Big strike at GM

[iron81]

Iversonian, no I wasn't leveling. Is it really that hard to believe there is a union supporter around here?

Ike, the primary reason for declining unionization rates is the decline in manufacturing. Much of the remainder is due to anti-union labor law changes like right-to-work and corporate resistance to unions. You've heard the stories about Wal-Mart closing stores that went union? The reason why right-to-work is bad is that it makes it much easier for the corporations to exert pressure on their workers to not join unions: its going to look very suspicious and probably result in a grievance if a closed shop union loses a member, but not so much in an open shop.

AJackson, I agree that high wages are useless if they put the company out of business. Unions are aware of this as well and that's why they're giving wage and health care concessions in the GM strike in exchange for job security promises. To be honest, I see business as a means to an end: to provide the means for people to make a life for themselves through wages. Unions help steer money from the upper-class investors toward middle class assembly workers and I think that's a good thing.

Mosdef, Midge is right about the terms of the contract. GM entered into successive collective bargaining contracts over the years promising UAW workers health care after they retired in exchange for their labor today. GM puts money aside to ensure that this benefit will be funded. So basically, GM is paying today for their current employees future medical problems, as they agreed to.

All, the strike is over. Some highlights from the Detroit Free Press:

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In addition to the (union taking over GMs health care plan), people familiar with the tentative deal say it includes:

• No base-wage increases, though workers will get a $3,000 signing bonus and an annual lump-sum payment of 3% or 4% in the other three years of the contract.

• New hires into non-assembly jobs will earn less than current workers. Those workers are expected to earn an average of $27 per hour in wages and benefits, compared with the current average of $73 per hour. People now in those noncore jobs will be offered buyouts and early-retirement offers similar to those offered to workers last year.

• Future cost-of-living increases will be diverted to pay for the health care of active and retired workers.

• The jobs bank, the controversial program that allows workers who have lost their jobs to keep getting paid, remains but the rules will change. The area in which workers would have to move to an open position or face losing their incomes is to be expanded.

It also is believed that at least 4,000 temporary workers will be made permanent GM employees.

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[Felix_Nietzsche]

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the primary reason for declining unionization rates is the decline in manufacturing. Much of the remainder is due to anti-union labor law changes like right-to-work and corporate resistance to unions.

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1. True manufacturing jobs are declining in the USA.
2. <Sign> You have things ass-backwards....
Right-to-Work laws are NEUTRAL. They prevent workers from being FORCED to pay union dues. They give the workers the option to join unions or not. Job shops effectively FORCE workers to join unions (they force the payment of dues). It is laws like these which KILL American manufacturing jobs. Right-To-Work laws help to keep mfg jobs in the USA. But even in right-to-work states like Texas, union thugs will threaten non-union employees. A fellow worker once told me a story where 4 union thugs cornered him in the back of truck trailor threatening to beat him if he did not join the union by the end of the week. Another acquaintance of mine was sent to New York to help out with telephone/circuit wiring. His first day he did 5 times the work as his fellow union workers who purposely worked slow so their union bosses could request more job slots from the company. The next day a union foreman told him he was making the local boys look bad and he needed to slow down or otherwise he was going to make a lot of people mad. He felt extremely intimidated and he slowed down. Then there are other scum-bag union tactics like "sick-outs".

American unions killed themselves with help from:
1. Spineless executives that caved in to excessive demands favoring next quarter's profits over long-term company survival. The GM retirement plan supports *SEVEN* workers/widows for every *ONE* current worker. You can NOT run a competitve company with this type of overhead.
2. Well-meaning politicians which passed laws which interfered in the free market negotiations between mgmt and the union. Laws which HEAVILY favored the unions.
3. Trial lawyers. Look at the small airplane market (Cessna) which use to mfg solely in the USA. Today because of lawsuits, these planes are now mfg in countries like Brazil. One place crash and USA companies on the hook for HUNDREDS of MILLIONs even if the fault may been because of poor maintence. Now if a Cessna crashes, the trial lawyers sadly shake their heads because they can not sue Brazil and are forced to shake down other honest American companies. The US workers which held these mfg jobs, lost their jobs...

