Minneapolis PD Suspect Dies On Video While Handcuffed. FBI Investigating.

[Borderland]

I worked in a non-right-to-work state. Unions prospered. Once the union gets control everyone pays dues. They don't have to be union members but they pay dues. It's like a job tax. I was a union official for while and had take care of some very unpleasant business with management. I took a lot of crap from supervisors for no other reason than I was a union official. I got the idea that it was mostly a big dog contest in which I had no interest in. One of my actions got a supervisor terminated. Fortunately management tried to keep the union happy. They did that because the unions contributed heavily to the campaigns of Democrats. Democrats ran the government.

I truly saw both sides of the equation and abuses from both management and the union. I agree with right-to-work laws. If a union truly has something to offer an employee, unions will exist. If they don't they won't exist. Probably the reason unions have been on the decline in the private sector for a long time.

[Joe in PNG]

Unions are simple. If they are fighting the man (eg. adjuncts unionizing in universities, et al.) then they’re a help.

If they are the man (eg. requiring that every cart, bag camera, ladder, etc. be carried in by union labor—I’ve played concerts in halls where I was told not to plug in and set up my own gear—F that...) then they are a hinderance.

Simple really. Blocks against overreach, or they are the overreach. Judge on a case-by-case.

JMO.

Unions, like Tylenol and opiates, are beneficial in low doses, and terrible in large doses.

[RoyGBiv]

Cost me $300 to have an "electrician" plug in a power strip for me at the Javitz Center once. Not including the rental cost for the strip.
Open outlet, plug in strip, leave.

I've worked a few union jobs over summers during HS and college. Food service mostly. The last union job I worked was at a cross dock facility for a major trucking company. Move this pallet from the truck at gate 27 to the truck at gate 3. Graveyard shift. My first night on the job, I'm just moseying. Trying not to take the wrong freight to the wrong place. I'm dropping a pallet in the forward end of a trailer and this guy comes flying in driving an empty forklift. Another guy follwoed on foot.

Forklift guy... Stops about 3 feet from me with the forks about chest high. Says.... "You might want to take it easy. You don't want to have an accident." (something close to that)

Apparently I was working too fast at my mosey pace.

Supervisor was very happy with my work that night. I never went back. Got a job waiting tables at 2x the pay. Plus free food and drinks at the end of the night. No benefits though.

[hufnagel]

The U.S. is a country of many contradictions in its policies.

Some insights from my earliest years working for the federal gov't:

When I would suggest that anyone who was able bodied but received financial relief should be compelled to work, whether street sweeping, ditch digging, public works, whatever...I was told that the unions wouldn't tolerate the incursion on its fiefdom. They wanted that work to go to union members. (Who obviously paid dues.)

When I shoveled snow in front of the federal building where I worked in Brooklyn, I was told I couldn't because it wasn't in my job description. I said "then fire me" because I didn't want little old ladies falling down and breaking their hips on un-shoveled sidewalks. They didn't fire me.

Yet, in East New York, (Brooklyn), the district manager (back in the late 70's) thought nothing of sending me out with a baseball bat to escort some of the women into the office when they came off the subway. It was a very high crime area. The bat wouldn't have gotten me very far.

However, when I drilled holes and mounted coat hooks under the female employees desks so their pocketbooks wouldn't be stolen, I was told I wasn't an electrician and wasn't allowed to do it. (I still finished the job.)

If we could only get out of our own way and allow common sense to rule our decisions. Hell, to even enter into the decisions.

Anyway, I digress...

you just described 99.9% of the bullshit i've ever had to deal with in the IT/tech world. get out of my fucking way and let me get done the shit you asked/tasked/pay me to get done, as efficiently and effectively as possible. and stop trying to micromanage. best client (when I finally went full time as an indie) ever, I said straight to his face "you really don't know half of what i'm saying, and you frankly don't really care. you just want it done, done right, and done as quickly a possible. let me get on with it and I'll tell you when i'm finished." he said "you're right" and for 15 years we had a great relationship, until he sold the auto parts biz.

