Speaker 1: 0:13

Alright, we're going to go into do not disturb mode. I'm probably going to end up taking a phone call or two, but hopefully not.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Yeah, let's hope not.

Speaker 1: 0:25

Whatever jerk Okay.

Speaker 2: 0:30

We ready now? No.

Speaker 1: 0:32

I still have to do my. Do not disturb. Okay, now we're ready. Oh, am I annoying you? No, it's fine, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 0:41

It's fine here. Let me reset my fucking timer. Have I ruined your day already? You actually have ruined my day, to be honest, but not for podcast reasons. Hey, Siri set a timer for 30 minutes. Oh, I just realized.

Speaker 1: 0:56

I figured out why.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yeah, it's okay, yeah, you're going to be okay. I mean thanks for your support. It could be better, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Anyways, appreciate your friendship and support and Hokey pokey, politics is back, rallying behind me. Here we go, I'm rallying, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Hmm.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Episode 11. 11, I'm rallying. Yeah, episode 11, double digits. We are firmly into it. We are into it, that is for sure. I think we have four listeners now why would you say that? The four subscribers.

Speaker 2: 1:34

I'm trying to be optimistic, yeah right like that's in your freaking bloodstream anymore, good god. Anyways, hokey pokey, politics is here. The hppp, hppp, we've got uh, another when do we start printing t-shirts? I mean we can get like merch behind us.

Speaker 1: 1:54

We don't have this yeah, isn't that't that the natural progression?

Speaker 2: 1:57

Yeah, it's lame, freaking cream wall that's behind each of us.

Speaker 1: 2:00

We could have, I think you do four episodes and then you create a merch website.

Speaker 2: 2:05

I think that's kind of the can we, can we create merch without paying for merch?

Speaker 1: 2:10

Yeah, print on demand. Okay, you'll get it in six months, when we get enough orders in to to print our first shirt. Yeah, there you go, crowdfunding. Maybe we could start a. Uh, go fund me. No, I'm good, I'm good, we could try, but but I'm good, yeah, anyways. So from our last episode where we talked, a comment from one of our four listeners.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So once again, eric P from Springfield had this to say DEI is a tricky topic. In a perfect world, the most qualified person gets the job, regardless of any other factors. But the reason things like affirmative action and DEI were implemented in the first place is because historically, minorities, who were the most qualified, were getting passed over strictly because they weren't white. One thing that hasn't changed is that older, wealthy white men are still predominantly the ones with all the money and power in our country. So to say we don't need some sort of system in place to be sure minorities are even considered for these jobs is to say that racism no longer exists in that power class of people and that they would make those decisions based solely on qualifications and nothing more. I'm not sure if that's the case. Fair enough comments, oh I couldn't.

Speaker 1: 3:33

You would have thought I wrote that oh okay, yeah, I don't think you were capable of right I'm not.

Speaker 2: 3:39

I'm not, no, no, I, I 100, agree, okay, I mean hook line and sinker. I don't think. Uh, just because we had a black president doesn't mean racism went away no, I think it got worse.

Speaker 1: 3:53

I 100. Yeah, I think he stoked a lot of flames. Yeah, that's his towards that. Oh yeah, he was very decisive.

Speaker 2: 3:59

Born while black divisive, decisive he was, he was, he was decisive there, you go.

Speaker 1: 4:06

That's what I meant.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Yeah, that's okay, no, I, yeah, I. I think DEI is a very tricky subject and I think a lot of stuff gets lumped into a DEI a label that isn't necessarily a DEI label, you know.

Speaker 1: 4:19

For example.

Speaker 2: 4:23

I mean, I think you know even our conversations. We're talking about airline pilots that were DEI hires.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Potentially.

