Aug 20, 2009
Thanks to their union, Home Depot’s carpet installers can’t carpet an attic loft.
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To their credit, Unions once protected workers against 80-hour workweeks and measly pay.
Now they prevent grown men from climbing 6-foot ladders.
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Hey, gotta stand up for the little guy. (Multiple puns intended.)
See that’s the problem with you evil slave laborer capitalists. You expect poor defenseless grown men to face the perils of going up a six foot ladder where something bad could happen. Shame. This sarcasm was brought to you by the letters a, r, g, and h and a healthy dose of good grief.
Seriously always get a private contractor/installer.
I have nothing valuable to say except a great big guffaw. That’s hilarious.
In this age of big-brother government watching over employers’ shoulders, unions are becoming outdated. They are still good for some humor though apparently :).
I agree about the private carpet installer. We got a private one, and for Lowes to carpet an 11×15′ space it would cost us, at CHEAPEST, ~$600! We got a local carpet guy who had been driven out of business by Lowes, and it cost us $350. He got the carpet and pad from a warehouse that has very large scraps (and TONS of selection) and his labor was only $60. Lowes is $149 for one room or an entire house. Blech.
This post made me laugh! Thanks.
I really enjoyed Jake and Will’s comments :-)
Up next: a ban on staple guns. Those darned sore thumbs keep threatening a strike.
Labor unions are the bane and scourge of America.
Ah yes, it’s a shame what some unions have come to. Or what the labor movement has become/is turning into. I study industrial and labor relations at Cornell, and it’s been discouraging for me to see some of the unhelpful things unions do (or helpful things they don’t do, rather).
I’m a union wife and I would climb the ladder for you any day! They don’t own me yet:)
You might be lucky in the long run. There are some bad stories out there about their customer service.
living the american dream, just as the founding fathers intended!
I once worked in customer service at a call center where they had a union. You could choose to stay out of their union but you had to pay dues either way so there was really no benefit to opting out but there was also no benefit to opting in. I have no idea where all those union dues went. The only thing the union did was ensure you couldn’t sit down at your desk until exactly 4 mins before your shift. They never saved anyones job or raised the cap on pay or guaranteed any worker rights. It seemed like the union existed more for itself than the employees or the company. So strange, why do you need a union in a call center?
Oh, good grief.
Oh well. I suppose the reasoning behind it is similar to that behind the warnings I’ve actually seen in print explaining that you shouldn’t try to dry your little dog in the microwave if he gets wet in the rain.
Can you say nanny state?
Wow…
Here is my 2-cents
The Home Depot is extremely anti-union, so I highly doubt that the installers were unionized.
In addition, unfortunately the last handful of generations have not experienced occupational life before unions came along. And most people are ignorant of why and how we got the descent working conditions that we now enjoy. People think unions are superfluous and therefore they are becoming extinct. But working conditions will not get better, only worse. My guess is that in 50 years (If we are still here) unions will be very popular again due to the regression of working conditions and our standard of living. We should take heed and learn from our history!