Shuttle drivers at Apple, other Silicon Valley tech companies vote for Teamsters representation

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  • Reply 41 of 170
    Does the math add up? Before they got almost $20 and hour. Now they get $24.50. Surely they are paying $6-7 or more an hour to the union. This is not a free service. Why are these workers complaining? $20 an hour to drive bus -- is this economy? I live in Honduras. $20 is almost five DAYS of work at the factories.
  • Reply 42 of 170
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    San Francisco was settled by white people like myself who ran Native Americans out, many of which made their money by slavery or as a result of it. Now that Native Americans and African Americans have the opportunity to return and buy a house in a beautiful place like San Francisco, some want to use their influence and their governments influence to keep things the way they have been. They want to cement their position even though no one in the past was able to do that. If the city is becoming popular, let anyone who wants to pay money get in. If I own property in San Francisco, let me sell it for the price I want. Let me rent it for the price I want. Let people have a choice to live there. If you can't afford to live there, maybe you need to move to one of the places that these suppressed people have had to live for the last 200 years.

    You must be really old if you made any money as a result of slavery. ;)

    I guess suburbia wasn't it was cracked up to be. White people fled metropolitan areas which allowed minorities to move in, and now that you can't afford to live where the white people that never left live in you're moving into the neighborhoods of the oppressed, and pushing them out which further oppresses them.
  • Reply 43 of 170
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    I've been hearing that nonsense all my life. This was going to eliminate that, that was going to eliminate this. We're going to have so much free time on our hands because of automation, and if anything we have less free time.

    Do you have more or less time to do whatever you want because you own computers and iPhones? Speaking for myself I have more free time and can do more with these effort multiplying devices. I "work" less than half as much as I used to and spend most of my time doing what I really want to do (I put the "work" in quotes because I like my work).
  • Reply 44 of 170
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    Do you have more or less time to do whatever you want because you own computers and iPhones? Speaking for myself I have more free time and can do more with these effort multiplying devices. I "work" less than half as much as I used to and spend most of my time doing what I really want to do (I put the "work" in quotes because I like my work).

    You're the exception, not the rule. I don't work with computers, so they haven't helped me in any way.
  • Reply 45 of 170
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    You're the exception, not the rule. I don't work with computers, so they haven't helped me in any way.

    You're using a computer right now, plus whether you realize it or not computers have multiplied the productivity and access to information for almost everyone because even if an individual does not have access to a computer, the people THEY interact with have access, and that additional layer of access affects every aspect of economic activity.
  • Reply 46 of 170
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    You're using a computer right now, plus whether you realize it or not computers have multiplied the productivity and access to information for almost everyone because even if an individual does not have access to a computer, the people THEY interact with have access, and that additional layer of access affects every aspect of economic activity.

    While that's true, I still haven't seen people with a plethora of free time. There are still long lines at the DMV, and in banks, etc...., and all things computers and automation were supposed to improve.
  • Reply 47 of 170
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    While that's true, I still haven't seen people with a plethora of free time. There are still long lines at the DMV, and in banks, etc...., and all things computers and automation were supposed to improve.

    If you make an appointment online (or even using a phone) for the DMV, you'll find your time spent waiting is dramatically reduced, although this is certainly not an endorsement of any government services. Also, many banking tasks may be carried out online and using an ATM. Automation and computation are already so embedded in our interactions that they seem invisible to most.
  • Reply 48 of 170
    If you make an appointment online (or even using a phone) for the DMV, you'll find your time spent waiting is dramatically reduced, although this is certainly not an endorsement of any government services. Also, many banking tasks may be carried out online and using an ATM.

    Unfortunately the DMVs near me do not have that option, and yes ATMs, and online banking is supposed reduced lines but I have yet to see it. Today is the last day of the month, go to a bank and see if there's not a long line today.
  • Reply 49 of 170
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    Unfortunately the DMVs near me do not have that option, and yes ATMs, and online banking is supposed reduced lines but I have yet to see it. Today is the last day of the month, go to a bank and see if there's not a long line today.

