—With the news market in New Orleans suddenly up for grabs—thanks to Advance Publications’s decision to slash the newsroom of the Times-Picayune in a pitiful quest for clicks—it’s good to see online and alternative competitors organizing themselves to have a run at the T-P’s suddenly disrespected readership.
The Lens, My Spilt Milk, NOLA Defender, and Uptown Messenger have formed a cooperative that will start out promoting each others’ work and maybe find some other ways to collaborate.
The Lens’s Steve Beattie Beatty tells me:
The changes at the TP “certainly were the catalyst for this, though we’ve all been mutual admirers for some time. Plenty of readers have suggested a new central clearinghouse for news, and our four online sites all cover different pieces of the city, so it makes sense to offer that service. I’d say it’s less about The Times-Picayune’s decision to cut back on print coverage and more about nola.com’s nearly impenetrable website.
The Lens, along with a culture site, Nolavie, is also part of a plan announced by the public radio affiliate, WWNO-FM, to expand its local news coverage. WWNO says it’s been in talks with the other two sites for eight months, so the plans aren’t a direct response to Times-Pic debacle.
Still, it’s all very timely.
—Matt Taibbi gets a gold star for taking on Larry Kudlow for insisting the Libor scandal is a victimless crime. What Taibbi might have also mentioned is that first victim of marketplace corruption—admitted to by Barclays itself—is the market itself. How can you trust a manipulated market?
—Steven Greenhouse, who at this point has to be considered the dean of American labor reporters (okay, it’s rather a vanishing speciality), has a good report from Joliet, Illinois, where machinists are striking against Caterpillar. Despite a net income of $4.9 billion, a record, and even better projections for next year, demanding a *six-year* wage freeze. Its adversary, the International Association of Machinists, is said to be equally tough.
—The best thing about about Nick Bilton’s fun bit about Silicon Valley as some kind of Gatsby-esque lotus land was the reaction is provoked from local denizens, including Michael Arrington:
There is an obscene amount of money here. But it’s the only place in the world where most rich people don’t really flaunt it.
I know a billionaire that drove an old Honda until recently, for example.
Well, there you go. But what’s he drive now?
Unless the fed gets involved, this caterpillar strike is going to end as bad as the last one.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/archive/fall1998art1.pdf
If I was Richard Trumka, I'd make a mention of this in passing to the Democrats. The unions have really gotten no support from the Obama Administration because they don't want to spend 'political capital' on people who are in their fold anyways for lack of better options.
The DLC doesn't understand that it's a losing battle having to suck up to the same people as the Republicans, since they won't be able to compete with what the Republicans offer without eliminating the difference between them and Republicans. The more money you take, the less obligated your voters feel to vote.
How obligated should the unions feel to support you when you stiff them 70 to 90% of the time?
PS. interesting contrast between then and now.
Then:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/04/us/union-leaders-give-up-on-caterpillar-strike.html
"The strikers lost about $32,000 each in wages, because they received $300 a week in strike pay, down from the average weekly salary of $767."
Now:
"Ever since negotiations began in March, Caterpillar has insisted on a wage freeze for its top-tier workers, those employed seven years or more; they average $26 an hour, or $55,000 a year before overtime. For the junior third of the workers who typically earn $12 to $19 an hour, Caterpillar has made no promises but has suggested it might raise their wages based on local market conditions.
“We make an excellent product here, a product that Caterpillar uses in all its vehicles,” said Mr. Williams, a machinery repairman. “That gives us a leverage that the other plants don’t have.”
Yet he admits to feeling financial pain. He receives $150 a week in strike benefits, and he said he did not have the $40 needed for his 11-year-old son to play Little League."
Times are much tougher. Are labor laws and negotiations going to be enforced or not?
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 23 Jul 2012 at 11:00 PM
"How can you trust a manipulated market?"
So say the folks who are all-in for the FED's economy-wide market-manipulation and the FedGov's anti-capitalistic regulatory regime that dwarfs Mussolini's.
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 24 Jul 2012 at 08:41 AM
"Taibbi is a joke, who would call for more regulation of the banking sector on any basis, but never say a word about the real massive interest rate and money supply manipulations of central banks, such as the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve.
