Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: UPMC is the biggest employer in the region, is one of the largest landowners, and is largely tax exempt. They threatened to cut off service to all Blue Cross customers if BC/BS bought one of the local smaller hospital systems.

They're kinda dicks.

Since non-medical employees began seeking unionization earlier this year from SEIU, they have been telling the public about the low wages paid by the healthcare giant and how it affects their ability to make ends meet.

Guess we know why their workers are trying to unionize then.

/but don't worry, unions are evil and government regulations will protect us.

FTA: "I don't need them to pick out my food for me; I need them to pay me better wage so I can pick out my own food,"


THE POINT, CORPORATE ASSHOLES. YOU MISSED IT.

L.D. Ablo: Let's just bring back indentured servitude.

Sell yourself to a corporation for seven years to get out of your student loans.

Hey it's a guaranteed job and at least you know when this "unpaid internship" will end!

/I gagged a little typing that...

JWideman: IlGreven: Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: You should pay me more than I'm worth!

No wage slave has ever been paid even half of what he's worth.

I don't mean your unicorn fru-fru fantasy idea of what his soul is worth...I mean his worth to the company.

If you're making the company a $10 profit per hour of your labor, your labor isn't worth $15 an hour, no matter how hungry your family is.

I don't want to get into a long discussion, but $10 profit is above and beyond the wage you're paying the worker. I'm talking about the wealth created by a wage slave's work.

Huh?

I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

Liquidation. You run a lousy company, and you're doing Bob no favors by not being able to pay him a living wage. It'll hurt, but it'll be better in the long run.

This. Why can't Bob sell his widgets directly for $11 each? He's the one actually producing anything of value.

Because he doesn't have the supply chain, sales force, manufacturing capabilities, advertising, or patents that the company has??

cuzsis: L.D. Ablo: Let's just bring back indentured servitude.

Sell yourself to a corporation for seven years to get out of your student loans.

Hey it's a guaranteed job and at least you know when this "unpaid internship" will end!

/I gagged a little typing that...

gagged you say? so youve been an intern for clinton?

cuzsis: Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: UPMC is the biggest employer in the region, is one of the largest landowners, and is largely tax exempt. They threatened to cut off service to all Blue Cross customers if BC/BS bought one of the local smaller hospital systems.

They're kinda dicks.

Since non-medical employees began seeking unionization earlier this year from SEIU, they have been telling the public about the low wages paid by the healthcare giant and how it affects their ability to make ends meet.

Guess we know why their workers are trying to unionize then.

/but don't worry, unions are evil and government zero regulations will protect us.

FTFY.

oi clueless over paid execs trying to find the cheapest way to save face in the media and blowing it completely.

two things need to happen single payer healthcare and a major increase in the minimum wage at least a $5 bump.

BarkingUnicorn: Yeah, I'd say UPMC is doing pretty well, if you like low profit margins and job creation.

Except for the folks who need to use a food bank to compensate for their low wages apparently.

Speaking of Dire Straits....

I go down to Speaker's Corner I'm thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they're Jesus one of them must be wrong
There's a protest singer singing a protest song - he says
'they want to have a war to keep us on our knees

They want to have a war to keep their factories
They want to have a war to stop us buying Japanese
They want to have a war to stop Industrial Disease
They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They want to sap your energy incarcerate your mind
They give you Rule Brittania, gassy beer, page three

Two weeks in Espana and Sunday striptease'
Meanwhile the first Jesus says 'I'd cure it soon
Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons'
The other one's on a hunger strike he's dying by degrees
How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease?!

Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: You should pay me more than I'm worth!

No wage slave has ever been paid even half of what he's worth.

I don't mean your unicorn fru-fru fantasy idea of what his soul is worth...I mean his worth to the company.

If you're making the company a $10 profit per hour of your labor, your labor isn't worth $15 an hour, no matter how hungry your family is.

I don't want to get into a long discussion, but $10 profit is above and beyond the wage you're paying the worker. I'm talking about the wealth created by a wage slave's work.

Huh?

I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

Guess you're going to go out of business because no one is willing to starve to death for your company.

/Ta-da!

But they said the wealth would trickle down...

Silly Jesus: I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

Well, if you're a typical CEO in the United States, you pay yourself $2,000 for every $10 that you pay Bob, write off your losses against corporate taxes, then when the debt piles up you fire Bob before awarding yourself a $20 million bonus for a job well done or, in the worst of cases, pay yourself a $100 million golden parachute before leaving the company in someone else's hands.

According to Republicans, this is called being a successful job creator and deserving of tax cuts.

Industry. - The business of making things and selling them.

Capitalism. - The practice of moving liquid capital into services and industries and financing their growth for a profitable return.

Corporatism. - The practice of gutting businesses with gymnastic financial constructs, pocketing the money and moving on to the next business to wreck.

Governance. - The institution that legislates in favor of whoever manages to grab the most loot.

LOL!

