Turbine Work

Union Brother's and Sister's:

Industrial Contractors Inc. is building up a data base for some Turbine work. If you are interested.
Please email Mike Butler at mbutler@industrialcontractors.com
Mike will email you a form to fill out and return.

Mike Butler
Industrial Contractors Inc. 100% Union
Turbine Superintendent

Website www.industrialcontactors.com

Thanks and Be Safe
Millwright Ron
www.unionmillwright.com

President Obama, bless his heart

President Obama, bless his heart, evidently thought the nation would have a reasoned and respectful debate on health care reform.

Oh, ye of liberal faith.

Anyway, I’d been waiting for some Democrat to turn the tables on the shrieking, swastika-sign waving yahoos who show up at the town hall-style forums to demonize the president and the Democrats who want to overhaul our health care system.

For weeks, we got grin-and-bear it from hard-pressed House and Senate Dems at the town hall food fights.

Finally, we got some Frank Talk.

The Nazi stuff proved too much for Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (95 percent lifetime AFL-CIO COPE rating), who is Jewish. His response to a wacko woman holding a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache has become an instant You Tube classic. It was at a town hall shindig in Dartmouth, Mass., part of his district.

Frank, as we say in Kentucky, “opened up a can of ass-whup.”

“On what planet do you spend most of your time?” the feisty Frank replied when the nut job asked him why he favored Obama’s “Nazi” health care plan.

“You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis,” Frank added, setting her up.

Then he lowered the boom: “Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

Maybe Frank’s verbal broadside wasn’t the Shot Heard ‘Round the World – that was in a Beantown ’burb long ago. But it echoed in my old Kentucky home.

I cheered the first time I saw it on the TV news – almost as loudly as I whooped it up when my Yankees swept the Sawx a few days ago.

My guess is Congressman Frank is a pretty ecumenical guy. Most liberals are. So I hope he will welcome this dyed-in-the-pinstripes Bronx Bomber fan to his booster club in Sawx land. This unapologetic left-leaning, union-card carrying Bluegrass State born-and-reared history teacher has been a Frank fan since the voters of the Bay State’s 4th CD had the good sense to send him to Congress in 1980.

Give ‘em hell, Barney.

Millwright Ron
www.unionmillwright.com

China trade costs jobs in every state

China trade costs jobs in every state
Economic Policy Institute

China trade costs jobs in every state

Unbalanced U.S. trade with China since 2001 has had a devastating effect on U.S. workers. Between 2001 and 2007, 2.3 million jobs were lost or displaced, including 366,000 in 2007 alone. These jobs were displaced by the growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China, which increased from $84 billion in 2001 to $262 billion in 2007.

Growing China trade deficits between 2001 and 2007 eliminated jobs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Jobs displacement exceeded 2.0% of total employment in Idaho, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Vermont, Texas, and Wisconsin. The effects of growing trade deficits with China have been felt widely across the United States and no area has been exempt from their impact. While traditional manufacturing states such as Wisconsin, Tennessee, and the Carolinas were certainly hard hit, so too were states in the tech sector such as California, Texas, Oregon, and Minnesota. Rapidly growing imports of computers and electronic parts accounted for almost half of the $178 billion increase and eliminated 561,000 U.S. jobs. Idaho, which lost an estimated 9,000 jobs in computer and electronic products alone, was the hardest-hit state in the country in terms of share of total state employment.

Millwright Ron
www.unionmillwright.com

The Republicans Legacy

The Republicans Legacy
The Republican Legacy:
The Worst Economic Crisis in Three Generations

Heckuva job Bush and his Republican friends have given us the credit crisis, the housing bust, the energy crisis, two budget-busting wars with the threat of a third and record oil company profits. Time and time again, the Republicans, including John McCain who doesn't know how many houses he has and who loves to buy stacks of $100 chips for gambling, have also offered giveaways to the rich who are already rich and don't need giveaways. Did I mention that we're in an economic crisis?Did I also mention that every sane person in Congress is holding their nose because they are probably going to have to vote yes on a bailout plan that is certainly better than Bush's plan but far from ideal because Bush and Republicans refused to deal with the problem when it would have been far smarter to do so a year or two ago? Yeah, it's a mouthful to swallow. And nobody likes it. Did everyone think that the Chinese were going to pour their billions into our housing market forever while huge areas of our economy lagged behind in the 20th century? Were we going to buy oil from the Arabs forever while shipping our jobs overseas? Were we going to borrow from the future forever

Millwright Ron
www.unionmillwright.com

Union Busting

Union busting
The following tactics are sometimes used:

Supervisors and managers can deliver letters, speeches, and informal chats, sometimes prepared by a union-buster.

Employees may be asked to attend one-on-one discussions, group meetings, or lectures about the union, during which they will be paid. Employers must be careful not to intimidate their employees, because employees can appeal to the NLRB, usually resulting in an election being rerun, and in some cases resulting in the employer being automatically required to recognize the union as the bargaining unit representing employees. At these meetings, employers discuss the negative aspects of a union and try to convince employees not to join.

In some cases, supervisors and managers will walk the floors more frequently and arrange impromptu chats and meetings to find out what their workers are up to.
The union-busters may prepare many letters to be signed by administrators, employees, and well-liked supervisors and managers. They may express appreciation for what the employees have done for the company, admit having made mistakes in the past and express an intention to do a better job in the future. They will also paint an ugly picture of the union or suggest that the union is hiding something.

To convince employees that they don't need a union to obtain improvements, a company may provide unexpected increases in wages or benefits, and may link benefits or wages not to join unions union or threaten wage cuts.

In extreme cases the union-buster may direct management to play one group of employees against another to generate disunity (e.g. "disloyal" union supporters versus "loyal" union opponents, one department against another, etc.).

United States Labor law presents very strict guidelines for both employer and union actions in union organizing. Unions and employers can attempt to present their factual case against or for the union, but employers cannot threaten employees or even make them feel intimidated. The union buster's key strategy, when confronted with an election, is to organize a Counter-Organizing drive.



Millwright Ron

WWW.unionmillwright.com

Lifetime Achievement Falsie Award

Lifetime Achievement Falsie Award
The Center for Media and Democracy/PR Watch gave its first-ever “Lifetime Achievement Falsie Award” to Berman, the man CBS’s 60 Minutes dubbed “Dr. Evil.” The Falsies shine an unflattering light on those responsible for polluting our information environment—you know, those high-paid corporate mouthpieces who have truth-telling issues.


Millwright Ron


http://www.unionmillwright.com/

What Is a Veteran?

What Is a Veteran?

A “Veteran” — whether active duty, discharged, retired, or reserve — is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to, and including his life.” That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country today, who no longer understand that fact.