"There was probably an attempt of some manipulation of LIBOR, but it is not clear if any of it was successful. Further, any serious manipulation would have distorted markets through out the world and would have been spotted immediately because of the distortions in supply and demand. There are people trying to game most markets all the time, but massive manipulation against supply and demand can't be pulled off, unless of course you are the Federal Reserve and can print money at will."
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/07/matt-taibbi-versus-larry-kudlow-on-libor.html
.
#3 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 24 Jul 2012 at 08:49 AM
I dunno, Danny Boy, the Hunt Brothers took a pretty good shot at it when they tried to corner the silver commodities market ... and I don't think your Hated Central Banks had anything to do with it.
But the best conspiracies are the ones that are never explained: Like the traders who benefited from picking off blue chip stocks on stop orders during mystery Flash Crash stock manipulations over the last three or four years. Cleaning off cautious small investors who thought they were being sensible by loading up on affected stocks, only to sell them off hours -- or minutes -- later when they popped back up to their original prices.
Sometime the invisible hand of market forces doesn't guide the natural forces of supply and demand. It just sweeps the little guys off the game board.
#4 Posted by jrhmobile, CJR on Tue 24 Jul 2012 at 09:07 AM
Painful reality:
"The appalling ignorance of basic economic theory is why we see the headlines about Barclays and the manipulation of rates. Bankers probably made many millions of pounds extra, but this had no measurable effect on the direction of interest rates. We are not talking about hundreds of billions. We are not talking about the Bank of England.
"Columnists like to get attention. There is nothing like a scandal to get attention. But to say that the commercial banks manipulated inter-bank rates is saying that (1) central banks and reserve requirements don't count for much; (2) market rates can be held down by a few commercial banks, thereby overcoming the market for capital: lenders and borrowers.
"The people who cry 'scandal' do not think through the implications of what they are saying. Making a lot of money is one thing. It is possible. Re-structuring the derivatives market totaling about a quadrillion dollars in assets/promises is something else.
"The problem has little to do with rate-tinkering by Barclays and the others. The problem, then as now, is the misguided Keynesianism that undergirds the policy decisions of the West's central bankers.
"Keep Barclays. End the FED, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank."
#5 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 24 Jul 2012 at 09:07 AM
"the misguided Keynesianism that undergirds the policy decisions of the West's central bankers."
Sigh. Monetarism? Yes. Neo-classical Economics? Totally. Objectivism? Undeniably under Alan Goddamn Greenspan. Keynesianism?
Where?
Show me the desire for full employment at the fed over the last 30 years. Show me when Ben Bernake, Greenspan, and Volcker cared more about stagnating wages and less about price stability over the last 30 years. Where? Show. Please.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 24 Jul 2012 at 05:05 PM
$26/hour plus overtime and benefits?
Now, wait a minute... These are smart guys and everything. But there are lots of smart people out there. And they're hard-working and all, but there's lots of hard-working people out there. The engines these guys build travel over roads and bridges and pass by schools full of teachers. These guys didn't build that. Why should they make more than teachers or school janitors make?
HUH?
#7 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Tue 24 Jul 2012 at 06:53 PM
"These guys didn't build that. Why should they make more than teachers or school janitors make?"
Sorry, but did those middle class employees pay their share of taxes? No? You mean they didn't offshore their incomes? Didn't claim it as carried interest? Didn't book themselves a huge bonus based on the degradation of the value of the company's labor?
Like what was being talked about in the offending speech?
http://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia
"THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, like I said, the only way you can pay for that -- if you’re actually saying you’re bringing down the deficit -- is to cut transportation, cut education, cut basic research, voucherize Medicare, and you’re still going to end up having to raise taxes on middle-class families to pay for this $5 trillion tax cut. That’s not a deficit reduction plan. That’s a deficit expansion plan...
But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them. So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more."
So yeah, what was your problem again? A company with 4.6 billion in profit shouldn't have to reward the skills which made that profit possible, unless it's management, because they didn't build a bridge - their taxes did?
Weird point.
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 01:45 AM
Those Caterpillar employees didn't build those engines, Thimbles.
