FYI, selise, Bonior is Chair of American Rights at Work, so there is at least someone who has union workers’ backs on that team.

When the Charleston, WV AT&T Call Center closed – after years of valiant effort to prevent it by Sen. Rockefeller – my ex-wife was given 1 year’s severance pay, 18 months of continued health insurance, and 2 years of paid schooling to retrain for another job.

That’s how it’s done, not the “Jobs Bank” way.

And it seems to me that things that were done 3 years ago might be having an effect today. Just saying.

A lot of the reason why Southwest has been so successful is that they developed a corporate culture of “we’re all in this together” from the beginning. Work rules are flexible, with an eye more towards efficient operation rather than draconian observation. Basically, they have taken care of their employees from the beginning.

I spent a week “inside” Southwest for a magazine article, which is why I have some knowledge of this!

it is not the worker on the line that has created the bloody mess we are in now. The biggest problem we have is the health care system that is the most expensive, one of the least effective and is being run by insurance companies not medical professionals.

I agree wholeheartedly, but for the purposes of this discussion, we have to separate the worker from union officials.

I’m not saying that the worker who sat in the job bank is the problem, I’m saying that the knuckleheads who came up with the idea and implemented it should not have a seat at the 21st century bargaining table.

Universal health care is by far a better solution to most of the problems discussed here today than unions for union’s sake.

The Jobs Bank was started to give union workers whose jobs were having to implement technology that would ultimately put them out of a job. While there were certainly problems with the way it was administered, the alternative was putting them out on the street.

I welcome the discussion but let’s not go for three strikes here.