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John Deere workers on strike

MuntCuffin said:
Deere is a tech company more than an ag company, anymore. There was a good video on YouTube about it, good watch.

There tractors are built mostly by robots. You can tell. Heavy iron frame, all systems are compartmentalized, covered in shitty plastic made to look like a pissed off grasshopper. The valuable parts of the machines aint the iron, its the hardware and software to run that machine around the field with minimal input from a human.


But their techs are kinda starting to suck now.
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You have to understand how Deere runs their business model and have for decades. They have divisions and they don’t cross over much at all. Power systems do like engines though. Basically it’s like this, AG is completely separate from construction. At one time lawn & garden was its own division but is now completely under AG.

Deere has their hands in all kinds of business besides equipment related also. Helps keep them diversified through tough times.

Business model of Deere versus say Fiat (which owns case and new holland) when Deere buys a company out, it stays separate from the main company. It operates on its own standing and has to survive this way. Like when Deere for some dumbass reason bough homealite couple decades ago ish. That venture didn’t pan out and they sold it off. Fiat on the other hand, buys a company or takes one over like the above mentioned, then their business model is to combined them with other businesses they own. Meaning like what they e done with case and new holland. Today both case and new holland equipment are built on the same assembly lines using the same designs and parts. Only difference is paint colors and decals.

Why is Fiats Business model good and bad? Good because they can cut manufacturing cost and overhead cost. The bad is if one brand suffers, there is really no way they can sell it off except in name only because the assets are tied into other companies that share that platform. Fiat does this with most all their businesses they own, refrigerators etc.

Oh and fuck unions. They’re an eyesore of things today imo. Way too corrupt and they don’t give a shit about the employees. They need to rethink their standing and reorganize to stop stealing money from employees payroll and do nothing but put them out of work in the end. There may come a time when unions become relevant again but I doubt it. Like stated above, Deere is using a lot of robotics because they just work every day without drama and inconsistencies. Not everything can be automated in assembly but it’s getting closer to that.

The thing I think about with robots is this, if most all work ends up being performed by AI and robots, what will humans do for employment? If humans can’t earn an income, how are they going to be able to buy the things the robots are building? We will become obsolete and in AI’s eyes, useless and will need to be used as slaves or killed off for the rise of… that’s another story.
 
Yup that's exactly what Deere did when they bought Wirtgen. Cat does the same as Fiat CNH, buys a company and fully absorbs it.
 
To be real clear, I'm not "pro union, ride or die!"
I just accept that the pendulum swings.

Before I signed my union card I looked up Ron Paul's take on unions, the take was "if employees want to join together to collectively bargain, they should be free to do so"


Here's where I feel it's justified. Picture some dumbfuck foreman who basically got his job because he's 6'2" and chews the same chew as his boss. He got a 10% raise he blew on a new razor because he's the boss man, and he's got his eyes on another promotion and a bigger pickup truck. We'll call him Buck

That's not really an exaggeration of "leadership" in my industry, that's actually pretty represtative of how it is.

Now picture some younger dumbshit that you still kinda like, even though he's a dumb shit. Maybe it's your wife's little cousin or some shit. We'll call him Matt. He's green but he has a baby and tries hard to provide. He gets hired on at the mine and works for Buck.

On graveyard shift something goes down and production stops and this month's numbers are going to tank and Buck isn't going to get his bonus, so he's got a bright idea about how Matt is gonna get in the hole just real quick like and fix it from inside. The older fatter guys that can't fit shake their heads and tell Matt it isn't a good idea.

Non union plant, they can call msha and get a response Wednesday and it'll piss off everybody. They can tell safety department the following morning, if it's a weekday, and piss off everybody.

Union plant, they can tell Buck to go fuck himself, or if they don't have the sack they can call their steward over and he can tell Buck he can go fuck himself. Buck gets told to go fuck himself. And then puts a plan together that takes 4 hours longer but gets done without injury or fatality and gets trained in his mind to do things the right way like a dog who's nose gets rubbed in shit.

The process is up and running.

The steward then decides how big of a deal to make it. He can involve msha, or not. He can hold it over Bucks head and get some slug cover for taking long lunches. He can go to the mine manager and use it for trading on some other deal, he can use it as leverage for training. He can put these issues on paper and on the record, in a way that kind of makes everybody look bad, from Matt being a trouble maker all the way up to the feds getting notified that the company is engaging in unsafe acts. If non union, that paper trail would have to be made once Matt refused the job. Maybe it would be so uncomfortable that he wouldn't want to refuse the next job just because he doesn't want to look like a troublemaker.
That's just the bullshit politics between a poorly managed company and a union that often has a collectivist bent.

