DeWalt

Anyway, DeWalt tools are just as good quality as the other big brands. Milwaukee has the edge in drills, Bosch in sabre saws, Metabo in grinders, etc, but that's how every market is.

What grinds my gears is that jobs have been exported and more Americans are out of work. Also, they move the jobs to Mexico because their labor costs are maybe 1/3 (if not less) of what they are in the States. I'd be willing to pretty much guarantee that you and I won't see the cost savings reflected in the prices of DeWalt tools.

I'm still torqued that the savings generated by exporting the jobs will wind up in some CEO's pocket instead of mine tho.

The Federal Gov't found out that by doing a aduit of ALL the sub-contrators that contracts with non-union labor was 35% slower in compleation dates, completed work quality was lower and manufactured goods were of a lower quality.

*******Highlights of what have Labor Unions accomplished:*******
Raised wages for non-union workers with better benefits
Stopped the 7day work week
Stopped unfair layoffs of retirement aged workers
Increased the work place saftey conditions
Increased quality of manufatured goods Increased production rates.

I could go on for days about how Labor Unions have improved ALL workers quality of life and the quality of there family lifes.

Are labor Unions 100% correct all the time? No, but there is no prefect world either and we have to start somewhere.

T_Bone

I run a one man fab/mechanical shop, my work better be done right and on time because I don't have the safety net of a union to run and hide behind and keep me employed. I'm not anti-union, and I think that there's a place for them, but it's just not for me.

I spent a summer as a laborer on a bridge. The steel workers and rodbusters were union, we were not. If I got caught retieing a joint that a rodbuster screwed up, or more commonly just got broke from being walked on, I got fined $25. Now, my job was to clean the deck prior to pouring concrete. So I had to cleanup the cigarrete butts and tobacco spittings of the rodbusters who were in general 300 feet in front of me. I walked the whole area of the pour 5 times doing that. If I needed something retied it'd take DAYS before one of the lazy rodbusters would come over and do it. They started later than us, ended earlier than us, took longer breaks than us, and got paid more than us. In general my experience was that the Union guys had NO hustle because they knew their jobs were protected. It was real hard to get a lazy rodbuster fired, while somebody on my crew didn't pull their weight was gone in a day.

I've worked a couple summers as a surveyors assistant, one job we did alot of work on was an expansion for National Semiconductor, lots of union people on that job. While we were on that job one of the most frustrating things was that parts of my job were proportely "union" jobs, including sweeping off the points we had set that got covered with dust and construction debris. So if I went to set the instrument and had to clear a point, if I cleared it with a swipe of my boot that was okay, but if I used a little wisk broom that was a union job that I was "stealing" from a union worker and not allowed, again a $25 fine. Thus if we had to shovel or something we'd have to go get a union guy to do it for us. This was very important because if we didn't the union guys would do things like put truckloads of junk on our points to make it harder for us.

No, my experience with unions has been very, very bad. I wouldn't join one now for all the money in the world.

First, yer absolutely right. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, Management was treating Labor like slaves, and something had to be done. The folks that started the union movement were some brave individuals and stuck to their task until it got done. However, comma, that was a LONG time ago, and before there were any state or federal laws with any teeth in them to keep management from exploiting the workers.

That is no longer the case. I'm not involved in labor/management situations anymore, so I don't have any applicable data or experience, but it is my suspicion that unions have done their members a disservice over the last 10 or 20 years by driving wage and benefit costs up to the point that a lot of companies are taking their business elsewhere.

That's not to say that unions are no longer needed, but rather that I think their efforts would be better focused on things like making sure that management doesn't screw the workers out of their pensions via stock scams and 401K mismanagement a'la Enron, WorldCom, et. al.

In order to avoid annoying other posters with this off-topic subject, it might be a good idea to take it offline, should you happen to care to discuss it further. I've posted my email.