This is like starting a food bank inside of Africa and asking the malnourished people to donate to it :D

Hey, I'd rather my company gave most of its employees a food bank than this December's bonus.

/Layoff papers
//Spare change, anyone?

fredklein: JWideman: IlGreven: Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: You should pay me more than I'm worth!

No wage slave has ever been paid even half of what he's worth.

I don't mean your unicorn fru-fru fantasy idea of what his soul is worth...I mean his worth to the company.

If you're making the company a $10 profit per hour of your labor, your labor isn't worth $15 an hour, no matter how hungry your family is.

I don't want to get into a long discussion, but $10 profit is above and beyond the wage you're paying the worker. I'm talking about the wealth created by a wage slave's work.

Huh?

I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

Liquidation. You run a lousy company, and you're doing Bob no favors by not being able to pay him a living wage. It'll hurt, but it'll be better in the long run.

This. Why can't Bob sell his widgets directly for $11 each? He's the one actually producing anything of value.

Because he doesn't have the supply chain, sales force, manufacturing capabilities, advertising, or patents that the company has??

Cuz THAT'S covered by the 9% left after 91% employee compensation per unit, uh huh. Nope, money laundering is still the most likely candidate for this scenario. here's how it goes down...


Lilly Cheesus fronts a "manufacturing shop" in Bumfark, and he has contracts for widgets from Boliver Morth, who works for the Fed. Boliver pays Billy Wheesus in direct cash payments(wired) and invoices 200,000 widgets a month for $11/ea. But Milly Beesus only produces 200 widgets, which are round, hollow containers you see, that he actually buys at Family Dollar, and he contracts with farking BOB to make them and farking BOB is a double digit IQ Teaderper that thinks being on a 1099 is the cats pajamjams and he pays farking BOB by the peice, and farking BOB is all like SCHWEET MAH NIGG CASH MONAY becuase he gets $2000/mo for painting these units brown or something while working 20hr/week and that's not sufficient for his brood of 4 sticky children and a wife that never wears anything but pajama bottoms and underwear halter tops with her Uggs, so there's some unresolved tension there but Filly Leesus keeps telling farking BOB that orders are gonna be up next month or some stupid shiat which farking BOB totally believes and fronts him some cash or lunch and shiat, and Gilly Meesus records his costs on book at 10:1 thanks to farking BOB'S paychecks we he records as operating expenses because farking BOB is on that 1099 yall and then fudges his deliverables by 3 decimal places to the right.

Dilly Peesus pays himself $8K/mo which IS farkING BALLIN' YO and puts a cardboard case of 200 units on a long haul service on the 23rd of every month and gets the bill of lading which somehow matches up with his fudgy receivable and HE STAPLES THEM TOGETHER YO AND MAILS THEM TO... Boliver Morth, who submits them in triplicate to his accounting team. It's a flawless scheme.

Plug and play labor is gonna have us all behind plows and ass deep in mud for ol massah corpy while he dines on pork chops.

This will end well...

Insatiable Jesus: Either decide that you want to live as a serf under some corporate feudal system or if you want to take your country, and your world back.

Make no mistake, the enemy of America are the wealthy and the corporatists. They launched a coup on this country. Remember oil going out of sight for no readily apparent reason? Yeah, that was them sucking all the the money possible out of the bottom of the system. The Wall Street crash? That was money being sucked out of the top of the system. They systematically looted our wealth from bottom to top and blamed it on speculators and black people buying homes, respectively.

Now they sit on their wealth while the nation that played host to so many of them bleeds and suffers. And these insufferable pricks use that misery to hold this nation hostage and demand the dismantling of decades worth of hard fought labor law and lower taxes for themselves.

Power has never simply quit the field. Never in history has power just stepped aside or stopped seeking MORE power. It has to be driven off with blades and bullets. Power only understands power. These people have no intention of stopping until they have as much power and control over our lives as possible. The see this nation as something for them to rightfully plunder, citing the fact that people like themselves built this country and created this economy. Never mind that if any of the wealthy families of today never existed, somebody else would have done those same things. But they believe themselves to be special, above us.

They need to be shown that they are not special. That they bleed and suffer and burn like those that they tread upon so callously.

Musket Balls.

Faces.

It's time to take out the Tories, again.

There was a time when suggesting this would have been reactionary and stupid. Not anymore.

Only in America do people complain about being given free food.

giftedmadness: Only in America do people complain about being given free food.

And France. Having the audacity to scoff at cake. The nerve!

Silly Jesus: I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

I can arrange to have those widgets made for $6 each, including the shipping from Bangalore.

Bob can get a job somewhere else.

No one has mentioned that, thanks to Bush and Obama economic decisions, these worker's pay isn't worth much, and that is the real problem.

Your company chits, despite the classy forefather pics, aren't worth the rag paper they're printed on.

But yeah, go blame the employer. Unionize. Strike. Who knows? Maybe that company won't relocate and leave 20,000 people fighting for 4 MacDonald's jobs.