    I'm guessing only the woefully uninformed or very special cases are those spending time waiting in bank lines.
  • Reply 50 of 170
    splifsplif Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post





    What is The wow all about. $24 an hour is already damn good wages for a stupid person to earn.

    How does it feel to live your life in theory?

  • Reply 51 of 170
    I'm guessing only the woefully uninformed or very special cases are those spending time waiting in bank lines.

    Fortunately for bank tellers, the woefully uninformed are plentiful. :lol:
  • Reply 52 of 170
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,033member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post



    I've been hearing that nonsense all my life. This was going to eliminate that, that was going to eliminate this. We're going to have so much free time on our hands because of automation, and if anything we have less free time.



    You have less free time today because you post idiocy like this on the Internet, something you didn't do twenty years ago. time with things you didn't do two decades ago, like read Apple rumor sites and post nonsensical comments.

     

    Twenty years ago, if you wanted to buy a plane ticket, you drove to a travel agency, talked with someone for a while, then bought your tickets, which likely were snail mailed to you within a week.

     

    If you wanted to buy some books, you drove to the bookstore and perused the titles for an hour. Or maybe you read about something in a newspaper or magazine article. And perhaps you had an older title in mind. Oh wait, it's not in stock. We'll special order it for you, please come back in a week to pick up that back-ordered item. Same thing with records or CDs. Today, you shop iTunes Store or Kindle Store and click Buy.

     

    Same with videos. You went to Blockbuster, perused the titles, then waited at the counter. Remember, there are late fees if you don't return your videos on time, so you hurry in the morning, leave home a little early so you can dump stuff into the store's returns slot before you head off to work, school, etc.

     

    How about pumping gas? In the bad old days, you had to go inside to pay with cash, or later, to hand over a credit/debit card to activate the pump, then return to pay for the transaction and retrieve your plastic, often waiting behind other people there to do the same thing. Today, the POS terminals are on the pump.

     

    And how about that refund check from the IRS? In the bad old days, you anxiously peered into the mailbox and when it did arrive, it meant a drive to the bank. Today, direct deposit. You do nothing but wait for the funds to arrive in the designated account.

     

    Have you ever shopped at a bricks-and-mortars Apple Store? Ten years ago, you picked out your purchase and stood in a line for the next available sales associate to ring you up. Today, they have handheld terminals for a quick credit card swipe, and you can opt to have your receipt e-mailed to you.

     

    There are countless other ways that technology has saved you time.

     

    You have understood nothing.

  • Reply 53 of 170
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post





    This Republican notion that everyone can get an education, and make it is so wrong. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer, a developer, or own a business. We need people to be policeman, fire fighters, garbage collectors, and bus drivers. Those people provide an essential service, and should earn a living wage.



    SF is a small city that has been hit hard by gentrification. The new residents are willing to pay more in rent, and as are the businesses that cater to them. This causes long time residents, and businesses to get pushed out by their landlord. The higher cost of doing business gets passed on to the consumer. It's people that make the cost of living to sky rocket, so how do you suggest we remedy that?



    I am a republican, and I don't care what political party you belong  to if you want an education you can get one and earn one yourself.

    Both my son and my daughter earned and worked there way through college.  I am a blue collar worker and could not afford to "give them an education but saying it is a republican notion that everyone can get an education is complete baloney.  I have democratic or as they like to be called "progressive" neighbors that believe the same thing that if you want an education you can get one.  Both of them are lower middle income like me and could not afford them an education either.  But they both have sons and daughters that earned there education the hard way like my son and daughter, by getting two jobs and going to school.  No one said it would be easy, but it can be done and has nothing to do with political affiliation.

  • Reply 54 of 170
    wizard69 wrote: »
    What is The wow all about. $24 an hour is already damn good wages for a stupid person to earn.

    How exactly are they stupid people?
  • Reply 55 of 170
    mpantone wrote: »

    You have less free time today because you post idiocy like this on the Internet, something you didn't do twenty years ago. time with things you didn't do two decades ago, like read Apple rumor sites and post nonsensical comments.

    Twenty years ago, if you wanted to buy a plane ticket, you drove to a travel agency, talked with someone for a while, then bought your tickets, which likely were snail mailed to you within a week.

