ALLSAINTS66

>>But that contract said that if either of you were unhappy with the deal, you have the option to re-negotiate another contract at that point.
The owners did NOT back out of a contract, they simply exercised a mutally agreed upon right to renegotiate.<<

Yeah you know, we tried that here in the South back in the 1800s, and
look how THAT worked out... *smirk*

skymike

Your avatar is AWESOME, '66!

ALLSAINTS66

Thank ye. I got it as a magnet from ebaY. You can get one
too, ratcheer:

h**p://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-ORLEANS-SAINTS-JAX-BEER-FRIDGE-MAGNET-/120702943237?pt=US_Football_Fan_Shop&hash=item1c1a74c005

Replace the *s with t's, just so we don't show up in
searches or nothin' like that.

No, I ain't that person, and I make no profits from tellin' y'all
about this here cool magnet. Enjoy.

SapperSaint

66 made a very good point with his reference to baseball.

Baseball killed it's self with the strike. The MLB started the recovery during the Sosa - McGwire HR battle. (which was later destroyed by the press and government) with the steriod crap.

I remember, not too long ago, you could turn on just about any channel and find a baseball game. You can't do that now. Baseball is still having the effects of the stopage.

Football. Has fully taken over the tv waves. For goodness sake, they even play re-runs for pro and college games all year long. I don't think the players, owners and NFL Brass really understand what harm can happen to the NFL as a whole if this lockout continues.

Most of sports fans are lower - middle blue collar people. Who work very hard for the money they make and are so devote to the teams they support that they will adjust their income just to buy tickets to games.

Once you make those people feel alienated, or feel betrayed.....your buisness is screwed.

"We are number one. All others are number two, or lower."
-The Sphinx
http://blackandgold.com/groups/28-ou...tsman-s-corner

ALLSAINTS66

Faddarekkid, I think the original baseball quote was Danno's.

And fadda resta darekkid, I'm a chick. Not that it really matters
in this context, but, just in the interest of full disclosure, I guess.

As for blue collar fans, it feels like most of the major sports leagues
have totally forgotten this. They cater to high dollar fans and corporations,
even tearing out season ticket holder seats to make room for corporate
ballrooms to watch games from. Glassed enclosures, away from all
of us rowdy, dirty, raucous, drunk and disorderly fans who made
all those gottdang seats POSSIBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

While I will *always* love the New Orleans Saints, I do feel like
the leagues have let their money go to their heads, and are shooting
themselves in the feet with some of this stuff. NASCAR is another
example. They keep trying to make the sport more "mainstream
friendly" and they keep wondering why seats at tracks like Bristol
last weekend get emptier, and emptier. They say, "it's the economy".
Naw, it's not the economy. It's that they keep jacking ticket prices
up, while changing rules and watering down the sport more an'
more. There's only so much fertilizer people will put up with.
And with ALL these leagues, there's usually a smaller, cheaper,
passionate and wildly entertaining local league we all CAN and
WILL go to instead of their overpriced pablum.

Except for the Saints. There is not, was not and never will be
a replacement for them. Which is why I really really REALLY
hope the NFL and the players will find a happy medium and
GET ON WITH IT ALREADY.

skymike

amen.

and thanks for the magnet link! that sucker's going on my truck!

'66, you're really coming on this board with a bang. I disagree with a little of what you say, but thats what its all about. Dont take nothin
too serious. After all, B&G is all for fun, and we're rooting for the same
team.

If they'll get the season rolling, we'll get some tailgators going.

SAINT_MICHAEL

I understand that the history of America shows that organized labor had its purpose and place. But as response to a seemingly common idea running through this thread, I say it is a mistake to relate modern day unions exclusively with hard, blue collar workers and vice versa. It’s the ethic of the person that makes a hard worker, not a union. I've got family and friends in both teacher and refinery worker positions (both heavily unionized) and to say that union workers are synonymous with hard workers is a crock. In fact, the opposite is often true because non-union contract workers are frequently self employed and more motivated because they don't have the safety net of a high profile, politically motivated, due funded, lawyer advised and represented union to fall back on.

I know for a fact that unions dissuade teachers in at least one local district here in the bay area from having extra open office hours before or after school or from spending weekend unpaid time on their own with students. Their union has specifically told them that those hours are not in their contract to provide and therefore not sanctioned by the union and should not be participated in. So, this blue collar, hard working teacher union basically tried to deny a teacher a weekend field trip to a local museum with her class even though it was on her time and dime.

I've been paid for many labor jobs and sweated through many 12-hour workdays to pay my way through college without joining a union. So don't act like the workingman claim is strictly for pro union members. I worked hard to get money for college, worked hard to get my degree in college, and I’ve worked hard once I got out of college to make a career. To me, the idea that a group of people can have a monopoly on a work skill and demand that anyone who is employed in that skill pay them money so that they can represent them is extortion and as Un American as denying someone freedom of speech or religion. Didn’t the Corleone family kinda get started out like that?

