9 Thoughts on “Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch?

  1. On Labor Day I reflect on the plight of the largest class of people in this nation. The working poor. Thru Jy of this year 131 homes have been foreclosed on. Ryan Nesiba, econmics professor at Augie recently said this in the Paywall leader.

    “I’m still surprised there’s so many (foreclosures),” Nesiba said. “It’s harder to live in Sioux Falls if you’re just trying to get by on a $10 or $12 an hour job.”

    Thank the unions for getting wages and benefits where they are, however meager. Without unions what gains have been realized for the working class would not exist today. Without unions gains for the working class over the years, the number if working class poor would be double what it is now.

  2. anonymous on September 2, 2013 at 11:08 am said:

    And sadly, it’s the largest employers in SF who are paying these kind of wages. A large percentage of their workforces are making $10 to $12 an hour.

    These are the economic gains that SF movers and shakers so frequently refer to.

    There maybe a small percentage at the top who are benefiting, but the vast majority are part of the working poor.

    Why do you think organizations like the Banquet have seen their numbers soar in the past year!?! Many of the guests are not homeless, they are working and often times working more than one job.

    Try meeting just basic needs in 2013 on $10-$12 an hour.

  3. Couldn’t make it -I was laboring.

  4. To think my first job out of high school I was making 65 cents an hour and that was after two raises and that was as high as it went. Then when I was teaching school elementary teachers made $3500.00 a year. Times were different back then. I definitely feel minimum wage has to be increased. The more money a person makes the more they spend.

  5. The $1.25 minimum wage of 1963 (when I started working) = $9.54 in today’s dollars.

    The $1.60 minimum wage of 1968 = $10.74 in today’s dollars.

  6. You can also thank unions for bankrupting places like Detroit, blocking the working poor in DC from getting their Wal Mart and driving manufacturing jobs to more business friendly places.

    Our crew voted the union out after 40 years because like most of them, their pension fund was upside down (underfunded by 60% and getting worse) and had likely been raided to grease the wheels of power by backing Democrats at all levels. They got back no benefits from the union and when they decided to put another rep on the ground making nearly 2x what the workers made to drive around in a truck and recruit people that was the last straw. The Union’s answer was to simply push the new costs back to the employer, and our choice was to eat those costs to the peril of the other 60 non-union employees or pass them on to the consumer despite the fact we were already at the highest point in the market place on the pay scale. Plus the crew had profit sharing on top of that and no work due to being too expensive in the marketplace was a pretty clear and unsustainable option. Beyond that they trashed out me and my brother to anyone who would listen as my dad laid dying of cancer.

    Unions are scum. There’s no free lunch, it’s a Ponzi scheme only valid as long as they dupe more people into joining. If you’re in a union, do some digging, you’ll find the truth.

  7. Sy – Ask the city employees how well the union has treated them. I think pretty damn good.

  8. Unions are scum. There’s no free lunch, it’s a Ponzi scheme only valid as long as they dupe more people into joining. If you’re in a union, do some digging, you’ll find the truth.

    Spent my whole career since 1973 dealing with this issue. Have been in both union and non union environments. Good and bad on both sides of the aisle. Dropped out of the union a couple times over what I thought were frivolous grievances that held no merit. But always came back eventually. Why? I’ve seen how far management will go on the other end as far as how they treat employees. My last job, since 84, I watched what management would do if there were no union, and that was not pretty. Part time, no benefits, substandard wages.

    Not saying your company would do that Sy, just that too many of them do.

  9. Blaming unions for Detroits woes sounds like a page straight from the play book of Glenn beck or rush. It goes much deeper than hatchet jobs on unions. Please Sy, read the following to better understand Detroit and lies in wait for SF in the coming years.

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/the-wrong-lesson-from-detroits-bankruptcy/?_r=0

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