[hufnagel]

I sent my son to RSR in Point Pleasant, WV several years ago for advanced defensive driving. The training saved his life a couple of years later.

I'm an advocate for everyone doing a DD hands-on course, or at the very least a HPDE track day in their own car. The knowledge gained of just how hard you can (or can't) push your vehicle in time of need can be of great benefit.

[TheNewbie]

We haven’t had a good ol' fashion PF thread drift in a while. This turning into a discussion about unions is just that.

I truly love this place.


Speaking of unions, Ron Chernow’s biography on Ulysses S. Grant is excellent. The audio version is 48 hours long, but totally worth it.

[hufnagel]

I very lightly mentioned this, but I guess this is as good a time as any to speak to it.

Most permitting practices for demonstrations are predicated on ensuring the safety of participants and sanitation of the community. The police need to ensure for your own safety that they can provide officers to blocks intersections, are aware of the nature of the protest to provide officers to maintain peace if it's a controversial topic likely to attract violence, that the route doesn't interfere with critical services such as a hospital, that the organizers provide an adequate number of porta johns for the number of people at a rally of X number of hours so you don't have 10,000 people shitting and pissing in public, etc.

I agree that it's unconstitutional to use such permitting processes to stifle 1st Amendment rights and some places teeter or outright use it in such a manner, however that's not the intention behind the practice in general. Most people doing this shit don't think through more than 5 seconds of the who/what/where/when/why and its safety and health impacts.

I tried to formulate a response; you did my thoughts better justice.

[BehindBlueI's]

One of the most difficult challenges of being a libertarian - is trying to determine where the overlapping rights meet infringements. Which is not to say, I disagree that blocking a freeway and creating havoc doesn't infringe on free movement. However, here's a difficult one - does anyone have a right to use a highway? If the answer is yes. Doesn't that mean whether marching or driving you have a right to use that freeway?

I don't see that as a difficult question in the slightest. Am I allowed to park on a public airport's runway? Am I allowed to drive on the sidewalk? No, because it's not a tyranny of the individual. Society pooled resources to build roads to drive on. I don't get to override the desire of the vast majority and the rule of law because *I* decide I should utilize the resource differently. I especially don't get to endanger people to do so.

We shut down a bunch of streets so that restaurants could have more outdoor seating and pedestrians would have a safer environment. That's society, via government and the rule of law, deciding to utilize a resource differently and adapting the law to do so. That's how a republic works vs how mob rule works.

So what about police unions?

Positive or negative for their members and society?

Have they helped us get to this crisis point?

Do you want me to be able to arrest the mayor's buddy if the mayor's buddy is a criminal? Then you want police unions.

Do you want me to get promoted by donating to the mayor/sheriff's election campaign, not arresting or ticketing people with the right credentials (which usually start with "I know..." and/or "...and donated to..."? They you don't want police unions.

Do you want officers who feel like they can do their jobs within the confines of both policy and the law and not get fired for political whim and media pressure? Then you want police unions.

Do you want officers afraid to take enforcement action that might result in media/political attention and the resulting APE* case? Then you do not want police unions.


*APE = A Political Emergency

[blues]

Speaking of unions, Ron Chernow’s biography on Ulysses S. Grant is excellent. The audio version is 48 hours long, but totally worth it.

Read the book. Grant was an interesting portrait.

[peterb]

This was cool:

http://twowheeledmadwoman.blogspot.c...mindspace.html
... The huddle of police and marchers dissolved into fist-bumps and shoulder slaps; the line of contact between police and marchers broke out in handshakes and even hugs, social distancing notwithstanding.* You could see the strain easing in expressions and postures. The police were still wary and the marchers were still upset, but they appeared to be seeing one another as people instead of symbols or threats.

The police and protestors marched the rest of the way to the Governors house intermingled. The protestors agreed to disperse afterward, and police walked with them back downtown to their cars.

No one got hurt. There were no riots in Indianapolis last night. There was no looting.