Add all these factors up and you create a hostile environment for USA manufacturing. Politicians are the main cause of these job losses. They never understood the law of unintended consequences....

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I agree that high wages are useless if they put the company out of business. Unions are aware of this as well and that's why they're giving wage and health care concessions

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Yeah......about 20 years too late.
These union bosses killed a lot of union jobs due to their greed.

[mosdef]

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Mosdef, Midge is right about the terms of the contract. GM entered into successive collective bargaining contracts over the years promising UAW workers health care after they retired in exchange for their labor today. GM puts money aside to ensure that this benefit will be funded. So basically, GM is paying today for their current employees future medical problems, as they agreed to.

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Actually, I think what you just said is the same as what I was saying, not what Midge was saying. When you look at the deferred benefits that are due to employees and former employees now for service that was rendered years ago, whether or not those deferred benefits are being paid is only relevant to the current contract to the extent that current actives think it says something about the value of deferred benefits. What the current active employees negotiate now for service in the upcoming bargaining period should not (theoretically) include demands that previously deferred benefits be paid. I think this is a terrible position for the union to assume. What they are saying is: If you carry through on your promise to pay us what you owe us for work already done, we'll do more work. The employer should JUMP at this and continue to offer as many deferred benefits as the employees will take because they will always be able to get more work in exchange for just paying the employees for what they've already done! The employees MUST not allow this to happen by accepting deferred compensation if they are not prepared to bear the risk that the compensation will not be paid in the future as promised.

[Misfire]

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I see business as a means to an end: to provide the means for people to make a life for themselves through wages.

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Do you play poker to provide the means for dealers to make wages? Do you think investors open cardrooms for the same reason? What about other businesses?

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Unions help steer money from the upper-class investors toward middle class assembly workers and I think that's a good thing.

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Yes, because profit isn't an incentive for upper class investors to continue creating jobs... oh wait

[surftheiop]

so you want the governement to prop up some monopolies (those on labor) and you want governemt to dismantle other monopolies?
wtf bro

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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I see business as a means to an end: to provide the means for people to make a life for themselves through wages.

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Do you play poker to provide the means for dealers to make wages? Do you think investors open cardrooms for the same reason? What about other businesses?


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Agreed.....they tried this type of incentive program in Russia. The results were not good....

[TomCollins]

Its sad. Iron is a good guy with a big heart clearly. It's a shame he can't get past his good intentions to see the logic in this. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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Its sad. Iron is a good guy with a big heart clearly. It's a shame he can't get past his good intentions to see the logic in this.

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Agreed.... He is intelligent and I think he is younger than 35 so I think he might eventually come around. After a person turns 35, their beliefs start to harden where it is unlikely they will change. Hell, during my radical days I use to have a poster of Karl Marx in my room.....but I wised up... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[tolbiny]

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To be honest, I see business as a means to an end: to provide the means for people to make a life for themselves through wages

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In Ford's philosophy, the benefits of mass production were intended for the consumer, which includes labor, since all wage earners are also consumers. In his scheme the consumer was more important than the producer; and if this seems a bit dialectical you may consider the fact that while you may dispense with the wage earner by putting a machine in his place, the consumer, who buys the products of the machine and makes mass production possible, is indispensable. The wage earner is more important in the aspect of consumer than in the aspect of producer, and it follows that in order to be a good consumer he must have high wages.

But when labor itself has the power to say what the wage shall be and how much it will give for the wage received, it claims for itself the first benefits of mass production; the consumer is forgotten. Thus the true economic ends of mass production are defeated, and all you have left is a method of producing goods. You may say it another way: that the intentions of mass production cannot be realized unless management and labor are both free. So long as that freedom existed in the motorcar industry, the cost of an automobile went lower and lower until it became, pound for pound, the cheapest manufactured thing in the world, not the Ford car only but all cars; and automobile labor at the same time was the highest-paid labor of its kind in the world.

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web page

[vulturesrow]

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To be honest, I see business as a means to an end: to provide the means for people to make a life for themselves through wages. Unions help steer money from the upper-class investors toward middle class assembly workers and I think that's a good thing.


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This was literally mindblowing to read, and I dont mean that in a good way.