    If you wanted to buy some books, you drove to the bookstore and perused the titles for an hour. Or maybe you read about something in a newspaper or magazine article. And perhaps you had an older title in mind. Oh wait, it's not in stock. We'll special order it for you, please come back in a week to pick up that back-ordered item. Same thing with records or CDs. Today, you shop iTunes Store or Kindle Store and click Buy.

    Same with videos. You went to Blockbuster, perused the titles, then waited at the counter. Remember, there are late fees if you don't return your videos on time, so you hurry in the morning, leave home a little early so you can dump stuff into the store's returns slot before you head off to work, school, etc.

    How about pumping gas? In the bad old days, you had to go inside to pay with cash, or later, to hand over a credit/debit card to activate the pump, then return to pay for the transaction and retrieve your plastic, often waiting behind other people there to do the same thing. Today, the POS terminals are on the pump.

    And how about that refund check from the IRS? In the bad old days, you anxiously peered into the mailbox and when it did arrive, it meant a drive to the bank. Today, direct deposit. You do nothing but wait for the funds to arrive in the designated account.

    Have you ever shopped at a bricks-and-mortars Apple Store? Ten years ago, you picked out your purchase and stood in a line for the next available sales associate to ring you up. Today, they have handheld terminals for a quick credit card swipe, and you can opt to have your receipt e-mailed to you.

    There are countless other ways that technology has saved you time.

    You have understood nothing.

    Yet everything you listed is done on free time. I meant free time as opposed to work which the hours spent doing has increased, not decreased.
  • Reply 56 of 170
    mechanic wrote: »
    I am a republican, and I don't care what political party you belong  to if you want an education you can get one and earn one yourself.
    Both my son and my daughter earned and worked there way through college.  I am a blue collar worker and could not afford to "give them an education but saying it is a republican notion that everyone can get an education is complete baloney.  I have democratic or as they like to be called "progressive" neighbors that believe the same thing that if you want an education you can get one.  Both of them are lower middle income like me and could not afford them an education either.  But they both have sons and daughters that earned there education the hard way like my son and daughter, by getting two jobs and going to school.  No one said it would be easy, but it can be done and has nothing to do with political affiliation.

    You conveniently left out the 'make it' part. The truth is all the universities in the US don't have enough spots for every single high school graduate, and there aren't enough retail spaces for everyone to open a business. We still need a great many of those kids to be soldiers, to flip burgers, to stock the shelves at our retailers, etc, etc, etc. I know plenty of college graduates that couldn't find work, and had to settle for a blue collar job.
  • Reply 57 of 170
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    You conveniently left out the 'make it' part. The truth is all the universities in the US don't have enough spots for every single high school graduate, and there aren't enough retail spaces for everyone to open a business. We still need a great many of those kids to be soldiers, to flip burgers, to stock the shelves at our retailers, etc, etc, etc. I know plenty of college graduates that couldn't find work, and had to settle for a blue collar job.

    Having a college degree isn't a guarantee of a job. It's just proof that a student is capable of completing assigned tasks. If there is no work available in their preferred field, they have to adjust their expectations.
  • Reply 58 of 170
    Having a college degree isn't a guarantee of a job. It's just proof that a student is capable of completing assigned tasks. If there is no work available in their preferred field, they have to adjust their expectations.

    Yet many here think these bus drivers are stupid, and incapable of having a college education when there's the possibility that they are educated, and couldn't find work. Some people don't have the benefit of moving in with Mommy, and Daddy into their 30s.
  • Reply 59 of 170
    newbeenewbee Posts: 2,055member
    boredumb wrote: »
    Until otherwise proven, I choose to believe he's joking...

    The problem is, how does one "prove" the difference between an idiot and a comedian. You choose comedian, while I, after a brief glance over his posting history, chose the other option.
  • Reply 60 of 170
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post

    I've been hearing that nonsense all my life. This was going to eliminate that, that was going to eliminate this. We're going to have so much free time on our hands because of automation, and if anything we have less free time.