Somewhere along the line they had a cafeteria lady to make sure they had a Gubmint lunch in the third grade (unless, like Obama, they never attended a public school once in their lives) They drove to the plant over a bridge that a Gubmint guy signed the check for. They breathed the air that the Gubmint made.
Why should these guys make more money than the cafeteria lady? Why should the Gubmint help these guys make more money than a cop or a teacher?
HUH?
#9 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 06:58 AM
Profits belong to owners, not employees.
The sooner you daft leftists absorb this reality, the sooner we will be on our way to restoring this country.
Workers should be "rewarded" for profits with raises? OK, then conversely, workers should be "punished" for losses with wage reductions, right?
Liberals wouldn't be liberals if they couldn't be inconsistent, now would they?
They want the Gubmint to step in a gunpoint to help unions increase wages in good times, but somehow I don't recall ever seeing any liberal demanding the Gubmint help owners get wage concessions in bad times.
Wages are a function of M-A-R-K-E-T forces in a healthy and free economy. They are not a function of outcomes. A company that is losing money has to pay the same wage for a machinist that the company across town that is making money does.
#10 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 07:21 AM
'Why should these guys make more money than the cafeteria lady? Why should the Gubmint help these guys make more money than a cop or a teacher?'
Why should lawyers? Why not drop everybody's wages to the floor? Why can't managers and executives work for less?
People have the right to collectively bargain with their employers. This can take the form of negociations between partners in an enterprise or it can take place as adversaries in a war, both sides baring bloody baseball bats like in they did in the good old days.
The enforcement of law by government is intended to replace the excercise of power by individuals. When government relinquishes its duty to protect the rights of individuals, then those individuals will assume the responsibility of protecting their rights and will attempt to extract by force what should have been theirs by law.
If you want anarchy, that's fine - admit that.
"Workers should be "rewarded" for profits with raises? OK, then conversely, workers should be "punished" for losses with wage reductions, right?"
They are. Very often. What do you think happened to Detroit? What do you think happens to a company taken over by Bain? What do you think happens when a company's bosses uses the suggestion of company operations to move to Mexico as leverage? People get laid off and offered their old jobs back at less wages and minus benefits all the time.
So yeah, your point is moot. Demanding a six year wage freeze when inflation is two percent per year and the company is making big profits and paying big bonuses to managers is not acceptable. If greedy owners and executives want to play the ultimatum game with people's livelihoods, I'd expect a nasty reprisal.
Does it make sense to play a greedy asshole game when profits are high? Give wages rising with inflation and keep making money, how hard is that?
Extremely hard, it seems, for sociopathic morons with god complexes.
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 07:08 PM
One more time...
Profits (and losses) belong to OWNERS.... Not employees...
How freaking hard is this to understand?
If I buy a house to fix up and flip... And if I hire carpet installers and painters and end up making a profit... I don't owe the painters or carpet guys money, Dude.
It isn't complicated.
I take the risk. I pay market rates for carpet and paint no matter whether I end up making money or not. I get the reward if it pays off. I eat the loss if it doesn't. The workers get paid the same.
It's called B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S. What part of it are you silly leftists missing?
Why limit your silly, collectivist reasoning to workers?
Why shouldn't we get the Gubmint to make Caterpillar pay its landlords more money? Why shouldn't we make them pay more for materials?
Your stupid, stupid nonsense falls apart under the slightest application of intellectual energy.
#12 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 08:09 PM
Thimbles....
Just to be clear...
You are advocating for the Gubmint to help workers get "rewarded" for profits with wages increases AND you are also advocating for the Gubmint to help companies get wage concessions from workers when the companies lose money, right?
This is your position, isn't it?
#13 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 11:40 PM
Witness the beauty of Thimbilistic Chittumism - that nascent branch of economic theorty that posits that Left Coast "journalists" are better able to dictate the equitable distribution of assets and resources than others - owwners, investors, executives, etc.
In a Thimbilistically Chittumistic world, owners take risk and absorb losses, but workers are entitled to the profits - somehow, society is better off when profits end up in the hands of workers than owners. The dumber and lazier one is, the more one is entitled to other people's money, and the government's proper role is to punish success, production, diligence and innovation and to reward failure, waste, sloth and conformity.
