Today listening to Rush he was talking about this subject, I performed a google and thought I would present the following:
Prior to following the LINK for the answer, think about this: what is the average yearly compensation of “stagehands” at Lincoln Center in NYC?
.
Stagehand - move musicians chairs into place and hang lights.
Paging the people who don’t think unions are destroying the country…
B_C
I have a friend who has a masters in Lighting Design for stages, shows, concerts, and the like. He said that NYC is by far the worst city for being strangled by unions in the show biz.
If someone spills a liquid on stage, they have dedicated people for that. If someone other than those dedicated people tries to clean up that spill, they won’t get work again. It’s insane.
If they’re not happy paying the union workers their salaries they shouldn’t sign the contracts. Rush Limbaugh isn’t much different. He provides a service with very little true value beyond entertainment and requires a large sum (over $500mil) to do it. Why? Because he negotiates his pay and gets a contract signed when he comes to an agreement.
I for one don’t like unions for many reasons, pay isn’t my biggest problem with unions. And most blame can be put on the employer not the union itself. Unions are parasitic and need a host to survive, if business grew a pair they wouldn’t have the influence they currently have.
That article clearly defines what’s fucked up with this country.
I would say all the lawyers that make that much money a year are more of a problem in my book then a few stage hands working in a trade, but that’s just me.
How many people on this site make that much money? Huh? How many of them are going to admit to it? Bet they can find a million ways to justify their income, and how they’re worthy of making that much.
Wow, logic. Amazing…
I dont know if unions are ruining the counrty, they are not all the same. We must not forget that the unions have given us all the rights we have today. If it was not for Union men like Samuel Gompers we would all be slaves to our employers.
I agree that the amout they make is too much for sure. A Union Ironworker here in Upstate NY makes an avarage of 45,000 a year by comparision their counterparts in NYC make 100,000 a year mostly do to cost of living and Union strength in a big city. Also with that said we all know the news is always looking to exploit the angles not tell the truth.
Just a thought.
I would greatly disagree that the unions gave us all of our rights. I also would disagree that we would all be slaves( many are anyway and dont realize it). Having said that they have done some wonderful things for this country but some unions have gone a bit overboard in recent years and have definitely had a negative impact.
Mr. Smiles you have the best comment so far.
I think you’ve missed the point somewhat on this situation. The folks that offer and sign the contracts with the unions at Lincoln etc are run by vast liberal groups. They could care less how much money they have to pay b/c most of the money to run the place is actually from donations and tax payer dollars through programs associated with the “arts”. There’s no way with how few shows are done a year with only an average ticket price of say $350 or so pays all the bills.
To me it’s really all by design where you scratch my back I scratch yours and so the horrible cycle continues like it has for over 60 years in NYC. My biggest complaint is that tax dollars are paying for this continued power grab. To me is as corrupt as it gets.
I however dont’ see Rush Limbaugh being paid by tax dollars. The free market for his pay holds true. He yes in an entertainer and gets paid what he negotiates for his services whether one likes it or not. I’d say the amount of money he makes is change compared to the advertising profits by said companies’ products for that which he solicits when you have over 50 million listening per day across the nation.
Another good example are the teacher’s union. They in my opinion are the biggest reason why our school system’s have failed; espcially at the administration level. It is true that kids in general are partly to blame as well. We don’t get to as an “employer” get to fire them all and kick them to the curb. To me the power grab and corrupt special interest game is so big and tied to politics it would take a small miracle for it to be corrected.
well they gave us the 8 hour work day the 5 day work week, weekends off, overtime, double time and lunch brakes. They organized labor in America and in Europe after WWI. Woodrow Wilsons sent Samual Gompers to the signing of the treaty of Versais to oversea their labor laws.
I think we passed the point where unions were nessicary some time ago.
290k to move chairs around? thats horseshit.
Than your problem isn’t the union’s but those who support them with public money.
There was a time when unions were needed in the nation. Ain’t no doubt abut it. However the unions have morphed into some thing that is now destructive to this nation.
As for the wages in the article it does not surprise me in the least.
“And after all those years of payin’ Union dues
It sure didn’t seem to count for much when we got our layoff news”
I Got You by Dwight Yoakam
Kind of hard when you have laws protecting the unions and forcing unions on employers and then the unions can bring your business to its knees through strike actions etc. Unions use extortion to press a better bargain. It is not a free market (in many states that don’t have right-to-work laws) where employers can negotiate on the true value of the labor etc.
Rush Limbaugh or A-Rod or any other examples or not valid comparisons. They don’t use extortion as a negotiating tool.
I have both problems with those that support them with public tax dollars in unproductive and inethical ways AND the leadership in unions and those who follow suit inside if they know that what the leadership is doing leads to unproductive and inethical actions.
I’m just playing devils advocate here, but do you KNOW for a fact, and with sources that the only thing the stage hand in question that makes 290k a year does is “move chairs around?”
I remember a very similar story about MTA conductors that ran in the NYPost about four years ago, it was complaining about their high pay. The one thing that the story forgot to mention was that they used 1, yes 1 employees pay (an employee that had worked for the MTA for 35 years) as the basis of the story. They completely failed to mention that the new conductors make about 35,000 a year starting, and due to current contracts will never get to the 150k that this single employee was pulling in due to a past contract.
IE there was more to the story then what was presented on the front page.
While I wish I made 290k a year, and I do agree that seems a bit much, I am really curious what is being left out here.
I know several stage hands that hold union cards that make about 15% of that a year. They are all young, and they work their ass off for the money they make. And I can tell you that they do a lot more then “move chairs”. Did you hear about the Spider Man show on Broadway? About how the stunt actor fell 30 feet due to a failure in the rigging? That was the mistake of a Stage Hand, that caused that failure. That alone shows you that the job compromises a little bit more then just moving chairs.
Currently in our battle or rope work it is a stage hand that holds the title of most skilled. My wife is tied with a logger, and the Airborne Vet is a very distant third. I would trust my life to the guy in first place, and other people do all the time, that is part of his job.
The fact that people use Rush as a source for information sickens me. There is more valuable information in a fortune cookie.
Just wait. You’ll eat those words in our lifetime.
We are in a stage where the value of unions is lower than in previous generations. Though, this is cyclical, and bet your ass the pendulum will swing back when the American worker gets fed up with being used up, shit on, abused all to hell and abandoned by the globalist parasites that want noting more than to suck every dime out of the United States, forcing us into their one world vision where the elite get paid, and we fight for the scraps.
Do you know the back dealings of A-Rod and Limbaugh? You’re making claims with out proof. All contracts usually have some form of extortion involved, it’s called getting the better end of the deal.
As for unions being forced on companies, move to a right to work state. Also bitch about the politicians who pass laws that support overly aggressive unions.
This is the same thing with pretty much all problems in the country, “the man” has us trained to get out a bucket and keep throwing water over the dike instead of just fixing the f’ning dike.
We need to stop looking at the water and start focusing on the fault in the system and that’s the dike.