Speaker 2: 4:27

Potentially. And once I started looking into it a little bit, I learned pretty early on that the airlines don't get to say who has a license and who doesn't, and the pilots have to go through their own training or not their own, but through pilot training and then they have to do 1500 hours of behind the wheel. Pedal Sure Pat, what? What I mean? Yoke, joystick, I have no idea what, whatever it is, they drive. They typically a yoke.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Okay, that's doesn't even seem right, but they drive. They typically a yoke. Okay, that's just doesn't even seem right. But and then once they're there, they've got you know. I mean there's, there's a a progression of um activities they have to go through just to get hired. And once they're through that, then they're considered licensed and they can be hired anywhere they want. And if a company wanted to say, hey, we would like to hire predominantly women, those aren't dei hires, they, they're all qualified. They have reached the threshold of what it takes to be licensed.

Speaker 1: 5:23

What's the reason a company would say we want to hire predominantly women?

Speaker 2: 5:26

I don't know. I mean just probably publicity, Probably to show that they are open-minded and that they are trying to eliminate the gender gap with, with salaries and yeah, so that's the definition of a DEI hire, but is a company saying we want to hire predominantly women or we want to hire predominantly minorities, right, that's a.

Speaker 1: 5:50

That's the definition of DEI hiring.

Speaker 2: 5:52

But the conversation we had was that it's not so much who they're hiring, it is that they're lowering the standards to get there. And in some scenarios I'm not saying that if you go to the local dollar general, that they're not going to say, you know, hey, we're looking for not out loud, we're looking for a predominantly whatever female you know, whatever race, whatever you know. I'm not saying that they don't do that, but they're also they don't have to have a license to do that work. So I think like that's, that's where, when I was talking the other day about having a threshold, like once you meet that threshold and you are officially qualified, could you be more qualified? Absolutely, but that doesn't mean you don't get the job, or or that somebody else can't get the job over you. Everybody there is hereby met that threshold, their license, they're ready to go.

Speaker 1: 6:43

Well, and that's one of the things I asked you about is are you you know? Are you saying that as long as they meet a minimum standard, then that's good enough for you?

Speaker 2: 6:52

As long as the minimum standard is safe. I mean, and that's what everybody you know regardless of that minimum standard shouldn't change according to race, creed, national origin, sex. You know any of that stuff?

Speaker 1: 7:05

Well, and in the airline industry I don't think it does. But DEI is much broader than that, obviously, than just the airline industry, and we know for certain that within police departments, within fire departments, things of that nature, they do lower standards in order to attract more diverse candidates, and that's where I think we've run into major problems. I've been thinking a lot about this topic this week because I think if you run a private business, you should be able to hire whoever you want, and the problem you run into is like with the airline industry that's a private business, so I think you should be able to hire whoever you want. However, there's a public safety factor there too that you don't get if you run a McDonald's or if you run a property management company. So you have to factor that in somehow. Again, the issue you run into you have a pilot that has met the minimum standard minimum standard.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Now let's go to the Toronto example, because what is being reported is that the person flying the aircraft was a young female who had met the minimum standard and she wasn't much over the minimum standard. From what I'm understanding, she was actually hired before she had met the minimum standard. Because that changes, I think, if you go to an actual school, an actual, I think. She went to a university that had a specialization for pilots, and so I think then they can hire them prior to meeting the minimum standard and then kind of accelerate them to that she had met the minimum standard by the time she was flying that aircraft.

Speaker 1: 9:00

More seasoned, let's say, I don't know how much more seasoned, but so what that gets into is, when you fly an airplane, you don't know who your pilot is, right, you have no idea. And so, from a public safety factor, are we going to end up now in a situation where we, you know, when you're selecting your flights, they also have pilot options for you, you know, do you want the guy who has, you know, 4,000 hours in an F-16 and then another 4,000 hours in a 747 and he's flying a 747? 747, and he's flying a 747, you know, would you rather have that, or would you rather have the young pilot who has the minimum of 1500 hours who's going to be flying that, that aircraft?

Speaker 2: 9:47

right, see what I mean well, I, I think in a perfect world the, the airlines would, would tie those people together and get the person with 1500 hours built up.

Speaker 1: 9:58

But look, look at this example, though. I think they did that. I don't know what the other person's hours were, but they said, I think they said he'd been with the airline for I don't know six or eight years. I think it had been.

Speaker 2: 10:09

I read that she got licensed in 2007. Like, she's been licensed a very long time to fly commercial jets.

