Friday, October 17, 2008

Joe Bidens Public Works Plan

In the fiscal year ended 9/30, immigration officials flew 72,187 illegal Mexicans back home on your nickel. Many thousands more illegals were returned to Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, El Salvador, etc.,

One illegal said she paid $5000 to be smuggled in. Another Mexican couldn't pay the $500 Mexican immigration officials demanded as a bribe so he turned himself back in to Border Control officials and was held in detention, yes, you paid for all the costs associated with the roundup, the housing, the meals, the transportation, etc. He was eventually returned to Mexico on a luxury federal plane.

Yet with all these now vacant jobs going begging, Populist Joe is going to create 2 million jobs to repair the crumbling roads and bridges in the United States. Figuring the number of illegals being deported each year to be around 125,000, deducting the 30% on welfare, almost one hundred thousand work positions need to be filled to replace the deportees.

Let's start with what the workers on the highway jobs are doing right now. Take time to see how many are actually working; the average in my 20 years of watching is about 1 1/2 working, 3 standing looking at the job or usually looking like they are waiting for something and often they are. A couple of years ago a highway truck and driver was parked in my neighborhood for a couple of hours. I finally walked down and asked him what he was doing. He said waiting for the rest of the equipment and workers. I told him there were other workers and equipment a couple of blocks away who looked kike they were waiting for something. You guessed it. They were waiting for him.

Union officials most usually protest administrations use of GPS, a system that keeps tabs on the whereabouts of vehicles.

Once I saw a guy sitting in the cab of a small crane. That was about 9 AM. At 4 PM, he was still sitting there. I asked him his job. He said "I come in the morning and remove the plate that covers the hole where some work was being done. When the workers leave at night, I cover the hole with the plate and go home. I'll do the same thing tomorrow.

Union bargaining is so powerful that they can restrict a specialist to do only one job as another union worker told me that his job was to watch if anything was done wrong. I asked him if that was what he did all day and did he see anything go wrong. He said nothing was done wrong because hardly anyone was working. I asked him how he personally felt about this and he said I would have to talk to his union boss. He did not want to give me his name for fear of being fired. He did say the job was so boring and so wasteful of public dollars that he was asking to be transferred to another job.

Because public highway workers and private contractors workers are all union, no one wants to work harder than anyone else for fear of "showing" senior workers up. Now Joe want to hire 2 million more at union scales. Including all benefits this would average out about $84,000 a year per 2 million workers. Out of 365 days in a year, an average of about 213 are work days. And in the union, you don't have to work a full day to get paid for a full day.

I can't blame the workers, if they can get it, they get it. It's up to those who grant the contracts to keep and equilibrium between management and unions. In many cases union negotiators are stronger than the public and private sector negotiators. Wait until the Democrats in Congress force through the "The Employee Free Choice Act".

Better read up on it if you don't know what it will do to those who do not want to be in any union. Basically, this law, when passed will strongarm the worker into the union.

My simple question to Joe is "where are you going to get the money when Obama is going to cut taxes for 95% of the citizenry?

My experience as 28 years as an employer is that jobs were and are available but the workers most of the time aren't qualified or even know the definition of "work" for employers like myself; employers who take the of time and money (hiring process, training, who provide job tools, etc ).

We have plenty of jobs in America. That is why a we have a huge backlog of foreigners trying to enter through legal immigration procedures. Why would a Mexican pay $5000 to risk death by being illegally smuggled into this country if those already illegally in the U.S. had not told them by wire, letter, newspaper or Internet that the U.S. had jobs begging to be filled by people who would work rather than prostitute, sell drugs, steal and live 100% off welfare which you can do even here in compassionate Peoria.

Maybe a better idea than Joe Biden's idea would be to put the roughly 3 million people incarcerated, the ones who do not pose a major threat to society, doing jobs under guard on highway projects. Where would the guards come from? From the same prison as there would be less need of guards in the prison during the day when prisoners were out working.

Bet most prisoners would work their butts off if a work ethic and good behavior might reduce their prison time. Won't happen. Why not? The strong grip of the unions. A grip to get much stronger in the next four years under a house full of Democrats in Washington, D.C.

1 comment:

Merle Widmer said...

When I was in business I negotiated contracts that included in the wording, that truck drivers also were unloaders, loaders, installers, ect. The drivers did not sit in the truck and listen to the radio or text-message (now).

Otherwise, my business may have failed. I made this known to the union negotiators and we worked TOGETHER.

The union has worked evidently successfully with the company for at least 38 years.