I once had a boss who was drunk, on the job, every single day. Anything you told him after lunch had to be repeated the next day because he couldn’t remember it.

He was the highest paid employee in the organization.

OT, but Labor related: I heard John Edwards say that half of all the children of Walmart employees were on Medicaid. I found that astounding. We hear all this shit about illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. and draining government services, and all the time corporate profiteer Walmart gets subsidized by the tax payers.

Have you ever seen the WalMart movie by Robert Greenwald? WalMart actually encourages their employees to seek government assistance for health care!!

Brad @ 19

I agree that employees should be treated with respect. The problem I have is unions. I know a lot of people who are union workers and I once got into a union myself. The trouble is that the average person can’t get into a union. It is all about who you know. When I finally got into a union I talked with a lot of my coworkers and found that nearly all got into the union by having connections. There were people who barely passed the written test yet got in. They have very unfair hiring policies. If your not a relative or a friend then ou have to try several times, score extremely well on the tests and maybe after the fifth try you might get in. The other problem is the amount of affirmative action that’s in play. If you are a minority or a woman all you have to do is pass the written (which is graded on a curve only between minorities and women) and you are in. Once they do get in they have all kinds of remedial training programs for them. They get extra help to pass test and even have separate awards for them so they don’t have to compete with white males. ( best minority employee, best female employee, etc). I really understand corporations going overseas to find a sane place to process business. You really can’t blame them.They are in business to make money and not babysit a group of people who need a relative or affirmative action in order to compete in the work force.

Maybe it’s time to get out more and see things as they are. If there’s a homeless shelter/food bank near you, just drop by some evening and ask around–how many people there were working six months ago and aren’t now.

And, then, don’t walk away thinking “there but for the grace of God go I,” because God doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Outsourcing is about greed, not an inability to compete. Name any business that is outsourcing jobs now and didn’t before, and it will be a business that was created by American labor and owes its productivity gains to the efforts of its workers.

Total nonsense. The company was started by a person who is risking his own money and time to build a profitable firm. If you do not have a dime invested into a company then don’t tell them how to run it. The business wants to succeed. It does not owe anyone a living. This sounds harsh but it is true. It would be wrong for me to demand that since you are better off than most that you should be obligated to give your hard earned money to someone else. If you want to give your money to the poor than that is your business not mine. Most people want money not because they are greedy but because money is a form of independence. If you are rich you do not have to work for a terrible boss again.

Sorry Brad, I don’t buy it. Yes, unions may be all of the things you mention, but I’ve worked in coporate America all my life and have encountered the same shitty managers, bad actors, political tools, etc where there were no unions present. Nobody says that companies can’t make money-we all know how they throw it away in many areas and then cry poor when it comes time to pay people.

You are missing the point. These unions do not represent anyone but their friends and relatives. Why should I or anyone support a group that will not allow me to join? I am better off without a union for then I can actually aplly to the company and get hired on my merit. Many states wont even let you apply for a job. You have to go through the union.answer me this: when you got into the union did you know anybody? Did you get in over a better qualified person because of nepotism?

What pisses me off — and I’m a member of a union under the big AFL-CIO umbrella — is that unions, mostly those under the AFL-CIO, don’t do much grassroots organizing anymore. Their leaders have joined the cocktail-weenie political clique, pandering to the likes of Holy Joe and Rahmbot instead of fighting in the trenches with the rank-and-file. That’s why the SIEU bailed on them.

They would do well to remember Joe Hill’s last words: “Don’t mourn, boys – ORGANIZE!”

If there be any truth to the record of the past known more or less as “history”, tiz from conditions such as these that REVOLUTIONS are often born…..

I’ve been out of software for several years now, and I had another “bad boss” situation, in this case promises were not kept. So I quit and became a consulting physicist. Now my boss(es) are my clients, but at least I can fire them :-)