Speaker 1: 10:16

And I don't know. No, I don't think that's the case. I think she was probably licensed. She may have been licensed in 2007, but not to fly commercial jets. She had just got her what they call the ATP airline transport pilot certificate. Yeah, it's not even a license anymore Now you get a certificate. But she had gotten her ATP, I think, last year or within the last couple of years. What I had read again, you know, who knows what the actual?

Speaker 1: 10:42

we won't know the actual truth until it's a year and a half from now, but the I believe the airline actually put the information out there just to kind of squash the rumors.

Speaker 2: 10:51

I mean what the and I just saw headlines and brief snippets was that she was plenty seasoned. She wasn't. Yes, she was newer, but it wasn't that like newer with this airline. I don't. I don't know, but the thing, the thing I go back to is when we look at her and, oh my gosh, look what happened. There are thousands of flights that white men who have been in the business for years have crashed and or or or I don't.

Speaker 1: 11:18

There's not, though, that. I think that's the whole point oh, I think they're.

Speaker 2: 11:21

I mean you look at all the other crashes that have happened or all of the other near misses. I mean this was an actual crash, but you've got people blowing through the runways, like that. Stuff happens quite a bit. You know where there's no injuries, but they're, you know, and I think when, when there is a female or there's a person of color, then it, you know, it's like, oh man, we got to really watch ourselves with this and it's like, well, I mean, the percent of women that have wrecked airplanes, commercial jets, are significantly lower than men, I would assume, but there's also significantly fewer pilots out there.

Speaker 1: 11:53

So that is you know what I mean. So then you have to look at, then you have to look at the percentage of. You know you have to do it by percentage of flights that women have flown versus. You know you have to do it that way in order to make it right, reasonable. But yeah, and and you know I'm not saying this accident happened because of a DEI hire, I'm not even saying she is a DEI hire. What I'm saying is that the problem you run into is if you have an airline that's committed for your example, we're committed to hiring women pilots Okay and you have 10 applicants and nine of them are men and they all have, you know, 6,000 hours in the aircraft type that you fly, and then you have a woman who has 1,500 hours and she's fresh out of school and you pick her because you want to diversify your hiring, then I think you are putting the public safety at risk.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Potentially Maybe not, you know, I mean, but that's the issue you run into. And you know the examples we gave last time where you actually had people in the cockpit who had previously, you know, shown that they are not safe in the cockpit and they're still put in there because they want to diversify their workforce. That's a huge problem. Yeah, why do you have that crap-eating grin on your face when you say, yeah, that's not a problem? Why do you have that crap-eating grin on your face when you say, yeah, that's not a problem?

Speaker 2: 13:16

It is a problem when I don't know where the problem could lie with. That could be our segue into the next issue. Oh, here we go.

Speaker 1: 13:26

So we're going to talk about unions. We're going to talk about unions, yeah. So we had a request from a listener to discuss unions specifically, whether or not they're necessary in today's workforce. Wow, yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:41

I wasn't, I haven't Bam. Throw that at you.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Catch you totally off guard. I wasn't expecting that.

Speaker 2: 13:46

I mean we can go wherever you want.

Speaker 1: 13:48

We don't have to care, sure, sure.

Speaker 2: 13:50

I'm obviously a very pro-union person. Tell us why. I mean I came from the union background. My grandpa raised 12 kids, single dad of 12 kids.

Speaker 1: 14:02

So what are the pros you see with union and what are the cons you see, if any? Oh, there's definitely a lot of cons, yeah, so let's start with that.

Speaker 2: 14:09

The pros are just that you've got a workforce that potentially comes together for the greater good of everybody, minus the owners. Sometimes there are times where the unions become too powerful and it's a detriment to the business and the union, and you have that with UAW, for example. Anyways, so UAW, I'm not bitter, I support you. Uaw getting too powerful is where I was headed. Uaw getting better I support you. Uaw getting too powerful is where I was headed. So when the unions become too powerful, they can start getting to the point where they make unrealistic expectations and you get to the point where a person puts in a lug nut every 15 minutes and they just sit there other than that and they're making twice what prevailing wages. That hurts everybody, that hurts the economy. Yet Does it matter that the CEOs still make, you know, $50 million a year? I mean you could argue that, but the fact is they, the union, has outgrown their power when it comes to those, those businesses, because generally everything collapses makes it a lot easier.

