many subjects in one pot
many subjects in one pot
Ok, this branched from just selling printers to Iran to proper business practices to union legitimacy. Gotta love our current economy!
1) As rbailleu stated, unions were a great thing in the past. They provided security, safety, fairness and flexibility with their work environment. Unions protected the workers, and I guarantee 99.99% of the population will agree that it was something that needed to be done (Last .01% are the people who wanted the money for themselves and would squeeze whatever they could to get it).
As time went on we see that a lot of what unions stood for have been converted to laws. These laws now protect every American citizen within any type of job, not just union based. Many people will say these laws are broken, many will say these laws are working and just as many would say these laws are crippling businesses. A good example of a website that gets into all this type of stuff is
American Rights at Work - Home
Whether you agree with unions or not is beyond the point. The point is these businesses, example would be the big 3, are not doing as well as some of their overseas competitors. There are multiple reasons for this. Total cost per worker, union management, lax environment in regards to on-site rules and regulations, company management and even business model. The whole idea is their business isn't doing well. The company needs to figure out a way to survive or they are gone. Whether this means retooling how unions work, reorganization of the whole company, rethinking how they do business and so on.
Government bailout is not going to solve anything. It only prolongs the inevitable. Financial institutions are going under. Giving them a life-line while not changing how they do business isn't going to stop the bleeding. Giving a bailout to the automotive industries prevents them from making the changes they need in order to survive and stay competitive. I'll probably be challenged on that notion. If you don't agree I'll try to explain in another post
2) Touched on in #1, business practices that work is a key to surviving in any economy. If you sell a widget for $1 and it costs you $2 to produce, you can't survive. If you sell a widget for $1 and it costs .99 cents to produce, you can survive. It doesn't matter how much the union workers cost with their pay and benefits, if the company itself isn't able to manage that cost in order stay successful something needs to change. Management AND workers need to realize that. Its a fine line, but both need to understand each other in order to succeed.
We aren't talking about changing an element in the process, but the whole process itself. Lean Manufacturing is one way to start thinking about this, same with Six Sigma. As Lean states, we shouldn't put blame on someone for what they did wrong, but see what happened, why it happened, figure out a solution to insure that it never happens again. The big 3 need to come to grips with this and start quick. They can choose whatever system they so wish, just as long as they know that such change will come slow, but they will come.
Toyota does just this with their Toyota Production System. Granted, they've had about 40+ years to fine tune it, but it works nonetheless. You shouldn't emulate the system down to the period, but examining how your own company works at the moment and trying to improve on it by giving the workers the ability to improve themselves is a major step.
3) The original topic. There are two sides to every story. There are two sides of facts to every subject. Instead of trying to fight both sides and get nowhere, lets try to think about the overall facts (If there are any!)
Why do many in America not agree with Iran? Easy enough, they are seen as a terrorist supportive country that their leadership also wishes to destroy the state of Israel. Personally I take offense to it, I have family that lives there. There are many other reasons, but I put those two down because they usually are the most commonly seen.
Why does Iran wish to destroy the state of Israel?
One sentence should get this. They are a successful non-Islamic state routed in a historical area that is deeply disputed between Islamic and non-Islamic religions.
If Israel was a country in disarray, I don't think Iran would give much thought, because of the fact that it would be in disarray and unpleasant for non-Islamic individuals living in the country.
So why do we care about HP Printers being sold to Iran?
I said I take offense to Iran leadership saying they wish to destroy Israel because of a subsection of my family being there. Something personal to me gives me that opinion. The people of Iran actually also agree with the president on this fact ,which was a bit disturbing to see. They want Israel gone, they want nuclear weapons.
All that aside, Iran's president was elected by democratic vote. America as a country have "supported" democratically elected governments, but only when they support the US's wants and needs. That is why we support Afghanistan, but not much with Venezuela's decisions.
So out of all these issues we have with Iran, its not OK with HP to sell printers to them third party style, but it was OK for coca-cola and to sell to Nazi Germany? Bad example to some, well lets try to dig deeper. The big 3 sell cars to dealerships, they have to sell the cars to consumers. They are independently owned and operated, but they still help the big 3 make money. So American companies CAN'T sell their products to independent dealerships, all be it foreign dealerships who do whatever it takes to sell the product? Isn't that in the first chapter in economics? Demand drives supply? Worrying about printers at the same level as nuclear material is a stretch, even to me. Politics aside, the whole idea of naming businesses "terrorist supportive" is like saying the military industrial complex in America are "terrorist supporters" in the eyes of Iran. Where has the world gone....
Two cents became four, criticize at your leisure