The purported basis of Thimbilistic Chittumism is some sort of arbitrary and sophomoric notion of social justice, howeverthe Thimbilistic Chittumites cannot yet articulate this supposed justification. They cannot explain how such a juvenile collectivist system will foster economic growth or encourage production and risk-taking.
If the proponents of this redistributive theory could demonstrate its effectivenees, I would be its most ardent supporter. If they could prove that using the force of government to reward stupidity, laziness and failure can make the world a better place in which to live, I'd have a tent at an Occupier camp.
The simple, undeniable, immutable, irrefutable truth oh the matter, however, is that this type of daft economic lunacy has failed miserably in every single instance in which it has bern attempted anywhere in the known Universe. PERIOD. Its implementation results immediately in oppression, slavery, misery, famine, injustice and inequality. PERIOD.
#14 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 09:58 AM
"If I buy a house to fix up and flip... And if I hire carpet installers and painters and end up making a profit... I don't owe the painters or carpet guys money, Dude."
Contract labor != Employee
Yeah, your contractor can't say, "I want a bigger piece of the pie." when a job is done (Aye, there's the rub) but he can charge what he likes for the next job or complete the job in the cheapest manner possible.
Or he can refuse the work altogether, because you're an a-hole. If you play the ultimatum game with contractors, they will have some fun with you.
You do work internally because it is cheaper, dependable, and commited to your enterprise - not someone else's. Companies have no problem making salary cuts and lay offs when times are bad - and no one is arguing that they shouldn't - but when times aren't bad, why is this company asking their workers for a salary cut over six years? Do you not believe in meritocracy? If workers are responsible for producing a quality product which is generating sales, do they merits a reward for labor or not? If not, say so. Say that workers should never expect raises for good work. Tell them they should expect salary cuts to make room for management bonuses.
See, these small minded, idiot, conservatives are always talking about the value of work and labor on their left, while advocating the withholding of rewards for work so they can make bonuses and fat salaries on their right. To them, every worker is a replacable cog. If any programmer makes 10 grand a year on the market, then every programmer should make 10 grand. Skill, expertise, quality? Unimportant. There is no reward for performance, you are just a job and the market has plenty of people who want a job for 10 grand. The more of those people used, the bigger my management bonus.
Slurp it up, vampire. See where that mind set takes you.
"AND you are also advocating for the Gubmint to help companies get wage concessions from workers when the companies lose money, right?"
I don't have to advocate. The government has very strong policies supporting the erosion of labor rights. Trade policy, tax policy, bankruptcy policy, and there's that thing that conservatives had no problem with until Obama did it with the children of immigrants - of not enforcing the laws on the books.
All I'm saying is that workers will not have a chance at extracting an agreement from caterpillar if they don't suffer more than just a strike and a bunch of wagging fingers from government. If the administration supports labor, now would be the time to show it.
#15 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 04:28 PM
See, in Thimbilisitic Chittumism, when employees demand high wages, that's called "stakeholder capitalism". It isn't greedy for employees to demand the highest possible wages. It's a natural and beneficial phenomenon.
However, when an investor demands the highest possible return, that's called "vampire capitalism". Pure, evil greed.
SUCH silly dumbass nonsense... But there it is.
Looks like I need to do this again. Maybe if they keep reading it, this little slice of reality will sink in.
PROFITS BELONG TO OWNERS, NOT EMPLOYEES.
Wages are based on market worth, not outcomes.
A burger shop that's losing money has to pay the same wages for a cook that a burger shop that's making money pays in wages.
Anybody with a couple of functioning neurons knows this.
Any business that pays more than market wages for labor is cheating its owners and overcharging its customers. Why is it so difficult for leftists to absorb this reality?
when times aren't bad, why is this company asking their workers for a salary cut over six years?
Because of M-A-R-K-E-T CONDITIONS, that's why, Thimbo.. Unemployment is sky high. Labor participation is through the floor. It's a simple case of supply and demand. Investors maximizing profits by minimizing expenses.
This is GOOD BUSINESS.
ECON 101.
Why do you lefties draw the redistributive line at workers? Why not get the Gubmint to beat up on Caterpillar to pay more rent? To pay more for materials?