Speaker 2: 15:12

You know when, when you know I worked in the group, I worked in food, food industry union and then I worked in retail as well. So like grocery store stuff, and the thing with grocery stores is the more powerful the union gets, the more likely they are to automate. You know, 16, 17 bucks an hour, plus full pension, plus full healthcare. It's a lot cheaper for them to go buy a hundred thousand dollar robot to do the, the inventory that goes up and down the aisles, and you see it today, same same thing as the, the self-checkouts.

Speaker 2: 15:47

You know you get too powerful and they're going to push back which, when there was a big push in the late teens for you know the I don't know what they called it, something for 15, where they were pushing for $15 an hour for all fast food workers, you know the union was like, hey, that's fine, just know, if that happens, there's going to be a lot more automation when you walk into McDonald's, because it makes no sense for them to pay you $15 an hour to sit there when that person can go up to a touchscreen and they can put their own order in and your job has just been eliminated, we'll pay 15. We're only going to pay two people as opposed to 10 and the company still comes out ahead. So that's where unions and that that's just. I'm not saying McDonald's was a union, but that's where people coming together to fight for better wages, healthcare, pension. All of that Right, because if the union.

Speaker 1: 16:36

If the union pushes for a minimum wage and then that minimum wage becomes federal, then it does affect a McDonald's or any other business, whether it's union or not, and I mean honestly.

Speaker 2: 16:45

I think that's where what the overall goal was with the push for 15 is like if we can get fast food workers there and get the majority of them there, then these other companies are going to have to follow suit. The majority of them there, then these other companies are going to have to follow suit. Otherwise everybody's going to leave Arby's and go to McDonald's. You know what I'm saying and that was, I think, the thought process. And they got minimum wage up. But I don't know that the push for 15 was really. What did it? I think a lot of it was just the regular economics and people that were pushing forward, trying to provide a better wage to attract better workers.

Speaker 2: 17:19

And that's the part that gets tricky with unions is when you have a union contract, the union is required to fight for every union member, for whatever issue.

Speaker 2: 17:30

So if there's a grievance filed, if the boss comes up to you and says hey, don't stick your hand in that machine, and you stick your hand in the machine, you get hurt, and the boss says I told you not to do that, you know we're going to suspend you. The union has to go file a grievance for you regardless so you could have somebody who's been at a job for 30 years, that's never caused an issue, and they get hurt on the job and you know you go file a grievance for them and you lose. You get to arbitration and the arbitrator comes out and says no, I'm sorry, the termination or the suspension was justified. And then you turn around and you get the same guy who never wears his safety glasses, who has been written up 10 times, and then he loses an eye and sues them for a work comp claim and wins. That's where a lot of pressure comes in with unions, because a lot of times the unions do protect the people that are the bad employees, which make it harder for everybody else.

Speaker 2: 18:25

You know what I'm saying Every time the union protects the bad employees.

