“Plumbers and pipefitters with Local Union 393 are picketing outside Apple’s new space ship campus under construction,” ABC San Francisco reports.
“Dozens of workers rallied outside one the gates,” ABC reports. “The Santa Clara County sheriff’s says there have been some traffic issues. But, so far no arrests or citations.”
“Workers are upset at Preston Pipelines,” ABC reports. “The company is doing work on apple’s new campus. Workers say it’s not paying a prevailing wage and they want Apple to put pressure on Preston Pipelines to pay a fair wage.”
Read more in the full article here.
SEE ALSO:
The spaceship rises: A detailed look at Apple’s new Campus 2 and Theatre – March 7, 2016
this fracas is like the shuttle drivers who are employees of a standalone, contracted company with the likes of Facebook and Apple trying to general public awareness of their beef with their employer.
move on, nothing to see here
Apple can require contractors to hire union employees. Or they can vote their hearts to build their company HQ on the backs of low wages and few benefits. I guess it all depends on who you want to be able to look in the eye.
Yeah, these workers have over half a year of formal trades schooling and are doing something that others would love to be allowed to to for the same wage. They deserve most of Apple’s billions for doing their small part in making parts of that building.
Are you kidding? Journeyman plumbers are skilled workers. Your comment would be just as off-base if you were talking about coders or Apple’s technicians.
California practically invites Mexicans with its sanctuary cities. They need jobs, too! /s
LOL, you think the trades in California are getting “low wages and few benefits’?!?
Unions are evil
Yup, and when they get paid more, then prices go up, and they want more… and on it goes. I’m all for a fair wage, but I’m not in favour of workers hiding behind “unions”. Not happy with your job, got find another one. Simple as that.
Clearly you’ve never had plumbing installed by unskilled labor.
The country that values its philosophers over its plumbers loses twice, Neither its theories nor its pipes will hold water.
You imply that union = skilled, non-union = non-skilled.
Neither equivalence is necessarily correct.
In an era when CEOs can earn 300x the salary of the company’s workers and lay off people on a whim I’d say the USA needs unions more than ever.
300x? Try 400x.
In most of the rest of the world, it’s remained where it was in the US until the 1980s: about 40x.
Closer to 20x before the ’80s.
But the big problems start when the 400x crowd begins to believe they’re worth it.
You’re right. The only thing MORE evil than unions are companies that treat their workers like total crap, and get away with it. Without unions, workers don’t have a voice, and are forced to put up with anything the boss says.
And if your answer is get another job, if only it were that easy.
BTW, do you enjoy paid days off? Sick leave? Health care? A 40-hour work week? The fact that your kids can stay in school past 12 years old? Then you have unions to thank for it all — since businesses didn’t do any of those things until they were forced to do si.
I’ve been a Union worker my entire life. I started with the Teamsters right out of high school. Then onto the IBEW, then the PBA. Years ago unions were very necessary as the employers were abusers. I’ve watched that turn into the Unions are now the abusers with lavish contracts and demands. When I was an IBEW member, a pallet of pipe fittings were blocking us from an area we needed to work in. I grabbed a pallet jack to move the pallet and was instantly yelled at by the shop stewart. We couldn’t move it, we had to call a union pipe fitter to move it. SO 6 of us sat there for a hour until 4 union pipe fitters showed up and moved the pallet, it tool all of 30 seconds. These kinds of abuses happen EVERY day. The Unions have gotten out of control and now have become the abusers and we all pay for these crazy behaviors and perks.
Scab? That plumbing company is probably cheating their workers out of prevailing wage just on Apple’s job. In construction happens all the time.
I don’t think unions are evil. But one needs to be clear headed about who they represent and who they do not represent. Unions are about protecting their own. They represent only those who are in the union and bargain accordingly. They are not about protecting all tradesmen. They are perfectly happy to bargain for increased wages at the expense of those who do not have jobs, which has the effective impact of pricing some tradesmen out of jobs they might otherwise have been willing to take at lesser wages. Just be aware of that distinction before glorifying unions as the tonic for an ailing middle class.
My big beef is with unions that require employees of certain companies and government agencies to join their unions and pay dues. That is evil. Every employee should have the right to choose.