A little scrutiny lays waste to this daft commie idiocy.
Why do you screwy leftists think that it is better for employees to end up with profits than investors? HUH? How does it advance society to give money to unambitious people who aren't taking risks by taking it from those who are willing to take risk?
HUH?
#16 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 05:52 PM
"Any business that pays more than market wages for labor is cheating its owners and overcharging its customers."
Wrong. Quality product requires quality workers. If you don't believe in meritocracy, then it's okay to drive wages into the ground irrespective of the quality of work. And then you can end up like Best Buy and Walmart, fighting over the bottom spectrum of customers who care about nothing but price, problem being those customers have increasing little to spend. As IBM is starting to find, you can't justify premium prices for shoddy services and product.
"Major IBM customers such as Amgen, The State of Texas, and most recently the Walt Disney Company have cut ties with IBM in favor of other providers. Many other customers are scaling back the services they’re buying from IBM as the perceived value continues to drop. Customers are starting to realize that they can directly hire offshore companies such as TCS, Wipro, HCL and Satayam and book the savings directly instead of paying IBM top dollar for support and then seeing that support fulfilled from BRIC countries."
You'll probably think this is Chittimistic Thimbleism but there's a point here.
"And the media tends to just repeat what it is told, tacking ads to the content. There’s a cynicism in the media combined with an inability to give more than 15 minutes of real attention to anything that isn’t a celebrity divorce resulting in little information or useful perspective in the news.
There are huge economic forces at work here — far bigger than many people or institutions recognize. Right now, for example, there are hundreds of thousands of experienced IT workers in the USA who are unemployed at the exact moment when big corporate America is screaming for relaxed immigration rules to deal with a critical shortage of IT talent.
How can this be? Do we have an IT glut or an IT shortage?
Like any commodity, the answer to this question generally comes down to delivered cost. If you are willing to pay $100 per barrel of oil there’s plenty of the stuff to be purchased. There’s a glut of $100 oil. But if you will only pay $10 per barrel of oil there’s a critical shortage. In fact at $10 America probably has no oil at all.
In America right now there is a glut of $80,000-and-above IT workers and a shortage of $40,000-and-below IT workers."
You pay for quality, you think so when it's the salary of a douchebag executive, why don't you think so when it's the person making your mission critical construction equipment? Why would you want to demoralize the people who make your quality and safety possible?
#17 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 26 Jul 2012 at 11:57 PM
You're dodging, as usual, Thimbles.
Nobody (but you) is talking about "driving wages into the ground" and nobody (but you) is talking about reducing the quality of Caterpillar's workers.
If Caterpillar pays less than the market wage for machinists, the machinists will go elsewhere. If there aren't any jobs, the market wage plummets. If there are tons of jobs, the market wage skyrockets. It's that ECON 101 thing again.
Paying below market wages, or replacing skilled workers with unskilled workers doesn't make sense. But that's not what's at issue here in Realityville.
We're talking here about the idiotic notion of getting the Gubmint to force Caterpillar into paying ABOVE MARKET wages purely because it happens to be turning a profit. Robbing the rewards of investors to dole out money to workers for some sort of commie notion of social justice.
THAT is what's at issue - and it is clearly a stupid idea.
You keep dodging the important questions. Why are the workers the ones to benefit from Gubmint redistribution of investor's money? Why not the landlords? Why not suppliers? Why not force Caterpillar to pay double its electric bill, just for the Hell of it?
WHY do you leftists think that it is better for society for profits to end up in the pockets of machinists instead of investors? HOW does it advance society more to put money into the hands of workers instead of investors? WHY is it "good" for machinists to demand higher pay, but it is "bad" for investors to demand higher returns?
HUH?
Furthermore... Despite your contention to the contrary.... Paying more than is necessary in the free market for labor CHEATS SHAREHOLDERS and OVERCHARGES CUSTOMERS. It just does. Paying more than the market rate for ANYTHING - parts, materials, utilities, rent, taxes, and yes, labor, raises prices and reduces profits. It just does. To argue otherwise is just silly.
#18 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 27 Jul 2012 at 12:35 AM
Getting kinda bored here.
