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A bit OT: Are guitar factory workers in the U.S. unionized?


chimi

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I sincerely doubt they are at Gibson, which moved from Michigan to Tennessee 30 years ago to be in a right-to-work state. I couldn't tell you about PRS, Washburn, Fender, Carvin, or Rickenbacker, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them is unionized since they are in very organized labor-friendly states (MD, IL, and CA x3 respectively).

 

On the other hand, I can't imagine that union wages would be that much higher. The foreign and boutique competition is just way too stiff to put an extra few hundred dollars on the headstock. The exception might be Rickenbacker, which has kept its product unique in the marketplace through aggressive litigation.

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I would think with them it would be more about job security and maybe better benefits (if they get any) than actual extra money. The whole Cort thing got me thinking about this lately. I'm not even sure what kind of conditions the people here are working in, but i'm sure some of them aren't the greatest.

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It would be nice if we actually had an employee from one of these companies on the board who could give us a bit more insight. This is really interesting stuff, especially with the economy being the way it is right now.

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OSHA oversees factories these days, most are pretty guitar manufacturers in the US are open to the public as well (such as Gibson). The conditions are probably some of the best in the world. Most companies do not want to get in trouble with OSHA and have pretty stringent guidelines which is a good thing. I for one believe the days of organized labor have come and gone (they were needed at one time, agreed), we have enough federal and state guidelines and unions have really helped the US become uncompetitive in global manufacturing in negotiating pay beyond what the scale should be and benefits beyond what scale and skill should offer. They encourage mediocrecy in the work force (do the minimum for the most return) and really, they have become money and political machines for the union chiefs. I've worked with people who moved to my right to work state who are former union members and they are just horribly lazy.

 

I worked with a manufacturing company in Texas (not guitars) and got a factory tour -- it was really an amazing place, clean, modern, and safe. Workers were trained on the latest technologies and several still were able to use craftsman skills that few people have. Very happy people and no union!

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Both of the 1960s Gibson semis I've owned in the past (a '67 ES355 and a '68 Trini Lopez Standard) had orange stickers inside which proudly proclaimed 'Union Made.'

 

Mind you, that WAS the '60s ...

 

No idea what the deal is now.

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I for one believe the days of organized labor have come and gone (they were needed at one time, agreed), we have enough federal and state guidelines and unions have really helped the US become uncompetitive in global manufacturing in negotiating pay beyond what the scale should be and benefits beyond what scale and skill should offer. They encourage mediocrecy in the work force (do the minimum for the most return) and really, they have become money and political machines for the union chiefs.

 

 

THIS. To wit, the decline and fall of the U.S. auto industry.

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I for one believe the days of organized labor have come and gone (they were needed at one time, agreed), we have enough federal and state guidelines and unions have really helped the US become uncompetitive in global manufacturing in negotiating pay beyond what the scale should be and benefits beyond what scale and skill should offer. They encourage mediocrecy in the work force (do the minimum for the most return) and really, they have become money and political machines for the union chiefs.

 

 

Spoken like someone who has no teachers in their family. Not all unions are bad, my friend.

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There's a certain irony in the fact that organized labor advocates so heavily for federal-level laws and regulations--on things like health insurance and workplace safety--that, once in place, actually undermine a lot of the justification for collective bargaining.

 

I do know, though, that if it were up to a lot of the right-to-work states, they'd have work environments that make Chinese factories look like models of safety and comfort. Slavery may have been outlawed with the 13th Amendment, but in a lot of the South it didn't really end until the 1960s.

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Spoken like someone who has no teachers in their family. Not all unions are bad, my friend.

 

 

Yes, and the US public school system is fantastic....dripping with sarcasm. Just like the auto industry, we use to be leaders in education. Unions have had a large part in the downfall of both.

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Spoken like someone who has no teachers in their family. Not all unions are bad, my friend.

 

 

Both of my grandmothers were teachers, my cousin and his wife are teachers, and I in fact have taught (at the college level - no union I was aware of, I was adjunct faculty). I spent a lot of time in California, the unions have really not been good for teachers there (where my cousin is). The funny thing is, teachers/postal workers/fireman/police unions -- all needed to work with their main employer, the federal, state or local municipality, in other words, the government! We are talking non-manufacturing jobs here as well, which has really gotten screwed up due to unions (and other government regulations).

 

I would agree that teachers, firefighters and police are sorely under paid, but most have excellent benefits, pensions and job security, better than you or I in the private sector. But the question you have to ask yourself, especially concerning teachers - are the unions really helping them in this day and age or would they be better off in a free market free of union oversight, dues, and power struggles? I don't claim to know that answer but would be open for debate on the subject once I did additional research. My initial thought is they too have allowed for mediocrity to become the norm among teachers. The teachers at my kids school are a prime example.