You are not correct. When a union has a contract with a company, the contract covers all employees of a class, usually a given trade. All workers of the class get the same wage and benefits scale. And the existence of some union workers in a company influences the pay and benefit scale of all non-union workers in the company, if for no other reason than the company treats them well to avoid them unionizing.
As to your beef about wanting to be a leech, would you accept lower pay and less benefits than the union member for doing the same job? Do you take some pride in standing against the company alone? What, exactly is it that you desire to choose?
It depends on the union contract. They aren’t all the same.
I can’t really address the issue where a company signs an agreement with a union to exclusively hire only those who will join the union. Personally, I think it’s problematic. But one could argue that private companies have a right to make those kind of decisions. Although in practice, I have never seen a company willingly do such a thing.
I’m troubled that you would use the term “leech” for a nonunion employee. That word has implications that are patently unfair and does not represent the real life circumstances of that employee.
A now retired family member was stuck in the railroad union (not sure which one) for over 20 years. They took a chunk of his paycheck and did absolutely nothing for him over that time. When the railroad company screwed with employees the union was silent. Nepotism for the union leadership was rife. And no one saw where the union dues went. The union leadership was corrupt to its very core. But he was stuck with them if he wanted to keep his job. That’s very wrong.
Leech is about employees who are willing to draw the union negotiated wage and benefit package without contributing dues to run the union. I don’t know if there is a nicer term for the attitude. Maybe “I’m sure glad you guys walked the picket line during the strike and we’re getting paid more because of your sacrifice, but it would be real inconvenient for me to give $20 a paycheck to keep the union running”. I guess that’s another way to look at it.
I don’t know of a company that would require an employee to join a union, quite the opposite, most companies would like to see unions disappear. It’s pretty much the responsibility of the unions to convince employees to join. The only leverage unions have is social pressure and appeals to a sense of fair play.
But, there are many types of unions. There are large, national unions with professional union leadership that can be, and have been, quite nasty at times. My experience is with smaller unions made up of employees of one company, loosely affiliated with a national group, whose leadership came from within the group they represented. I’m sure I have biases based on that experience.
mortsahl, I would like to know why you feel that way. Seriously. Have you considered the purpose of unions? Do you understand why they came to exist in the first place? If so, do you truly believe that circumstances have changed to the extent that unions are no longer necessary?
Based on your statement, I would bet a lot of money that you are a die hard Republican. Have you ever considered that neither political party necessarily represents your best interests across their entire platform. Have you considered that the people with the money do not like unions because it places a limit on their corporate power and might keep them from squeezing out the last particle of profitability. Consider who is paying for the message before committing to it.
Your blanket statement is that ALL unions are evil. Do you believe that? Might there be a subset of unions that fairly and reasonably represent the interests of their members?
It is truly difficult to take you seriously when you appear to be such a shallow thinker.
If wages paid aren’t prevailing, worker can go to other prevailing wage companies and work for them. If other companies pay about the same of this pipeline company, then this pipeline is prevailing wage. Company always pays just enough to have enough workforce to do the job. If not enough workforce to complete the project, they will pay more to hire more. Workers always want higher pay, so job hoping.
Got a lot of book learning, do you? People are just widgets and their lives are just points on the supply-demand curve. Maybe everyone should live in a van so they can be able to move instantly to the nearest decent job.
The Scab company is trying to pocket the difference Apple’s job and their other jobs.
Nothing is as simple as that.
The disparity between executive pay and mean worker pay in America is far greater than in any other developed country. More importantly, it has grown rapidly over the past decades. In 1980, it was approximately 30-1; today, it is well over 300-1. CEOs make in one day what the rest of the work force makes in over a year.
This disparity growth took place exactly over the same period during which unions have been diminishing in numbers and in bargaining power. In other words, what unions failed to negotiate for the work force, CEOs apparently grabbed for themselves.
America is the only developed country where the purchasing power of the middle class has actually diminished over the past 20 years (in real dollars).
The ability for unions to protect the quality of life of the working force seems to be more important with every year that CEO pay goes skyrocketing while the worker wages stay where they are, or even go down.
In general I strongly support the concept of unions. I just don’t support how some of them are truly only self serving.
