This is fairly normal for a collective bargaining contract. The employer will always go for increasing personal costs of healthcare in exchange for a raise in salary. That's the point of a CBA -- for the individual you're extremely lucky in most places where the increase to your insurance costs is balanced with your annual cost of living increase. Your employer's share of the cost has increased while yours has remained fairly static since 2016.
You'll have to show me where your Aetna plan doubled the prices of ER and Specialist Copays -- The stuff I'm seeing an increase on specialist from $25 to $40 and the ER visit from $75 to $100 on in network doctors. Looks like the same change I had to my own insurance in the last contract negotiation.
“You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”― Malcolm X
I watch them fight and die in the name of freedom. They speak of liberty and justice, but for whom? -Ratonhnhaké:ton (Connor Kenway)
Maybe you should leave your company if you are not happy with your salary or raise....pull yourself up by your bootstrap and look elsewhere if you think you are that valuable.
BTW how many years did it take them to go from 7.25 to 15 dollars?
has not increased since July 2009
so 10 years...... you know A DECADE.
Last edited by Zan15; 2019-02-19 at 01:21 AM.
All you need to do is look at China about 20 years ago now, or whenever they started to take off. They doubled the wages of all government employees. Those people started buying homes, cars, electronics, clothing, good food, and etc.. Their economy took off. This is textbook economics. But conservatives don't like it when non rich people have money for some strange reason.
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Big fucking deal you god damned crybaby. You already make well above a living wage for your area. Just becasue the bottom was brought up to respectability doesn't mean everyone else gets a raise.
Maybe he should. Watch him bitch about prices then if it were up to him alone to bargain for his wages and health care costs. He's be wishing he hada $15/hr minimum wage becasue I have no doubt, if it were not for his union, he's be making minimum wage.
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He couldn't he's just a union benefit freeloader. Bemoans all the dues, and unions in general, but I bet would go crying to his steward the first sign of a grievance.
Having grown up in small biz and continuing to stay with it to some degree, I can honestly tell you that wage increases aren't what's killing us.
It's big biz gouging everywhere they can.
For instance Sysco started adding a fuel surcharge a few years back when the cost of fuel skyrocketed, while the cost of barrels of oil came down, the cost of fuel has come down less, and companies like sysco, haven't dropped that fuel surcharge at all. And to be straight up with you all, that surcharge was WELL ABOVE and away from any increase in costs they had, and has become just another way to increase revenue.
This is just ONE supplier and they are all pretty much doing this now.
I think it all started with someone taking one olive out of the jar at the factory to save a company and workers, and some greedy dick realized that's a way to make money, offer less for the same...or more; fast forward to today and we're all buying packages of food that are half empty and full of air, paying surcharges, and the cost of living goes up and up.
If only we had regulatory boards that prevent these giants from doing these things against what makes sense for sustainable economy instead of the bleed it until it dies strategy they seem to be happy to ride us all to, maybe, just maybe, we could find a happy balance where the GNP was meaningful to your average person (who currently feels a gross disconnect), the numbers go up, but they do not feel their station in life is improving at ALL.
I suppose I feel like a cap on the cost of living would be the thing, though very hard to make happen, at least having more laws about sneaky, sly, price gouging by big biz would go a long way to helping that.
TLDR: We in small biz have never had issues meeting cost of living increases, we are struggling to meet all the gotcha price gouging by big biz.
"There are other sites on the internet designed for people to make friends or relationships. This isn't one" Darsithis Super Moderator
Proof that the mmochamp community can be a bitter and lonely place. What a shame.
Any business model that depends earnestly on people being homeless or destitute to work should not be allowed to persist.
On MMO-C we learn that Anti-Fascism is locking arms with corporations, the State Department and agreeing with the CIA, But opposing the CIA and corporate America, and thinking Jews have a right to buy land and can expect tenants to pay rent THAT is ultra-Fash Nazism. Bellingcat is an MI6/CIA cut out. Clyburn Truther.
Youre looking at the standard HMO insurance. I opted for the better insurance they offer where I dont have to use in network doctors and do not need referrals for a specialist. Also prior to this contract I had the Highmark PPO option which is no longer offered. Ever since Obama care was passed my costs increase every year so that people who refuse to buy insurance can get healthcare
Minimum wage laws are pretty crap.
The problem is any more effective solution gets opposed because those with money aggressively resist paying people what they're actually worth, and those with money are the only ones who can pay for lobbyists.
Until we can get enough political wherewithal to pursue something more effective like a UBI, this is the half-assed way we're gonna be stuck going.
"The cost of living"
Yea that's called inflation, what do you think the minimum wage does?
for example, If the value of labor working at a coffee shop is $12 and the minimum wage is $15 what do you think a company has to do? They either have to fire people, which makes their business more inefficient and raises costs, or they move the price onto their products which causes inflation. And inflation hurts people at the bottom the most as they spend their entire income. Rich people love inflation, especially governments. Inflation helps governments pay back their debts through higher revenue, it pushes people into higher taxes brackets, and it allows politicians and central bankers to tax people without voting for it. So great, you're getting payed a little more money and now everything costs more money, it's a zero sum game.