"We're talking here about the idiotic notion of getting the Gubmint to force Caterpillar into paying ABOVE MARKET wages purely because it happens to be turning a profit. Robbing the rewards of investors to dole out money to workers for some sort of commie notion of social justice."
Let's assume they're paying market wages for valued and qualified workers this year.
We're talking about aggreements that freeze them for the next six. If you're such a tool that you can't recognize that people taking jobs, buying houses, picking schools represents a risk that these people are taking with their careers and families, that they are investing in these communities under the promise their employers will treat them and compensate them with respect, hey - you can't expect a vampire to care about the meat.
"Why do you screwy leftists think that it is better for employees to end up with profits than investors? HUH? How does it advance society to give money to unambitious people who aren't taking risks by taking it from those who are willing to take risk?"
ECON 101. The middle class is your consumer base. If you tear up your middle class, it won't matter how many ideas you have. There's plenty of smart people in Nepal, how many of them are millionaires? You can have the best ideas, come up with the best product, and if you don't have a public to sell it to what's the point?
http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/distribution-of-stock-market-wealth-by-wealth-class-1962-2007/
The top 10% have 80% of stock market wealth. The top 1% have about 40%. Policies which help the 10% and hurt the 90% do not a strong economy make.
But hey, this is like discussing the finer points of modern medicine with a leech. Your interests aren't served by strong unions, strong labor, bigger tax base, and a more just distribution of wealth, and even though the government has taken huge strides defending assets, wealth, owners, banks, etc.. you're ready to FREAK OUT if the 'gubmit' dips a toe on the side of the worker. Hypothetically.
Get a grip loon-job.
#19 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 27 Jul 2012 at 01:53 AM
Thimbles wrote: Let's assume they're paying market wages for valued and qualified workers this year. We're talking about aggreements that freeze them for the next six.
padikiller responds: And if market conditions change favorably for the machinists in the next 6 years, then Caterpillar will lose employees and will have to renegotiate to keep them. Conversely, if market conditions erode and Caterpillar ends up in a Chapter 11, the machinists will end up with less money. Union contracts are almost always long term. It usually makes no sense to negotiate short term union contracts. The current state of the "Obama Recovery" is such that any person anywhere who holds a job paying $26 an hour plus loads of overtime in the Rustbelt had better be REAL careful about jumping ship.
You are just blithering by substituting labels. Why is it better for society to have the Gubmint take profits from investors and dole them out to the "consumer base"? HUH? Why is it better for our society to have profits going to buy Chinese flat screens at Walmart instead of having these profits reinvested to create wealth and jobs in our economy?
Your position is asinine. Institutional investors own nearly HALF of Caterpillar. Retirement funds. Do you grasp this? Pension funds (including UNION pension funds). Charitable funds (including Bill Gate's foundation - which holds nearly 2% of CAT stock)..
Do you realize that your commie wealth-snatching plan means taking money away from immunizing impoverished kids and giving it instead to a guy who brings home nearly six figures? You realize you are advocating taking away money from retirees on fixed incomes to give to these workers?
The juvenile "occupy" class-warfare silliness doesn't hold up to reason. The free market is fair. Gubmint intervention isn't.
#20 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 27 Jul 2012 at 08:24 AM
"padikiller responds: And if market conditions change favorably for the machinists in the next 6 years, then Caterpillar will lose employees and will have to renegotiate to keep them. Conversely, if market conditions erode and Caterpillar ends up in a Chapter 11, the machinists will end up with less money."
This is bullshit. The workers who have the expertise and experience to do the job to the level of quality expected should be compensated according to the value they provide to the product.
If the product has value, and it does to the tune of several billion in profits, it is because of the workers. When the workers don't work, as shown in the princeton paper above, the quality of the product suffers and the product loses value. They should be compensated according to the value they add.
To you this equates to "Paying more than is necessary in the free market for labor CHEATS SHAREHOLDERS and OVERCHARGES CUSTOMERS. It just does."
Somehow, an American worker which contributes to the economy of an American community and pays taxes at a much higher rate than the vampires is somehow preventing Bill Gates from healing Africa? You have cargo planes standing ready to dump the bullshit, don't you.