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My girlfriend's older brother is a teacher and from what i've heard he might be losing his job in the next week basically because the union decided instead of taking a bit of pay cut and lose some benefits to get rid of about 20 teachers in their district.

 

Sometimes i think a union certainly has it's place in the working world, other times it really makes you wonder what the hell those people are doing.

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i work in a non union shop, have great benefits, and safe work conditions... granted, i make probably $10 an hour less than someone in a unionized shop doing the same type of work, but, in the small town where i live the average rent is only $350 a month too, so it balances out... i agree with curse about union workers being lazy, we had to have some of our guys go to our sister shop in the north east to help them get "caught up", our guys came back and said that their shop was filthy, that they took extra long breaks whenever the urge struck, and that they really only worked about 4 hours out of a ten hour day...

 

then you've got the poor shmucks who are in union shops... joe, bob and ed decide they want to strike because they need $25 an hour instead of $23, they strike, start picketing... meanwhile, poor ernie down the way only makes $15 an hour to begin with and has a family of 6 to support and wants to work is getting screwed out of his wages because of the other guys... and if he tries to cross the picket line to go to work his "friends" and "co-workers" beat the holy hell out of him...

 

i'm proud to live in a right to work state, the union can stay far, far away...

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Otherwise known as the armpit of the universe?

 

 

Lots of small towns in Kansas are arm-pits! My entire family is from them, mainly they were towns that sprouted up to support the local agricultural communities which have dwindled over the past 50 years or so. Wal-Mart has helped destroy a lot of that, but that is a different story all together..

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Spoken like someone who has no teachers in their family. Not all unions are bad, my friend.

 

 

How ironic that while one poster is raising up government oversight as the reason unions no longer need to exist, another says that some of the strongest and most needed unions advocate to secure pay, benefits and working conditions from government employers.

 

I personally agree with both sides; your average American factory worker has never had it better, unionized or not. On the other side, many of the public sector jobs, especially in education and emergency response, are going backward in pay.

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Yes, and the US public school system is fantastic....dripping with sarcasm. Just like the auto industry, we use to be leaders in education. Unions have had a large part in the downfall of both.

 

 

That's not the fault of the teachers, it's dwindiling tax dollars going into education, a trend that started, along with state and local legislatures dipping into funds earmarked for education and subsequently diverted to their pet project, in the early 60's and which, in my state of California most of all, has decimated the resources available to teachers, as well as making the idea of working as hard as a public school teacher with such small financial rewards something enticing to only the extremely passionate or the hopelessly misinformed. That analogy is like saying your car crashed because of the brakes not working, but you were driving a 1983 Dodge with the original factory brakes. Nonsense.

 

And no, being in a union is not a guarantee of benefits and job security-- Here in San Francisco, the district just handed out 900 pink slips. This is a town of 700,000 people. That's a lot of teachers per capita to be just up and out one semester.

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i work in a non union shop, have great benefits, and safe work conditions... granted, i make probably $10 an hour less than someone in a unionized shop doing the same type of work, but, in the small town where i live the average rent is only $350 a month too, so it balances out... i agree with curse about union workers being lazy, we had to have some of our guys go to our sister shop in the north east to help them get "caught up", our guys came back and said that their shop was filthy, that they took extra long breaks whenever the urge struck, and that they really only worked about 4 hours out of a ten hour day...


then you've got the poor shmucks who are in union shops... joe, bob and ed decide they want to strike because they need $25 an hour instead of $23, they strike, start picketing... meanwhile, poor ernie down the way only makes $15 an hour to begin with and has a family of 6 to support and wants to work is getting screwed out of his wages because of the other guys... and if he tries to cross the picket line to go to work his "friends" and "co-workers" beat the holy hell out of him...


i'm proud to live in a right to work state, the union can stay far, far away...

 

 

This post fails on so many points!The claim that union workers are lazy is blanket statement from a poster who by his own admission is getting his info second hand.Your claiming all union workers are lazy based on what studies?If I worked one or two non-union companies in my working life and they happened to have unsafe working conditions or poor benefits, can I claim then claim all non-union companies are the same?Your post really reflects your own personnel bias regarding unions,by spouting the same old rhetoric that companies have used to convince their employees they are better off non-union.Myself having worked both over the years have seen lazy non-union workers,yet I lived long enough to know better than to claim someone is a poor worker because they take long breaks whenever they feel like.I would put the blame on management before the workers!

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