Speaker 2: 18:31

That's a big issue when I started it. You know my younger years as a steward, worked myself up to be on the executive board, then a vice president, and then became president of the food workers union. And I can tell you there were plenty of times where I would sit down with the HR manager you know the plant manager and and he'd say, all right, here's the deal, we're not ready to fire this guy yet. You know we're going to, we're going to do a little scare tactic and a little theatrics, but you know we're not going to fire them. And I'd be like, okay, that's fine. And the employee would come in and there'd be theatrics and you know he'd be putting his fist on the table and you know you can't, you can't be doing this crap. And then it's over. And then there's other times where he would walk in and he'd say what do you want to do? And I'd be like he needs to be fired. Hands down, he's like we don't have enough info on him yet. I'm like then write him up, suspend him, but keep that in his file so that you can fire him next time.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Because the more these people don't do their work and they're just dirtbag employees, they make everybody else's job harder and for the most part the union was okay with that. We just wanted them to progressively discipline people. That was the goal. You know, progressive discipline was the way, the way of the world, and that was the problem that I run into with's his first bad call. Nobody's hurt, you know whatever it is. Then you know maybe some progressive discipline, some coaching, you know whatever. But if the same guy has caused issues two or three times, then you progressively discipline them according to how bad the infraction was until the point of termination and then once they're terminated, they should be terminated everywhere. But the problem you have is these people will bark up the tree and, especially with the police union, they'll go straight to the news and the police union will all right, we'll, we'll, we'll find you a job somewhere else. You know, we found something over here. You know, I know this guy over here. And next thing, you know, you've got a dirtbag cop that's getting moved to a different place in the union files of grievance. All right, you know, we'll settle this, but we want everything scrubbed from his file. I mean, that's terrible. Like the union should never, never be able to do that and we, we would fight.

Speaker 2: 20:50

Occasionally. There would be times where we would scrub somebody's file, but it was if there was a gross amount of neglect on their termination, meaning the company had zero right to do what they did. You know they come up to you and say, hey, we caught you lying or we caught you falsifying something and we're going to terminate your employment. Well then we find out, hey, that wasn't true, that wasn't your initials, that was somebody else. We're getting your job back. We want his file scrubbed.

Speaker 2: 21:18

He really had nothing to do with this. He didn't cause it, and usually they would then scrub it and they'd say, okay, that's fine. Otherwise they would say, nope, it's got to stay. He caused the issue, whatever it is, so that this is in his fight for the wrong person. And I don't know how you stop it. You know, because they are. They are dues paying members and that's the argument. Like, hey, if I'm paying dues, you need to fight for me, whether I'm innocent or guilty.

Speaker 2: 21:46

And that was tough, Like there were times I remember going in and you almost feel like a, a public defender, like you're going in to argue this and I don't agree with what he did. You know what you did could have hurt somebody, or what you did, could have, could have. You know you used the wrong you know we had. We had people that would put. You know one guy, drop a hard hat into a giant grinder and just not tell anybody and go get a new one. Well, now you've got all that stuff ground up. Like kids could get that, you know you. You it's going to get caught in checks, hopefully. But what if something doesn't get through? That's how recalls happen. Like I don't want to go and defend this guy. He made a stupid mistake. He should have hit the e-stop. He should have taken, taken it on the chin and say, hey, I screwed up.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yeah. So you're talking about plastic and food. Yeah, a hundred percent. And then he gets fired. I you know. He files a grievance and now I've got to go argue it and I'm like fire this dude, like get rid of him, like he, he doesn't deserve to be here. He's going to cause more issues. Let you make the case for why unions shouldn't exist. It's been fantastic. I mean, you've just made the case for me, Thank you.

Speaker 2: 23:02

The difference. What I will say is the difference between a third world country and an industrialized country is whether or not they have the right to bargain for labor, wages, health care, pension, all of that, every single time. If you look at any country that has the ability to have unions, they're an industrialized, civilized country. Every single country that doesn't allow unions is a third world country. Everywhere in the globe, without exception. So that tells me, when you have a workforce that's pushing the middle class, how do you keep them from getting too strong? I don't know, I truly don't, but you need that to help push the middle class. You know, how do you keep them from getting too strong? I don't know, I truly don't, but you need that to help push the middle class, to help keep. You know what I mean. You wouldn't have weekends now, you wouldn't have 40 hour work weeks, you wouldn't have that's not true.

Speaker 2: 23:47

I mean all of that came in and all of that a lot of that, the national labor relations.

Speaker 1: 23:51

You know it wasn't a union thing, it was a. So there was a time when you really didn't have much option for where you worked because it was based on where you lived and you were horse and buggy and you didn't. You couldn't go very far. The introduction of the automobile changed that because people could now travel further and for work and it made companies more act more competitively to hire and find good employees. So a lot of that was already in the works and happening prior to unions.