I notice that executive compensation, which goes into 7, 8, 9 figures with bonuses and perks, isn't considered stealing, cheating, nor overcharging. "It's the market, man. The market derives the natural price, dude, and some prices are just naturally higher, bro. You can't fight nature."
The market is the measure of an object's perceived value, and you folks perceive yourselves to be gods and MOU's and everyone else as ants, so you set the prices that way. It's not based on actual metrics, actual things produced, actual value created, it's based on the economics of superstars - that somehow when you're on top, your actions and compensation don't rob Bill Gates, American communities, and the company's customers of value. Gods are sinless and perfect. "Those damn $50,000 dollar a year car makers are bankrupting the industry!" "You made $40 million, not including your stock options." "I earned that!"
Of course you did. Your life was on the lie everyday dealing with those sharpie markers and pushing those pencils. Imagine the horror of lacerating your finger on a paper's edge. Are you sure 40 million is enough considering the risk?
Meanwhile you grouse about the $55,000 man who's only risking his health and life working with the heavy machinery.
Giving the 55 grand man a boost is cheating, stealing, overcharging in your words.
Cont..
#21 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 27 Jul 2012 at 09:31 PM
These guys earned their rewards. Anyone else? They're replaceable - despite the value they add to product - and paying above "market rate" is cheating.
So this guy was 'cheating and overcharging' his customers?
"Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, the shirts appeal to upscale customers - and epitomize why some retail analysts say Mr. Sinegal just might be America's shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton.
But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.
Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."
Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.
Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business.""
It's good business, not that you Wall Street idiots would know how to build one.
"Mr. Sinegal, whose father was a coal miner and steelworker, gave a simple explanation. "On Wall Street, they're in the business of making money between now and next Thursday," he said. "I don't say that with any bitterness, but we can't take that view. We want to build a company that will still be here 50 and 60 years from now.""
You don't know how to take care of a company and its customers, you only know how to take care of yourselves by sucking everyone else dry. If you really believed in the market, you would be demanding companies to rein in executive salaries which are way WAY out of step from executives in other countries. You say, "If Bill Gates doesn't cure malaria, then it must be the workers fault."
Because there is no sin in god.
#22 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 27 Jul 2012 at 09:47 PM
Sad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/caterpillar-to-unions-drop-dead/2012/08/03/7af72d6c-da9f-11e1-9745-d9ae6098d493_story.html
"For decades, executives at unionized companies have harbored the fantasy that they could dictate the wages, benefits and working conditions of their employees, just like non-union firms. What stood in their way was the unions’ ability to mount a strike that would prove more costly than paying above-market compensation. In the language of economics, the strike gave workers market power.
Now, at a hydraulics plant in Joliet, Ill., this corporate fantasy is about to become economic reality. Thanks to globalization, declining union density and years of chipping away at labor laws, Caterpillar is set to prove that even unionized companies can operate as if they have no union at all...
Even from a market perspective, however, there is a valid critique of Caterpillar’s hardball tactics.
The first is to note that when it comes to its executives, managers and engineers, Caterpillar does not use the same criteria of paying the average market wage. In those instances, the company has seen the competitive benefit of paying above the average to attract and retain a cadre of above-average employees and give them sufficient incentive to work hard, take risks and deliver superior performance. There is no evidence to suggest that having better-than-average production workers will not have the same beneficial results. To believe or behave otherwise is nothing more than the sort of class snobbery better suited to the country-club locker room than the executive suite of a modern global corporation.
If Caterpillar were really serious about having a world-class workforce, it would be willing to negotiate wage and benefits levels 15 percent above the market. And if it were serious about insuring that all workers share in the company’s success, then it would offer production workers a profit-sharing plan that reaches at least 10 percent of base pay in good times...
Caterpillar should not expect voters to embrace its aggressive free-trade philosophy if globalization merely gives it license to grind down the incomes of average workers. It shouldn’t expect politicians to approve more money for public works projects, or give the green light to increased coal and shale-oil production — both big generators of Caterpillar sales — if the profits from those sales won’t be shared fairly with front-line workers. And it shouldn’t expect to win the good opinion of investors or the public if its human-resource strategy is to become the recognized leader in the corporate race to the bottom."
#23 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 6 Aug 2012 at 03:34 AM