But in my experience, having the ability to tell your supervisor he's being unsafe and to get fucked at 2am is worth rolling in the mud with the union. But I'll stand my my previous statement, of there's a union there, it's probably a poorly run company.
 
Projectjunkie said:
But in my experience, having the ability to tell your supervisor he's being unsafe and to get fucked at 2am is worth rolling in the mud with the union. But I'll stand my my previous statement, of there's a union there, it's probably a poorly run company.
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You can tell your boss to go get fucked without being in a union.

I ran across some super sketchy shit at my old job and told my boss to get fucked more than once.
 
Steve300xcw said:
FYI you can be non union and do that same thing
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Clemson13 said:
You can tell your boss to go get fucked without being in a union.

I ran across some super sketchy shit at my old job and told my boss to get fucked more than once.
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Correct, you can tell anyone anything at any time.
Being the new kid and keeping your job is the variable. I've told lots of people to get fucked, the consequences varied :laughing:

Again not a huge proponent, just stating that unions have their place in an imperfect world.

As unpopular as that is, imagine being the tradesmen in a room of union stewards at contract time telling them they're too greedy trying to get the unskilled guys fat raises this go around.


So they can get fucked, and you can get fucked.
Everybody can get fucked:flipoff2:
 
Projectjunkie said:
To be real clear, I'm not "pro union, ride or die!"
I just accept that the pendulum swings.

Before I signed my union card I looked up Ron Paul's take on unions, the take was "if employees want to join together to collectively bargain, they should be free to do so"


Here's where I feel it's justified. Picture some dumbfuck foreman who basically got his job because he's 6'2" and chews the same chew as his boss. He got a 10% raise he blew on a new razor because he's the boss man, and he's got his eyes on another promotion and a bigger pickup truck. We'll call him Buck

That's not really an exaggeration of "leadership" in my industry, that's actually pretty represtative of how it is.

Now picture some younger dumbshit that you still kinda like, even though he's a dumb shit. Maybe it's your wife's little cousin or some shit. We'll call him Matt. He's green but he has a baby and tries hard to provide. He gets hired on at the mine and works for Buck.

On graveyard shift something goes down and production stops and this month's numbers are going to tank and Buck isn't going to get his bonus, so he's got a bright idea about how Matt is gonna get in the hole just real quick like and fix it from inside. The older fatter guys that can't fit shake their heads and tell Matt it isn't a good idea.

Non union plant, they can call msha and get a response Wednesday and it'll piss off everybody. They can tell safety department the following morning, if it's a weekday, and piss off everybody.

Union plant, they can tell Buck to go fuck himself, or if they don't have the sack they can call their steward over and he can tell Buck he can go fuck himself. Buck gets told to go fuck himself. And then puts a plan together that takes 4 hours longer but gets done without injury or fatality and gets trained in his mind to do things the right way like a dog who's nose gets rubbed in shit.

The process is up and running.

The steward then decides how big of a deal to make it. He can involve msha, or not. He can hold it over Bucks head and get some slug cover for taking long lunches. He can go to the mine manager and use it for trading on some other deal, he can use it as leverage for training. He can put these issues on paper and on the record, in a way that kind of makes everybody look bad, from Matt being a trouble maker all the way up to the feds getting notified that the company is engaging in unsafe acts. If non union, that paper trail would have to be made once Matt refused the job. Maybe it would be so uncomfortable that he wouldn't want to refuse the next job just because he doesn't want to look like a troublemaker.
That's just the bullshit politics between a poorly managed company and a union that often has a collectivist bent.

But in my experience, having the ability to tell your supervisor he's being unsafe and to get fucked at 2am is worth rolling in the mud with the union. But I'll stand my my previous statement, of there's a union there, it's probably a poorly run company.
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I work at a non work club mine and it works nothing like this.
 
[486] said:
dunno bro
what would normally be bare persuasion often gets really overly emotional once it has filtered around through several people playing the telephone game

rather be the one speaking for myself than having someone putting their words behind my efforts
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maybe I misread what you said. Wouldnt be the first time
 
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Ksand said:
There are no threats. He posted nothing but work club propaganda
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[486] said:
indeed
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Wait, not indeed.

There were implicit threats, just perfectly acceptable persuasive ones rather than the entirely unjustifiable coercive ones I'm usually crowing about.
I specifically said 'threats' rather than my normal broken record 'coercion' because of exactly this.

It is an important difference, but one not grasped by many, so a threat of quitting is often received in an overly emotional manner, since persuasion and coercion have been blurred together in our fucking broken culture.
 
