.

But the contracting outfit got more than three times that -- for doing sweet fuck-all. That's right, they were charging the company like 125 an hour and giving me 35. Hey it was twice what I was making as a post-doc, what did I know? Fresh out of school.

Now, say you took what the contracting outfit was getting off of your labor -- and split it three ways: you, the union and business.

The business gets a better deal. You get more money. And the other third goes into your dues which in turn goes straight into benefits, training, unemployment insurance and a defined pension plan.

Now think of the person on salary. If he or she joins the union, the benefits are managed by the union, not the business. Here, you and the business might break even if that money the business had to spend on benefits were going to the union instead.

You could say that this would be a case for going solo on a 1099, but the fly in that ointment is health benefits -- with a union you're part of a group with massive bargaining power. On your own, you're just...you.

So...you can take care of yourself, can you? How's that individual health plan workin for ya?

Measured differently.

America doesn't measure the long-term unemployed, Europe does.

Oh, no, I HAVE a 401K.

Compared to the defined benefits plan my dad had with his union, 401k plans stink to high heaven.

Now you go look up what a "Defined Benefits Pension Plan" is. You don't even know, do you?

You'll NEVER get one. You'll have all your money in the stock market in your 401K and it will TANK the day before you are eligible to retire. Right after your house suddenly becomes worthless -- again. Right after your fabulous republicrat gubmint has "privatized" Medicare and Social Security out from under you, and that's disappeared as well.

Good luck.

Well trained people that produce a good product at a fair price, and can be properly supervised because they're on-site? Yes, a union that provides this would definitely help keep companies from going broke.

What happens to tech businesses now is they get all kinds of snake-oil coming at them from all directions, and they solve the same problem at least three times while circling the drain.

The only ones that even survive their first round are the ones where the people in charge are themselves programmers and can smell the bullshit a mile away.

As soon as the money men and the managers take over, the company circles the drain a few times with first massive staff turnover, then attempted outsourcing, then re-in-sourcing with way overpriced contractors to get enough lipstick on the pig to flog it.

We've all seen it. I've even shamelessly benefited from it. Though the contracting outfits that do the re-in-sourcing and take a *huge* cut benefit a whole lot more without doing jack. Quite frankly, I'd rather see that cut going to the AFL-CIO or even the Teamsters or the UAW than to whoever it is that owns TekSystems, Addecco, or any number of other body shops out there.

Oh, and my undergraduate degree is from Cornell.

Home of the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Except my degree was from the Engineering school. I spent a lot of time with ILRs, because my father was a union man, so we had some basis of communication.

Of course, I suppose it's better to get your education on how unions work from FOX news than from being close friends with ILR students at Cornell, or by direct experience with the unions themselves.

Until the new tech bubble pops.

Then you'll be wishing you had that supplemental unemployment benefits unions offer, along with the free classes to add to your skill set.

You people have short memories, don't you?

While boat-builders use Simpson's rule on hull surfaces to estimate the displacement...with a slide rule and a sharp pencil.

Oh, but they're trained in Union apprenticeship programs and so could not *possibly* be as bright or talented or well-trained as a Doctor who went to University. And see? This Doctor has a publication! He must deserve 10X the salary of a boat builder.

Oh it *is* legal and ethical to explain a value proposition in the course of a negotiation.

This makes people "criminals and scum"? What, because they represent the interests of people with dirt under their fingernails? People who do actual work?

Now, I'm sure you don't put your money in a bank either, or take out a mortgage, or invest in the stock market through your 401K -- because last I checked, *those* people were the real criminals and scum.

Actually, the training programs offered by the steamfitters and pipefitters -- and by the brotherhood of carpenters -- are very effective, and people are constantly taking more courses to keep their skills up.

Courses offered for free by the union.

No, scratch that, courses that you actually get paid for while you take them, and get college credit for besides.

By new skills, I mean new welding techniques made possible by advances in materials science, new construction techniques, engineering courses (yes, engineering courses) and management courses -- particularly in site planning and project management.

So, if your DBA was not availing himself of the training opportunities his union provided, he can stay at whatever level (at a lower level of pay) he chooses, but it's still your bad for not specifying that you wanted a DBA that would verify the system *with* *SQL* when you were negotiating the contract.

Possibly those "niceties" were rejected by your management at either the planning or the staffing phase.

But that goes on all the time, whether the labor is union or non-union.

Oh. So if you tried to form a union you would try and institute crazy things?