    We do have more free time because of automation.   But we have less free time because corporate America has demanded a longer work week and most of us are working far more many hours than the average worker put in 30 years ago.    And plenty has been eliminated:  there used to be rooms full of typists as well as clerks and secretaries at virtually every business, even smaller ones.   Those people are all gone.    And we're all accomplishing more.   One of the reasons why businesses have done so well is because even aside from screwing workers, they've become far more efficient.   

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post

    What is The wow all about. $24 an hour is already damn good wages for a stupid person to earn.

    $24 an hour is $840 a week for a 35-hour week, which is $43,680 a year if you get paid for holidays, sick days and vacation, which they probably don't.    While that's above the poverty line, it's below the average income for a worker in the U.S.    How much does rent or mortgage + maintenance cost within 40 miles of Cupertino or Silicon Valley?    Now throw in their share of health insurance (if provided by the company) or their cost for Obamacare.    Now take off Federal, State and Local taxes.    Now throw in commuting costs to get to their job.   There won't be very much left.    And they're not even going to get the $24 for several years.

     

    And it's quite insulting for you to imply that all blue-collar working folks are stupid.   There's plenty of stupidity on this site from supposedly educated people.   Especially today, with college costs having increased at many times the rate of inflation, it's impossible for many people to attend college.    I'm old enough to remember when the City College of New York had free tuition, but it was really hard to get in. And many State schools across the country were near-free as well.   Even State schools are quite expensive today.   If the father of the bus worker also made $24 per hour (and he probably made less), chances are he could not send his kid to college.  

     

    Should there be a difference between what people who have invested in their education earn and those who didn't?   Absolutely.   But everyone who works hard deserves a wage they can live decently on.    It really pisses me off when people making upwards of $200K a year (with household income in the $300-$400,000 range) think it's perfectly okay to pay minimum wage or slightly more to working-class workers.  I don't think bus drivers have to have every luxury, but they deserve to live in a safe neighborhood, in decent housing and be able to put food on the table, clothes on their family's backs, be able to get healthcare when needed and to take a family vacation every once in a while.   You can't do that in most parts of the U.S., especially in most urban or otherwise desirable areas.    

     

    As for unions, in 2013, only 11.3% of American workers are covered by unions and most of those are public workers.   Have some unions done some bad things?   Sure.   The worst things they've done are probably the pension deals for which many cities are now spending more then they are on salaried workers, but the politicians were just as stupid for signing those deals and then even more stupid for not properly funding the plans.   Unions for private workers wouldn't exist if corporations weren't so damned greedy.   

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dasanman69 View Post

    This Republican notion that everyone can get an education, and make it is so wrong. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer, a developer, or own a business. We need people to be policeman, fire fighters, garbage collectors, and bus drivers. Those people provide an essential service, and should earn a living wage.



    SF is a small city that has been hit hard by gentrification. The new residents are willing to pay more in rent, and as are the businesses that cater to them. This causes long time residents, and businesses to get pushed out by their landlord. The higher cost of doing business gets passed on to the consumer. It's people that make the cost of living to sky rocket, so how do you suggest we remedy that?

    That's exactly right.   It used to be that the rich didn't have all that much impact on their surrounding communities and the prices paid for services.    But there's such a ridiculously high ratio between what the rich take in vs. what the average working glass person earns, it affects everything and communities that used to support people of all incomes are being transformed into places that only the rich can live.   In NYC, the average price of an apartment in Manhattan hovers around $1.6 million and prices in Brooklyn and some parts of Queens are fairly close behind.     We used to have a program in NYC to build housing for the middle class called the Mitchell-Lama program.   In return for keeping rents low (and tenants couldn't earn more than 6-7x the rent), the builders got a substantial tax break.   That program created tens of thousands of apartments for the middle-class, but starting about 20 years ago, the builders were permitted to buy their way out of the program and they almost all did.    Those buildings went condo or co-op, the builders made a fortune and now the apartments are quite expensive and non-professional co-op and condo boards are stuck with the maintenance bills in this now-aging housing stock.  

     

    If you're middle class, it's almost impossible to live almost anywhere in NYC if you don't already have a place. 

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