Speaker 1: 24:25

I'm not going to say that unions weren't a factor, maybe they were. But again, we're talking, at least the topic. We can get into all that. But the topic was you know, is it practical? For today I'm anti-union.

Speaker 1: 24:40

I see way too I say way more cons than I see pros when it comes to unions. You know, here, locally, you know it drives me crazy every time a union doesn't get a bid on some project and they throw up a giant mouse in front of the business with a sign, you know, trying to shame them for not hiring union. I mean, I just think that's ridiculous. The other thing is, any company could unionize and any one of them could. And if unions were so good, if unions were, were the absolute end all be all, it's great for a company, it's great for employees then people would do it.

Speaker 1: 25:15

But the unions typically have to coerce their way into a building in order to get people to unionize. And if you have to use coercion to get people to do something, then that automatically tells you this is not something people are for businesses. You know countrywide if any company could do it, they. You know if any employees could do it, and if it was so great, I think they would do it. People don't typically have to be coerced to do what. What do you mean by coerced? Well, you know they, they have that. I don't know if they still do it, but I know there was a time when it was like you know you could, you could set a meeting by, like, sneaking a business card in or something like that. That's coercion. So here's the problem.

Speaker 2: 26:07

Been through this exact scenario. There was a factory I mean I'll just use the details Mattoon, the lender's bagel factory, had a death at the facility, had a person get wrapped up inside of a machine and impacted them pretty hard and company came out. You know that was a few years back. Company came out and said hey, look, you know, prices are going up, we're going to have to raise your healthcare. And a couple of employees got together and said hey, let's just see about a union. You know what? Why not? So they reached out. There was a small meeting up front. The problem is is any company? So they reached out. There was a small meeting up front. The problem is is any company that's out there? They're so anti-union for the most part that they will fire an employee for doing one of these meetings in a minute. And you see it, it happens at.

Speaker 1: 26:52

Walmart today. You know what I mean. But that's my point If unions were so great, if unions were so wonderful for the company, for the employees I'm not saying they're wonderful for the company- Well, okay, yeah, I mean, for the employees, they definitely can be.

Speaker 2: 27:09

So let me back up. So you got a factory, you've got a handful of employees that think they want to do this. Now what? Well, we need a list of all the names, we need a list of everybody in the, in the, in the factory, and then we're going to research where they live and we're going to go knock on their door and see if this is something they want to do. I mean, that's organizing and you, you knock on somebody's door and they answer the door and sometimes it's no, thank you.

Speaker 2: 27:30

I don went through this for nine months at Lenders Bagel and they threw everything at the union that you could imagine they did. They were called captive audience meetings where there were mandatory meetings that every employee had to go into and they were paying these union busters literally nationwide union busting, busting business to come in and and talk about how bad the union is and how much trouble the union is. And we went out and we took their SEC filings and saw that their CEO let me think of the numbers. The CEO made $760 million the year before, which was $2.9 million per day, $400,000 an hour. He makes more money in his first three steps into the office on January 1st than his average employee makes in a year. And they are the ones saying you guys don't deserve healthcare, you don't deserve better working conditions, we don't want to pay you overtime unless we're required. That's where the issue came in. And when that stuff gets shared, it spreads like wildfire and it was ultimate greed taking over a factory.

Speaker 2: 28:42

And we sat down with the company and well, let me back up. So union was voted in overwhelmingly and then negotiations start. And that's where most unions fail, because it's very tough to get a company into negotiations. And they fought against it as much as they could. They dragged their feet. You get a company into negotiations and they fought against it as much as they could. They dragged their feet. After a year the company's allowed to go out and call for another union vote legally and they would push every single strategy they could to try to break the union. And the people realized early on because we had told them if this is so bad or I mean, I'm sorry, if the unions are so bad, why is the company fighting against it? And it's because it's bad for them, not for the employee there. It's going to take, take from them and uh, ultimately, so why would anybody?