Several decades ago I was an ironworker doing high steel. I was working for a non union shop. That shop had some union workers and some non union workers like me. That shop then got a big, high profile job. Within weeks the iron worker’s union came to the company’s president and said he had to unionize all workers on that big job site as only part of the team were part of the union — either that or they’d have their guys from other areas form the biggest and most obnoxious picket lines he could ever imagine. He caved. We all got union cards. (We were all more than qualified for journeymen cards). My personal hourly wage went from $8.00 to $14.40 an hour. But guess what? My union dues were $4.40 per hour. So I got an $80 a week raise and the union got a $176 a week “raise”. How is that really helping the worker? The cost to the company — on a firm, fixed priced contract for the job — overran costs by a vast amount and almost bankrupt the company. The company had to cut way back and not go after those big, high profile jobs. Some of the team lost their jobs because the company had to cut way back to survive. How was that a case us the union helping the workers?
And, as with my case, it was not a matter of skilled versus unskilled labor. If a plumber is licensed (or electrician, or such) then they should be qualified. If this discussion were about qualified versus unqualified and the union could conclusively show that the contractor is using unqualified labor AND the union would guaranteed all their people are qualified, then I’d probably side with the union. Otherwise, I strongly suspect it is just as in my case from those decades ago: the union is serving itself more than the tradesmen.
You said you went from $8/hr to $14.40, and the union took $4.40, which left you with a $2/hr raise — or a full 25% pay raise. And you’re complaining?
Did the union’s $4.40/hr include any additional benefits? I’m assuming so (vacation? sick days? payment into health care and pension?? Unless, of course, your union leadership was totally corrupt, in which case, I’m sorry…
Ronald Reagan told the air traffic controllers, “you’re fired”.
It sent Gorbachov a message by example that he wasn’t taking any junk. Unions are socialistic…looks real good up front, but it spoils and lazifies down the road…creates the feeling of entitlement. In 1997, the federal minimum wage was raised to $5.15 an hour…I don’t support an employee in CA getting $15 an hour saying “would you like fries with that”!
There is no doubt that King Ronnie lead the charge against American workers.
It is rather humorous what you choose to label as “socialistic.” Some people might (accurately) define unions as democratic.
If unions are “socialistic” then what are corporations? Totalitarian?
Just because unions can go overboard is no reason to paint them all with the “evil” brush or to attempt to get rid of them all. Under that logic, you would have to get rid of almost everything – alcohol, medications, automobiles, corporations….
The simplistic level of thinking on this forum greatly concerns me. If this is representative of a significant proportion of the populace, then we are truly doomed as a species.
Employees in California aren’t getting $15 minimum wage. And they won’t — for about five or six years, in which case it’ll be like getting today’s $10 minimum wage.
If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and/or productivity from its peak in the 1970s, it should be AT LEAST $15 today.
And, by the way, all your right-wing radio hosts? They are ALL members of unions. Yep, even Rush, Hannity and Michael Levine. Glenn Beck, too. Do you think THEY’RE spoiled and “lazified”, too?
Some unions are more equal than others…
Piss on these union goons. If they have this much time on their hands to picket instead of actually working and EARNING their money, then they’re not worth a damn anyway. Union workers don’t give a damn about anything but themselves.
Once again the company is paying their worker’s the normal lower wage (on their other jobs), but charging Apple the higher and pocketing the difference.
Howie, do companies give a damn about anything other than itself? Does anyone really give a damn about anything other than theirselves? Then why do you expect union workers to be different.
Union members walking picket lines often have to give up a day’s pay to make their voices heard. I’d like to see a corporate boss do the same some time.
The workers in this case aren’t picketing for either a “fair” or a “living” wage. They’re picketing for the “prevailing” wage. Something that someone else working somewhere else is earning doing something similar.
Taking into consideration that area of the country, other things, and the trades involved, a prevailing wage for those trades is a lot more than fair or living.
What isn’t fair about paying the “prevailing” wage? That actually seems like the ultimate measure of “fair”.
Preston Pipelines had better not be charging Apple more, and paying their workers less.
Every company does. I never made more than $50 an hour during my working career, by I know for a fact my employer billed north of $100 for my time. It’s how companies pay for bosses and support personnel and make a profit. There’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s fraud if the prevailing wage isn’t paid to the workers on the job that calls for it to be paid.
OK, I get what you mean, and I agree with your point.
Unfortunately “prevailing wage” is such a loose term. Better to use a real number, IMHO.
Hire NON union workers and they won’t have to worry about this crap and then the work will get done faster lol