Everything that happens within the free market is voluntary and mutual, it's not corporations you should be afraid of, its every two bit socialist politician who wants huge regulations, taxes and to stymie free markets so they can get voted into office.
I don't get the logic of zero sum game. Do you actually believe that the cost of something is 100% labor? Also the value of labor is whats the lowest someones willing to be paid to do this. If someone can find someone to do a job for a 1$ an hour, they'll do it, even if it's not moral or legal. Laws are in place to protect people, this one protects us from corporations creating slave labor conditions, which it's failed to do. We have people that are slaves to their job to survive, sure they can quit and find another, but then they're just a slave to that one. People have to work to survive, and corporations know that, so they'll pay us as little as they possibly can just to squeeze out every last cent they can from us, no matter how poorly our living conditions are because of it.
You really think the place any of you work at cares about you? Start asking around what people make and how long they've been there. You'll quickly find out you're just like the people on the bottom, you're still getting screwed, just with a regular baseball bat, and not one wrapped in barbed wire and dipped in lemon juice.
I'm a thread killer.
I think inflation generally seems to outstrip living increases, that's what I think.
But thanks for trying to educate me on the meaning of the word inflation, I hope it 'embiggens' your ego to school me
Now your version of life is great on paper, but in the real world it's just not that simple.
You'd think you can always just 'get another supplier who isn't screwing you', but you cannot always find another supplier who has what you need, or at the same cost/less/isn't also trying to gouge with surcharges. Life ain't that easy.
You can't just fire staff to increase efficiency in SMALL BIZ, you already operate at that line by nature of being a small biz.
As well, you cannot raise your prices past a point, as the local area cannot support increased prices past a point.
That's a socio/geo-economics thing.
I very much DO need to be aware of big biz trying to F me in the A, ON TOP OF two bit socialist AND capitalists, none of them have any compunction about screwing me, or my employees.
Welcome to reality, if this is news to you, you've never talked to anyone in small biz.
You have to stay on top of it all, every day, and you've got to get creative to keep the boat afloat; (my personal approach is to not keep all my eggs in one basket and I've diversified and grown it from just the one company to a few of different natures. This was done out of pocket over years, and they are small and tidy but all roll over a small net consistently) your 'it's simple' ideals just don't cut the mustard on so many levels. If they did, we wouldn't see the current state of things as they are in such a widespread way, over this many years, in so many regions of the entire world.
My staff see where the money is coming in, and where it goes out, they are absolutely aware of the limits and ability our company has in the community we are in.
I'd love to pay them more, they are good, hardworking people, they care about our work and our company.
Truth of the matter is that you can only do so much.
Giving cost of living increases isn't something I disagree with in any way, we all need to have that, and in fact I find that it's detestable that while people do get that, it doesn't match up with the cost of living (yes, also known as inflation...)
While we apparently can't regulate inflation, we could regulate big biz, and that would go a long way to at least hindering and combating unchecked inflation caused by gouging.
Just as I believe we should have stricter regulation on the oil and gas industry.
Both of those would go a long way to taking a lot of pain out of life across socio-economic board, except you know....big biz and the oil industry.
"There are other sites on the internet designed for people to make friends or relationships. This isn't one" Darsithis Super Moderator
Proof that the mmochamp community can be a bitter and lonely place. What a shame.
I think the problem is that many "remember" that it's to stop abuse stop there the majority of ever understanding the raises. We're already getting some salty messages over some who have already let go for said abuse and taking a moral high ground and declaring those with jobs still to either take a pay cut (worked ten years here and nearly at my goal of 6-digit income) or drag the company into the dirt for the sake of ethics. It's as if many who harp on this with big business have this view everyone who isn't single-handedly running a ceramic store are part of this problem.
Which is concerning, as I pointed out in the last post. McDonald's can cover this, and if the burger joint down the road goes under because of "bad control over their business" because the raises and supplemental increases in their own network because they also received a wage hike, and likely the ones above them. They're likely to pass the debts onto the next person down the ladder, where do you think the business will go when it all shuts down?
Major companies love these things cause it's dirt free disposal of competition of smaller companies. I just saw a Fazoli's open where a family Italian restaurant was closed due the collective of the rises, the taxes, the new gen not liking going outside and ordering in, and the property management deciding everyone gets higher fees cause his living in CA got higher too. All the while see the same lot spit on them for not doing their due diligence cause. It was a sad sight.
I think a lot of it comes from understanding that everything is finite. If you raise the wage of the poorest the next level of poverty is pulled down to them as rent and goods increase in price to match the new income.
It seems like a race to the bottom to me especially since we keep replacing the poor with unskilled immigrants both legal and illagal to ensure that wages remain stagnant and uncompetitive.