Speaker 1: 29:28

I mean, if this is my business and I built this business with my own blood, sweat and tears and took all that risk right? I mean regardless of how much money I make now? I mean, you've built a business. You know that in the beginning you don't make anything and I've grown this business. Now I've employed hundreds, if not thousands, of people up something of mine, because my employees are suddenly going to act ungrateful for having, for having that employment and they could go anywhere else. That goes. They can go somewhere else if they want.

Speaker 2: 30:08

Right, that goes both ways, because those employees are the ones that make the product for the owner.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Well, yeah, so without them there's you got no product right. There's benefits. Well, you, I'm sure you would find other employees, but there's benefits either way. But you know, yeah, I just I don't agree with it. I don't agree with you. Know, it's a private business and but you're forcing your way in the employees. I don't, I don't, I don't know that's capitalism, right, but I mean, but that employer should be able to say you know what? This is my business. I don't want this Right and therefore, if you're going to do this, I'm going to find new employees.

Speaker 2: 30:45

They do it all the time, and they should be able to. Yeah, I mean the thing now. They definitely can, because the National Labor Relations Board has been completely dismantled. Before you'd at least have to go and sit in front of a judge. After you do it now it's, it's free game.

Speaker 1: 30:58

Yeah but the issue that that um, that our listener brought up and it's it's some of the stuff that you've already talked about, so it's not something that I needed to chime in on because I think we're in agreement is, exactly, you know, some of these ridiculous rules that that right, you know, unions, the union environment creates. Let's say he was giving an example that, um, you know, in his line of work he has to have, uh, the you know power company come out and and hook up power lines and things, and if he calls them out on a particular day and it's, I think it was, 40 degrees was the threshold If it's 39 degrees, they won't get out of their car, they won't get out of their truck. They sit in their truck and they collect their money until it hits 40 degrees and then they get out and they do their work. I remember I had a boss I think I've told you this story, but I had a boss that when he was a kid teenager, he worked for a car manufacturer just during the summer part-time gig, working overnights, and his job was he was on a team that was there just in case the robots broke down, and so every night he would go in and him and his coworkers would play cards all night long, unless something happened.

Speaker 1: 32:12

Well, there was one night when he it was a Sunday, it happened to be a Sunday night he spilled a drink on the floor and so he got up to get some paper towels and one of the guys was like whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? I said, well, I spilled my drink. I'm going to clean it up. No, you're not. You're not qualified to do janitorial work. So what you're going to do is you're going to call the janitor, who's at home sleeping, and you're going, and when he does that, he's going to get a four-hour minimum and it's double time because it's on Sunday. That's insanity. Yeah, that's insanity. That's my issue with unions in a nutshell.

Speaker 2: 32:45

No, I mean. I think there are radical extremes all the way around.

Speaker 1: 32:50

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's radical, though Honestly I don't think that's radical or extreme when it comes to the way union rules.

Speaker 2: 32:57

I mean the thing like when I sat down we sat down with a guy from New Jersey to negotiate that contract and I had a 50, literally 50 page Excel spreadsheet with every employee, how much, how many hours they worked, how much overtime they had, how much their healthcare costs, how much their pension costs. I mean absolutely everything. So I could change something on page one and it would change the other 50 pages. And we came to the company and throughout our first proposal which of course was a $1.50 an hour raise, and we want to. We don't want to pay for healthcare at all and we want a full pension and we want 401k. You know what I mean Ridiculous the company comes at us hey, we, you know, we want you guys to pay off for all your healthcare. We want no pension, no health care, no 401k, and we want to pay you minimum wage. And then you negotiate it to get in the middle. When we threw that first offer at them and they threw theirs back, there was definitely a change in demeanor, because they realized that we could buy health care much cheaper than they could and we were putting them under our health care and our pension plan and it was saving the company like $400 per employee per year just on healthcare. So we go in and we're like look, we're going to save you here, we're going to keep the pension that these people want, we're going to give them this and here's your cost. You know your cost for the first year is minimal. It's what you probably would have paid anyway by your fifth year. It goes up because we're doing yearly raises and you know you wouldn't know on a regular business if you're going to do a regular raise. And negotiations were much different after that because they realized we weren't there to try to gouge them. We were there to try to make it better and we had that ability to provide a work, a workforce that is happy, healthy, they're not stressed out. You know, for the most part you're still going to have your people.