[486] said:
Wait, not indeed.

There were implicit threats, just perfectly acceptable persuasive ones rather than the entirely unjustifiable coercive ones I'm usually crowing about.
I specifically said 'threats' rather than my normal broken record 'coercion' because of exactly this.

It is an important difference, but one not grasped by many, so a threat of quitting is often received in an overly emotional manner, since persuasion and coercion have been blurred together in our fucking broken culture.
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I've never been threatened for not doing something. If something needs cribbed up for me to safely repair it, no on questions it. They just go get cribs and help me crib it up
 
Ksand said:
I've never been threatened for not doing something. If something needs cribbed up for me to safely repair it, no on questions it. They just go get cribs and help me crib it up
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I mean the implicit... threatening to quit over shitty conditions that is the... (there's a french term for it that's found its way into english and it ain't nom de guerre nor je ne sais pas) Fuck it whatever.
the thing that unions find basically their main purpose in aside from the ponzi scheme retirement baloney
 
Ksand said:
I work at a non work club mine and it works nothing like this.
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That's awesome! I'm happy for you.


I've worked as a contractor on different mine sites, non union, owned by the same company, and seen wildly different cultures.

I've also seen wildly different cultures on the sister properties of the union mine I worked at.

There was the Great Paul Burrito time clock conspiracy. He was a steward, and in the top quarter of producers. Paul's last name sounded like burrito, so they called it that. A supervisor saw Paul leaving work 5 minutes early and started termination paperwork.

He had them pull up his time card record, they said he falsified it, and added that to their case against him.

They pulled up video footage of him walking out early. They said it wasn't him. Company doubled down.

This went on for a few meetings and they really had him.

Then they had the company play the video and freeze it.
Then he rolled up his shirt sleeves and his arms were fully tattooed:laughing:

That guy went on strike, went to work for the same contractor I went to for a while making a shit ton more money, working on sites for both the company we were on strike from, and the competition. (There was a weird legal "some people cab return to work" where the union folded, and some people went back at the old pay, and the top half stayed out for an extra $10hr new and improved covid trades wages, so in some ways we were still part of a labor board case, but not scabs:homer:)

then went to work for the competition for even more money, and is probably on track for management

Anyways, I still believe if a company has a union it's probably poorly managed and not a great place to work regardless. I'm not here to promote unionism in general, only that it has its place in some industries.

It's also pretty clear that the deere employees union got greedy on a boom and they got laid off on a bust.

One part of our contract that I was already in place when I got involved, and that I fought to keep in place, was the bonus based on the LME copper price. In boom times the competition would raise their hourly rate or offer signing bonuses, our pay would stay flat (more ot) but the bonuses would be substantial. In lean times the competition would lay off, we'd have our base pay, minimal ot, and no bonuses. It was a compensation package that was mutually beneficial for the company and the employees, IMO. If anyone were to bitch about their pay, anybody could just point to the copper price, and that the competition was laying off.

TLDR; unions are slimy, so are some employers, sometimes you pick the lesser of two evils
 
Yeah at the non union surface Ag mine I work at Ignoring any employees input on something possibly being unsafe sets off a huge shitstorm. We've had losers quit and try and get us in trouble more than once.
 
Filthy McChevy said:
Yeah at the non union surface Ag mine I work at Ignoring any employees input on something possibly being unsafe sets off a huge shitstorm. We've had losers quit and try and get us in trouble more than once.
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Luckily I've never had to deal with that, even when I was a roof bolter. We were in the worst conditions imaginable and our faceboss said if we were not comfortable bolting it, he would take our place on the bolter
 
speed bump said:
Being non-union wouldn't change that.

I grew up in what was probably one of the strongest union towns this side of the Mississippi at one point. Price of fuel/power was high and the price of copper was low. The anaconda company had a big legacy tail here so arco shut it down. 9 years later the mine reopened non-union and ever since they have paid just good enough to keep the union out and operated that place that like coppers gonna hit a $1.35/lb any second and they are gonna close up shop.

When I got out of school I went into the oilfield on the drilling side in a super non-union state for a non-union company. Price of oil crashed in 15 and they laid 90% of the workforce off and worked the rest of us like rented mules. When it picked back up in 2017 they never changed that attitude and lost all their hands and work when they could have dominated the market for a year or two.

In every case ive personally experienced the workforce being union or not really didn't matter. Outside of market conditions or poorly operating a place with a legacy tail will get you more times than not.
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Sounds exactly like where I grew up. Butte Mt by any chance?
 
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