We get 2 hours if we show up with bad weather....most of the time we hang out for an hour then head home.

__________________


Eat your heart out Mr. Obama.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what is for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote" Benjamin Franklin

Yes there is a place where you wont be treated like a child.

You forgot to say how you work in heavy snow in below freezing temperatures.

You also forgot to mention how you work in most conditions until it becomes humanly impossible.

Oh that's right, you probably didn't mention it because you know most on here don't give a rats azz about how tough the job can be.

They'd rather sit at the computer and slam jobs that they probably coudn't handle themselves.

__________________
___________________________



___________________________

Learn the truth about Danny Faulkners
murder and his murderer here:

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/

Below freezing? When we built the new Ikea in SP I had two machines digging...one with a pneumatic hammer to break up the thick frost layer...and one to dig. Man was it COLD out there that year....and I was on that job for 15 months....from when the first piles were driven to well after the place was completed.

__________________


Eat your heart out Mr. Obama.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what is for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote" Benjamin Franklin

Yes there is a place where you wont be treated like a child.

So would I. I'd like to see non union company's paying better wages to their employee's with decent benefits and fair pension's.

Then it would be either the owner's make less or bid more competitively.

As it stands now, the owners pay employee's less so they can bid lower and the owner's still make the big bucks.

I guess your version of fair is a bit different than mine. All you see{in your minds eye only because yuor not really exposed to the facts} is thug this and thug that.

Pure speculation until you're in the trenches, which you'll never be. I'll bet it's all warm and cozy at that keyboard.

__________________
___________________________



___________________________

Learn the truth about Danny Faulkners
murder and his murderer here:

http://www.danielfaulkner.com/

I agree that the folks in the unions have a tough job and deserve decent pay. However, you also have to consider that the city is put at an economic disadvantage due to the higher labor costs imposed by the unions' monopoly within city limits.

Maybe my job doesn't require exposure to the elements or strenuous physical labor, but I wouldn't dismiss all people with desk jobs as wusses, either. My job presents challenges of its own, including the fact that it often changes significantly from one year to the next, moreso than most fields, requiring continuous study to remain relevant (I.e. I can't just "learn the trade" and then go on autopilot). Career paths that require advanced academic degrees also mean those of us who are in them often end up tens of thousands of dollars in debt once we get those degrees due to the cost of higher education. Many of us also get "balloon" type loans that start out interest only and hope our salary grows as fast as the payments. We also aren't immune to getting screwed by the man, or however you want to describe it. Upper management in white collar companies generally make a crap-load of money while those of us lower down are paid relatively little... and when I say relatively little, I mean that, if an article I read a while back is correct, I don't think I make much more than the union rate for a paper hanger in Philly.

I don't know what the ultimate answer is that'll make everyone happy, but the answer that'll make me happy may at some point end up being a move someplace where the local government can actually afford to fund basic services and law enforcement, and where decent housing is more affordable. Based on what I hear, a lot of union members have already come to that same conclusion.

__________________
Welcome to Philadelphia. Here's how you can help us make our great city even better:

• Write to your state and local elected officials
• Report suspicious activity to the police department

BTW, it looks like council can't actually "force" the unions to do anything when it comes to the convention center:

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news..._a_gamble.html

__________________
Welcome to Philadelphia. Here's how you can help us make our great city even better:

• Write to your state and local elected officials
• Report suspicious activity to the police department

Going back and reading the entire thread, this jumped out at me. I assume you know that anyone in America can open an IRA account and it's sort of like contributing to your own personal pension. I could be wrong, but I think that would go farther than paying union dues... how big are those anyway? Is it like paying a second wage tax, or not that bad? Just curious.

__________________
Welcome to Philadelphia. Here's how you can help us make our great city even better:

• Write to your state and local elected officials
• Report suspicious activity to the police department

I dunno... during the 1998-2001 period when we were writing as many H-1B visa approvals as we could, and some really large companies were turning into Indian employment agencies (Computer Sciences Corporation, USAA, IBM, etc.) I had really wished those of us in the engineering and engineering services field were part of the CWA [Communication Workers of America].


When sheet metal workers strike... nobody feels the pain except for the employer.

In my particular niche field, if we took to a strike...

You wouldn't have any electricity.


And PE's are not easily replaceable people. Many people who were laid off to have their services and engineering jobs replaced for 2-5 Indian workers were actually suckered into training their replacements before they got their severance packages.

Before the planes crashed into the WTC, I had lots of friends who were getting displaced by visa labor, and many of them had trained the newcomers not long before "their services were no longer needed by the organization." Now that we have Homeland Security coupled with its huge bureaucracy slowing down visa approvals, the labor market is a bit safer for those jobs that can't be contracted overseas [you can't run an American power plant from India or China, etc], but it's still a bear market when it comes to labor.

So, in this bear labor market, the dollar drops over ONE THIRD between 2002 and 2007 and wages have barely risen? Then in October of 2005 you have "bankruptcy reform" which basically screws over consumers who have fallen into credit holes. These aren't poor people who are falling down in the hole. These are people who have combined incomes more than $100,000! Now you have your average suburban couple... 2 million of them at the Fed Reserve's last estimate, who are facing ARM resets but can't get out of their house.

Something is wrong when you have a six figure household income and the bills can't get paid. Shoot... I made slightly less money in the go-go 90s and I felt like I had a LOT of money. These days, I don't feel as wealthy although I made a lot more than I used to.





Absolutely no way should the government bail these people out.


When we let credit card companies and banks rewrite lending laws to allow financial institutions to get tough on bad debt, we're in effect shifting our policy from a debt-ridden society to a savings society. I shifted my logic a long time ago. I used debt like crazy in the 90s and slowly paid it off. Now I won't even co-sign anything for any member of my family and I have shredded all my credit cards and keep zero balances on the accounts, and one of my largest automatic bill payments out of my bank account is to an out of state savings account I have.

You cannot change from a debt society into a savings-minded society without a massive correction in the economy as people eat their debts.


I say, LET the housing meltdown run its course, and let those houses go up in foreclosure. It will bring a long-needed correction, it will put affordability back into the real estate markets, and we will all be better off 5 years from now for having a really bad 2008.

If you want to know what the 1970s was like, you're about to find out next year.

__________________
WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

Yep. No one is opposed to unions flexing their muscles for reasonable pay and benefits. But when those muscles are flexed to exclude certain people from working at those jobs with the good pay and good benefits, or to take more money out of workers' pockets then they get back,/1/ or to prevent installation of green urinals, or to pay septa drivers to sit at home, or to kill truck drivers because they work for a non-union company (referring in particular to the Overnite situation), the tide turns.

/1/My first job was part-time at a union shop. Half of my check every week went to the union, yet I received nothing of value from the union; I was paid the legal minimum wage and received no benefits. And the union was taking all this money from p/t workers (and there were a lot of us) and not lifting a friggin' finger to try and get p/t'ers anything, even at contract renewal time.

__________________
---Shosh

Which I think is an even bigger story.

Now, assuming The Governor doesn't accept this or the board doesn't approve it ... realize exactly what that means.

It means City Council did one of 2 things:

1) They proposed this bill without checking with the other government bodies first to see if they will support them.

2) Or they did check and went ahead anyway.

If they went #1 it means they were, again, incompetent and are trying to pass legislation they can't get to stick (and could have found out with a couple phone calls) or #2 they are trying to pass legislation they know they can't get to stick.

So, with union contracts coming up for the City, they just went and pissed off several other union branches for probably no positive gain.

At this cursory level, I would say they mishandled another play.

__________________
Czar of the 26th Ward.