Abacus9: Giblet: Silly Jesus: I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

I can arrange to have those widgets made for $6 each, including the shipping from Bangalore.

Bob can get a job somewhere else.

Yeah, cuz everyone is hiring right now, right?

Bob had a job making $10 a widget: more than 95% of all people make. He was dissatisfied. His employer was dissatisfied. So the job was sent overseas.

Bob will work it out, or else his genes won't cloud our lovely pool.

Struggle against the logic all you like, but you will either adapt to it or starve.

Silly Jesus: jaylectricity: Silly Jesus: You should pay me more than I'm worth!

No wage slave has ever been paid even half of what he's worth.

I don't mean your unicorn fru-fru fantasy idea of what his soul is worth...I mean his worth to the company.

If you're making the company a $10 profit per hour of your labor, your labor isn't worth $15 an hour, no matter how hungry your family is.

All you have to do is look at the increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth between worker and owners/investors to know that a lot of people are not getting paid "what they are worth". There are a lot of ways for individual workers to be taken advantage of and your idea that everyone is getting paid exactly what they are "worth" is frankly not true. If an employee is generating $100 of profit per hour are they worth more than $10/hour? Or will that employer be tempted to pocket the $90 instead of $80 to put out a quarterly report that shows an extra 0.2cents/share growth?

The evidence is there that wages and the labor market have been taking the hit to further profits. Does this look like people getting paid what they are worth?
http://dailybail.com/home/chart-us-corporate-profits-vs-employee-wage s .html

You live in a globalized economy now, whether you like it or not.

That was a bipartisan decision. One of many that you ignored because you were OMGLOLing your life away.

If Mabewha, who lives in a grass hut, is willing/able to do your job for half of your salary, you better learn to either negotiate well, or learn to make a good mud pie.

Or, maybe you should strike. Yeah! That'll help!

Giblet: No one has mentioned that, thanks to Bush and Obama economic decisions, these worker's pay isn't worth much, and that is the real problem.

Your company chits, despite the classy forefather pics, aren't worth the rag paper they're printed on.

But yeah, go blame the employer. Unionize. Strike. Who knows? Maybe that company won't relocate and leave 20,000 people fighting for 4 MacDonald's jobs.

If they relocate who is going to buy all the products they are making? American citizens continue to represent the largest purchasers of consumer goods on the planet. In any case you can only exploit less developed nations for so long, until you develop their economies to the point where you are right back to the same labor and regulatory costs you face in a developed nation like the US.

In the long run we are going to have to figure out how to more tightly manage our economy. There are a lot of distruptive technologies on the horizon and robots don't buy cars or clothes, there will be the effects of global warming on food production, and of course are ever expanding population. There are major societal changes on the horizon, both at home and abroad. The world is going to be a very different place in 50 years time.

Shahab: Giblet: No one has mentioned that, thanks to Bush and Obama economic decisions, these worker's pay isn't worth much, and that is the real problem.

Your company chits, despite the classy forefather pics, aren't worth the rag paper they're printed on.

But yeah, go blame the employer. Unionize. Strike. Who knows? Maybe that company won't relocate and leave 20,000 people fighting for 4 MacDonald's jobs.

If they relocate who is going to buy all the products they are making? American citizens continue to represent the largest purchasers of consumer goods on the planet. In any case you can only exploit less developed nations for so long, until you develop their economies to the point where you are right back to the same labor and regulatory costs you face in a developed nation like the US.

In the long run we are going to have to figure out how to more tightly manage our economy. There are a lot of distruptive technologies on the horizon and robots don't buy cars or clothes, there will be the effects of global warming on food production, and of course are ever expanding population. There are major societal changes on the horizon, both at home and abroad. The world is going to be a very different place in 50 years time.

Yup.

Companies, since the globalization kicked into high gear in Clinton's last term, are extremely short-sighted. They only forecast 2-3 years out, with a focus on maximizing profits and meeting stock price targets.

That is one major cause of the income disparity that you see today.

Nothing can be done about it, so I recommend buying a crappy farm, far away from all the soon-to-be-angry city folks. Brew some beer. Raise bacon.

Oh wait. I already did that!

Abacus9: Giblet: Abacus9: Giblet: Silly Jesus: I own a company, and I sell widgets. I get $11 for each widget that I sell. I pay Bob $10 for each widget that he makes, but his family is hungry. What is your solution for the evil business owner?

I can arrange to have those widgets made for $6 each, including the shipping from Bangalore.

Bob can get a job somewhere else.

Yeah, cuz everyone is hiring right now, right?

Bob had a job making $10 a widget: more than 95% of all people make. He was dissatisfied. His employer was dissatisfied. So the job was sent overseas.

Bob will work it out, or else his genes won't cloud our lovely pool.

Struggle against the logic all you like, but you will either adapt to it or starve.

Too bad the same rules don't apply to the employer.

Yeah, but you only vote for those politicians that the employers choose (as advertised on MSNBC and Faux).

Seriously: WTF did you expect to happen? Unicorns and cheesecake?