Speaker 2: 34:43

But what I think people realized is that in the non-union factories, where it's a little bit pick and choosy and I want to give you overtime this week and not you there's a lot of favoritism. What that leads to is people that aren't focused on their job, and that's when people get hurt and that's where I think the unions come in and say, hey, look, these guys need a break. You need a break every three hours. You need a 15-minute break minimum, and they force it. Well, now the company's like man, we're going to have to hire a new person just to cover the breaks, okay, but you, that's going to we're going to have to hire a new person just to cover the breaks, okay, but you're also not going to have a work comp claim because somebody fell into a machine either.

Speaker 2: 35:25

So there's, you know what I mean? There's, there's, there's pros and cons to everything, and I think that's where unions today are still relevant, because there are still companies that would love it if it was more like China and you had sweatshops and you could force people 12 hour days. It if it was more like China and you had sweatshops and you could force people 12 hour days. And you know you go back to the coal mining days. You know, and granted, this is completely radical, but back in the coal mining days you wouldn't get paid money. You got paid.

Speaker 2: 35:49

It was, it was company dollars company dollars to go spend in to spend in their company stores and and like I mean that's the obviously the far pendulum going the other direction, you know, on that same direction is where you get China today, you get Malaysia. You get these I'll call them third world countries. They, they're not full third world countries because they do produce stuff, but their, their wages are minimal to nothing. You can't really live on them. A lot of them live in the factory and that is the alternative on the extreme side. The other side, the alternative is you get called in, you get four hours minimum when you spill something on the floor and I mean like that, you don't necessarily need it like that either. I mean there's, there should be common sense built.

Speaker 1: 36:33

Yeah I just don't. I don't think that's a the alternative in this country. I don't think that, I don't think that has ever been the case and I don't think that ever would be the case. What would stop it, though? Competition Democracy.

Speaker 2: 36:46

I mean, isn't that what? Wouldn't China have competition Like how?

Speaker 1: 36:50

did China get? I don't know how China operates. I have no idea. I've never been there. Don't live there.

Speaker 2: 36:56

I mean it's the same as mexico. When you look at mexico you know they're not allowed to have unions there and and their cars aren't that much cheaper. You know what I mean. Like the money just goes to other pockets as opposed to the employees pockets we have 30 minutes yet.

Speaker 1: 37:10

Oh yeah, way over. Let's. Let's end it. Go unions conversations boring. Why I think it's great? I just you think that every single day no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1: 37:19

I really mean I think this particular conversation is boring to me. Oh, okay, yeah, I just I don't think I care enough. I mean, at least you're honest. I mean I'm, I'm anti-union for a lot of reasons. I, you know, just because they have seniority, gets the job over somebody who might be younger but works harder, does better. You know, that's no, that's not DEI, that's exactly what that is? It's actually not, but okay.

Speaker 2: 37:46

You're including it's inclusion. It's inclusion.

Speaker 1: 37:52

I don't know how you make that leap, but fine. But yeah, there there's a lot of issues with it, but so I'm very I'm, I'm anti, but honestly, I just don't care enough. I think, yeah, maybe it's the day. I think it's the day, maybe it's the day for all of us. So sorry to bore everybody with this conversation, just because you don't like it. I think it's maybe because we didn't fight enough. I don't know yeah I.

Speaker 1: 38:15

I need to not fight over. I'd hate to. I'd hate to think that we're getting more cordial with it.

Speaker 2: 38:19

God did you the last one? No, no, that's not a case. I'm not worried about that at all. It just wasn't something you're passionate about. That's fine.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Yeah, that's true. I'm really not passionate about this topic.

Speaker 2: 38:32

Well, thanks for the call in anyway, or the suggestion.

Speaker 1: 38:35

Yeah, we do appreciate the comments and suggestions and we would like Thanks Eric P from Springfield, Yep, and and Mike Mike H from well, formerly Edinburgh, now Petersburg by way of Texas. All right, We'll see you guys later.