ALLSAINTS66

And do you know WHY the union tells them not to do that?

So it can't be FORCED ON THEM.

The idea that unions aren't needed any more is, IMO, a very
dangerous one. Unions are there to protect workers from
corporations. That's still a valid reason to have unions.
No, unions aren't always RIGHT, who IS? But collective
bargaining for workers is as important now as it ever was.
Because believe me, if there were no unions again, it wouldn't
take long at all to realize that when workers don't have a
collective voice, wages plummet, benefits plummet, working
conditions become hazardous beyond belief, and if a worker
complains... no job. THAT is why there are unions. Overzeal-
ous at times? Perhaps. But that HARDLY means that the
need for unions is outdated and over rated.

I personally have never made the jump that "union" = "hard worker".
I *do* make the jump that "union" = "blue collar". I hadn't personally
got that the jist of any of the union discussions was a paean to how
hard the person works or not. Hell, management, from my
personal experience, are some of the laziest people in all creation,
and proud of it. In fact, it gets worse the more wealthy most people
get. I know plenty of people whose idea of success is to live off of
interest and dividends and never have to work again. Most of them
are extreme fiscal conservatives when it comes to social issues, and
couldn't give a rat's arse about the quality of life of a working man
or his family.

I guess personally, the people I respect most are people who work
hard no matter what. No matter if they have money or not.
No matter if they get paid or not. I know it's not a universal value
or even a national one, but it's one amongst the people I love, and
it's how I was raised, so that's what's important to ME, and what
I value in people, whether they are football players, teachers,
janitors, or checkout clerks. What I also know from a lifetime
of observation, is that unions really protect people who can work
themselves to death, more than the lazy people. Unions protect
people with a good work ethic from being abused by corporations.
Lazy people are just lazy poeple, wherever they are found.

SAINT_MICHAEL

Hardly. They do it so they lazy tenured teachers won't look bad when they don't go the extra mile. To force teachers to have to work on weekends you'd have to force the kids to as well. We know that ain't gonna happen.

No, today's unions' goal is to get the most amount of money they can for it's members while performing the least amount of work possible. A person with a good work ethic would have no problem working their way up through better jobs with or without a union. Unions do more protecting of lazy workers that should be fired than they do of strong workers. Employers want strong workers...they don't need to be protected!

Believe it or not, all corporations are not monstrosities that are run as sweat shops only to torture the employees. Surprisingly, many have begun to realize that if you reward good workers with good salaries and good working conditions you get happy employees who do quality work. After all, there are plenty of workers in this country that are fine not working union jobs. In 2010, 88.1 % of the US workforce was non union:

Union Members Summary

So it seems that unions aren't always needed to protect the poor workers from the companies and their evil managers. 88 or so percent of us didn't need them in 2010.

BringTheWood

This isn't all together completely true. Just because someone busts their ass doesn't mean they are going to get their due. You can't honestly believe that. Ideally that is how it should work, but that's being optimistic. I can say to you, from experience, that I have seen more than 10 instances of workers being let go for less than substantial reasons. I live, and have almost always lived in Texas, an at will state. That means that you can be fired, at any given time, for no given reason, and you'd be surprised how often people get canned for no other reason than the managers don't like the people.

I won't disagree that some unions are leeches, because that would be a foolhardy thing to say. However, there are many that are not. To the same effect, as you stated, that while many companies are not unfair to their workers, some actually are. You have good and bad with anything. Personally, I support unions. That doesn't mean that I WOULD support EVERY union, especially the ones that I know are dirty. Objectively, unions are supposed to promote fairness and job security. Objectively, employers should take care of their employees, assuming they aren't terrible workers. How often are people objective though. Optimism and even pragmatism take a quick backseat to pessimism in this country. I try to stay optimistic and pragmatic.

To argue against unions fundamentally is just a bit wrong in my opinion. Any level headed individual can see that more often than not, it is the worker being screwed. Both sides do get screwed, just workers more often than not. Also, I feel that it is worth noting that RARELY would you have a PRIVATE company that would deal with unions. More often than not unions are there to combat corporations. Corporations elect leaders whose primary, and often only goal is the maximization of profits, without promoting well being in the workplace, worker incentive, or job security.

Lastly, without completely researching the EXACT statistics I would say that the 88.1% number you gave isn't because 88.1% of people are COMPLETELY fine without union support. There are a whole list of reasons why some people won't associate with unions, many of which aren't an ideological distaste. If you would have me elaborate on some, I could. And, truth is, Reagen went around in the 80's busting up most of the unions like Ryu against a car in a bonus stage. There just aren't nearly as many unions today as there were when America was more industrial. Lastly, to my last paragraph, America outsources so much freakin' work that many would form unions for, therefore we also see a drop in statistics. There just aren't as many industrial jobs in the states as their used to be.