Unions only stick up for their workers when it’s convenient, and throw them under the bus when it’s not. In Illinois, California, Indiana and a number of other states, the unions would not give any ground and as a result thousands of union employees get laid off in those states.

In Ohio they had an act that would have reduced the compensation of some of the employees but they would have kept their jobs. The unions got it repealed and as a direct result, thousands of union workers were layed off. The unions touted this as a victory.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker instituted an act that reduced the union demanding power and made them pay 12% of their health insurance costs and SOME into their pension. They were paying nothing into it before. Walker also eliminated the forced days off with out pay that our previous (Democrat) govenor instituted that the unions were complaining about. The school districts who took advantage of this act saved a ton of money, some were able to lower taxes AND hire new teachers thus lowering class sizes. Others did not make these concessions (cough MPS cough) and had to fire hundreds of teachers. But the senior union members were able to keep their free pensions!

Some say that it’s unreasonable to do this, that the union members would have made concessions. Bull. In January of last year the union leaders said this was war and they’d not give an inch. The school disctricts that didn’t have to negotiate because they renewed their contracts before act 10 took place (cough MPS cough) did not give any concessions. Democrat Mayor Barrett asked the police and fire department unions to give concessions (they were exempt from the bill) and they did not give any.

Because of Walker saving all these jobs and adding new ones in some districts the unions had organized several recalls of republican legislators as well as our governor. They also told Mayor Barrett not to run against Walker, they have a different candidate they want to run against him. This is too much power for a special interest to wield. The aforementioned states who layed off union workers did not organize massive recalls against their representatives.

But what I’ve learned from all this is that if you are a union public worker is that you’d rather be layed off than have to pay ANYTHING into a pension of which you are the sole beneficiary. That’d be like me complaining that I have to put something into my savings account if I want it to grow.

Seniority is not always the best option for promotion. You don’t always get the best candidate. I’ve seen this in some union shops where the leader was not knowledgeable or able to lead and had favourites who got the easy jobs.

Unions do not allow for an individual to excel or provide a company with ideas that could reduce costs, make improvements as the union normally considers anything that might affect the workers as being anti-union. Not good especially in today’s marketplace where changes are necessary.

Unions have to work with a company to keep the company going, keep it competitive and allowing for new initiatives to proceed so that they can keep as many jobs as possible. Most unions do not do this but take an us and them attitude. Today this is not the way to keep jobs as we’ve seen over the last couple of decades as union jobs have left the country and gone overseas to lower priced labour markets where the company can now compete on a worldwide scale.

Remember customers are required to purchase a companies products to make money for all involved in the company. If the company’s costs are higher than a competitors it must price accordingly. Is that just management’s fault? Not entirely if the union makes oe has made demands for higher wages and more benefits and goes out on strike costing the company market share and competitiveness.

Please give us an example of how and why this statement applies to public sector unions.

As with all forms of government intervention, or government-sponsored intervention, the question is whether unions raise the wages and conditions of all members of society, or only serve the privileged at the expense of everyone else. If you think they do the former, you are simply mistaken.

For if it’s true that unions raise wages and conditions without causing corresponding unemployment somewhere else, why not raise the minimum wage to $ 100 an hour? According to your theory, there would be no countervailing disadvantage. Unions are a recipe for magic pudding.

In reality what this means is that, when you look at the mass unemployment affecting American society, you’re looking at the work of the unions. The rest is self-serving fantasy.

“big mistake to correct a big wrong decision”

It’s the negotiation process that went wrong. somehow, I feel a conspiracy and he need to be silenced. It went well, he released hostages, they arrested his relatives, he went wild, they arrested his brother and all hell broke loose.

I did’nt pay much attention in the earlier part, video shots of him showed a composed man and was actually gentle with the hostages. I figured it will end up bloodless. I was wrong!

The policemen ‘acting’ the scene near the bus did their best. I would’nt like to be the first to rush in – vision blocked by the bus seats, no element of surprise and and a high-velocity 5.56mm round will drill through the seats and make mince-meat of most likely my face or upper-torso.

Coordination was lacking. Somehow, there were no walkie talkies for the teams to communicate. No plan of action either, where is the angle of attack, if it was the front , should a feign (distraction) be made from the rear?

What’s missing is the the fire-axe (would be better than the sledgehammer). Oops, I forgot the gas masks so tear-gas should not be an option. you rush in when the smok pops (gas mask on) and have the element of surprise.

So screwed up, embarrassing and laughed at internationally now. It sent a message that nothing should be taken for granted.

It’s a good wakeup call for the PNP, clean up, train up and start protecting instead of harrassing.

as of date (heard from the news) – 9 hostages have died and “several” others of the hostages still in the hospitals with various injuries. the police should be congratulated IF NO hostages “perished” (died). other than that, the performance of the police would either be average or below average.

in my opinion, they (police) performed below par. the following acts (from observation of the televised incident) were noted:
(1) the brother of the hostage taker (mendoza) was able to breach through police line and even approach the bus – no police/security line established;
(2) a tear gas was being thrown by one of the policemen and it bounced back to them as it hit the bus window glass – no police with poor eyesight should have been assigned for such task;
(3) policemen went inside bus (after spraying tear gas) had no gas mask, came out again after a while, crying, due to the sting of the tear gas they, themselves, had thrown inside;
(4) the rope that the police used to rip off the front entrance door of the bus got ripped/torn – the reporter herself commented that the police should have used “chain”, what kind of rope did the police used here????
(5) also after the tear gas incident, a police was seen using his kevlar helmet to break the bus window to let more tear gas escape from the bus – he came out holding his thumb with his other hand and seems he was wounded by the shattered glass of the window he tried to break – should have had a gloves;
(6) after the hostage crisis was over; scores of people were seen running towards the bus to get a glimpse of the aftermath – again no police security line;
(7) no bulletproof vests for the police????
(8) saw a picture of the police sniper (who was stationed during that hostage incident) in the philippine news inquirer. the sniper was naked without a shirt. (probably i could have brought a rifle there while naked and “they” would have thought i am a legit police sniper), he was using an armalite rifle with telescope. is armalite accurate enough to be used as a sniper rifle????

what a waste of lives!!!

but then again, most probably it will open the eyes of the police top brass (who is to be blamed MORE) that such incident calls for better trained and equipped “swat”.