It is like which is worse the pan or the fire… a state with “at will employment” or a work place that is unionized is one worse than the other or they both bad?
Indiana this year became a “at will” state… Recently I got some reliable second hand information that the school system has stopped providing healthcare for a specific subset of employees and if they told anyone in the media.. what had been done… they would be fired.. because you work in a “at will” state.
Then we have situation like the Hostess company.. that had to deal with 12 different unions.. which included 372 collective-bargaining agreements, 80 health and benefit plans, and 40 pension plans and the demands/expectations of 5600 union members… ended up causing 18,000 to now be without a job.. It has been reported that over the years, the various unions negotiated that Wonder Bread and Twinkies could not be on the same delivery truck… but had to have two separate trucks.. serving the same route.. and once at the retailer.. the truck driver could not handle the product and move it into the store. Is this an example of narcissism gone a muck ?
There has been discussions about RPH’s being in a union/guide.. since I was in college.. of course… a critical number of RPH’s agreeing to go down this path.. will probably never happen… not the nature of the beast.. With the coming of Obamacare in 2014… and what appears to be the piece meal formation of what may end up being a national health insurance.. which may put any idea of negotiations meaningless.. since typically the government doesn’t negotiate.. they legislate and dictate.
Many fairly large businesses.. especially franchisees.. are claiming that they are going to reduce as many employees as feasible to <30 hrs.. so as to avoid footing the cost of Obamacare.. how many people are now going to be under employed and/or have to have two or more jobs to make ends meet and still not have health insurance or end up on Medicaid or highly government subsidized healthcare?
With the growing surplus of RPH’s, these healthcare professionals may not be excluded from being under employed in the future.
It has always been the goal of parents to wish for a better life for their children… if what we are doing is called progress toward that goal… somewhere along the way.. the goals and rules have seemed to change.
I hope that I am not the only one who thinks this way….
Filed under: General Problems
Steve, I fully agree with you on everything you said. Several years ago, I changed my mind about joining a union. For the past several years, I have been saying that I would join a union. Of course, no union in my area, so the whole subject is mute. But, it was a change in my ideology driven by the working environment within these chains and the lack of being able to add my input to the pharmacy operation. It is questionable as to whether unions are helpful. I can remember being a 15 year old kid, working in the cotton fields of Mississippi, and my father going to town to buy tractor parts. Those parts were very expensive for us to purchase. The reason was the high salaries that the union workers were being paid in the northern industrial states. I can remember being fresh out of pharmacy school and having a few folks that had moved from the north and retired from Ford. Talk about good health insurance and benefits! It was unbelievable to me. Those unions has negotiated, or could we say threatened Ford, so that the workers had the best health insurance in the world. We all know what happened to the big auto makers. Toyota came along and was more competitive with better autos. But, if Ford had not spent so much on its workers, would they have upgraded their factories and produced better autos? The unions drove factories out of the north. They came south to get good, hard working folks and cheaper, non union labor. The South has benefited from the northern unions because those unions drove the factories south. We could say the unions drove a lot of those factories to Mexico. And, a lot of them simply pawned out their work to China.
On the one hand, we have these big corporations that act like the military and the workers have no input. On the other hand, we have the unions that give the workers some power and some control over their work, but they drive these companies into bankruptcy…which has happened to Hostess. I suppose there is no easy, simple answer to the union question.
Like some of the other comments here, I think Obamacare is about ‘power’ and ‘control’. Everything the Obama administration has done has lead to more government control over our lives. I will not say this is exclusive to Obama. It is the direction our government has been going for a long time. Once we get Obamacare, just watch, it will then be all about ‘controlling costs’. This is the only thing that government understands. The expense of Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and social security is more than this country can afford. The politicians would like to just keep the country going deeper and deeper in debt. But, the fear of the bond market simply imploding if they continue along the debt path, is making them take a second look at this issue. They are beginning to see that they are going to have to begin to tackle the debt. Will we see cuts to providers? Will we see reduced benefits to patients? Will our entire healthcare system become a nightmare?
Obamacare was never about healthcare for the poor. We already take care of anyone who goes to the emergency room according to Federal Law-regardless of ability to pay. Obamacare is about control.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is EXACTLY what the “government” wants. The more of us on government plans, the more they get to control us. That’s what government does best.