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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16705 messages, Last post on Nov 25, 2009 at 6:56 PM
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 12, 2008 4:43 pm) You can believe that if you like. We were building war ships and war materials all during the 1930s. The late 1930s was the beginning of the UAW. They were founded well into FDRs administration. Was dissent and labor abuses part of the FDR legacy? Your wrong assessment of the Reagan years is noted. As a working stiff I did much better after Reagan took office than during the Democrat controlled Congress from JFK through Carter. Nixon was a non entity to the working man. Congress ran the domestic end of the country and just about buried US in over bearing taxes. After Reagan got in and people were expected to work for a living it was tough on the featherbedders in the US auto industry. I think the consensus here is the Big 3 and the UAW built crappy cars pretty much from 1970s through the present. Not all can be blamed on the UAW. The workmanship on the cars can and that shows up in much of what was built. I find it funny that we see history from a totally different perspective. I from a middle class hardworking Union man and you from? I was raised in a close to poverty Christian home. We would not think of asking for government help even when there was no food in our home. Democrats & welfare were dirty words in my childhood home. They both denoted people too lazy to work. No work, no eat...... I liked to eat so I worked from the time I was very young. I was not brought up to think because I was born in America I was entitled to anything but the freedom to go out and make a living.
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 11, 2008 9:47 pm) If your about to lose your home and or car, do you call the insurance company and demand they lower your premiums? Can you call the tax office and demand they lower your assessment? Your case that the UAW is responsible for the Big Three's business failure is silly. If one can see that this an entire industry/economy suffering, its self evident that the UAW has been an asset over the years and out sold imports as a whole. There was more meat on the arguement of AIG at SPA's and bonuses. This is but a political witch hunt and grand standing. 700 billion and the executive office illegaly rewriting the tax code to support a non union industry reeks of the rats they are. Labor supported Obama and therefore labor has a special relationship. Just as big business had with GW and Company.
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when the democrats were talking about the outrages amounts of money CEO's make the republicans could not get up there and say this enough... " washington can not regulate wages. then when the workers in the UAW need help the republicans want to reduce the wages and benefits of the workers by breaking up their union. Tell me the republicans are not only in office to to make the rich richers and the workers indentured slaves? 
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 12, 2008 5:34 pm) Why are 50% of the domestic producers financially successful? They just happen to be the 50% that are not UAW. You call the UAW an asset. I think they were an asset in the early days, but greed has now destroyed an entire industry. The foreign nameplates had no such boat anchor and are successful. Even the domestic makes are successful outside this country. They are building new plants away from UAW influence and importing a higher percentage of their product. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 12, 2008 5:22 pm) I went to a parochial school in Chicago (is that Christian?), we weren't racist. Nor do we label all people by political association. We prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and thereby see their real character. As Jesus put it "whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me". Wave the flag you want, my daddy's coffin was draped by that flag. Patriotism doesn't mean that you must support unjust wars and or brutal murder of helpless people. The true patriots were those who opposed the Vietnam war and hastened its end. |
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Replying to: tlong (Dec 12, 2008 5:50 pm) Last I looked Toyota stock was at a 52 week low. Half price. You are delusional if you consider that successful. Nothing they build appeals to me, it must be basic transportation for the masses. The Cadillac CTS is UAW Michigan and the hottest car out there. Show me a Toyota that even in the same class as a VETT. Solstice/Sky are killing the two seater market. Have you been looking at cars lately? I did like the two seater Lexus, but the price is outrageous. Other than that their cars are fugly. You have to go look at BMW to get anything better than the American hot sellers.
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Replying to: lionsdenmother (Dec 12, 2008 5:49 pm) Republicans made become an endangered species within four years. No dimples or chads this past election. Just folks speaking their minds. It wasn't even close. |
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During talks with GM, the UAW pointed out that while the automaker has complained that hourly wages and benefits are dragging it down, it has continued awarding bonuses to its top executives. GM CEO Rick Wagoner "earned" $9.3 million in salary and bonus in 2006, nearly double what he "earned" in 2005. While UAW members finish voting on a new contract with General Motors that includes a cost-of-living freeze, union negotiators have moved on to Chrysler, with Ford Motor (F) next. Chrysler's new CEO, Bob Nardelli, became a symbol of corporate excess when he left Home Depot early this year with a $210 million severance package. Ford's new CEO, Alan Mulally, got $27.8 million in salary and bonus in his first few months on the job, including an $18.5 million signing bonus. |
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Dec 12, 2008 4:43 pm) I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you blaming laissez-faire (not "laizze-fair", whatever that is) capitalism for the onset of the Depression? If you are, you should know that many economists would fault the Fed for keeping interest rates too low during the boom years of the late 1920s & then boosting rates after the 1929 market crash. Even if you don't think that Fed fumbling caused the Depression, you have to agree with almost every economist, Republican or Democrat, that sharp tariff increases, triggered by the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, dramatically deepened & lengthened the downturn. After we raised tariffs to keep out imports & protect our manufacturers, every other industrial country followed suit. As a result, global trade dried up & factories all over the world shut down. Bad government policy, not "greedy businessmen", transformed what would otherwise have been a 2-year recession into the legendary Great Depression. We actually were well out of the depression long before we entered WW2, Thanks to FDR. Not if you look at the unemployment numbers. Note that the unemployment rate in 1928, the last full year before the Depression began, was 4.2%. By contrast, the rate in 1940, which was the last year of FDR's 2nd term, was 14.6% - more than 3 times higher. Not until the wartime year of 1942 (Pearl Harbor was bombed in December, 1941) did unemployment approach the 1928 level. U.S. Unemployment Rates: 1920-2007 Clearly, the war effort put far more people back to work than FDR's New Deal programs did. Indeed, you could go a step further & argue, as I would, that WWII - not the New Deal - laid the groundwork for the prosperity that we enjoyed for the next 30 years. |
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Replying to: jimbres (Dec 12, 2008 6:53 pm) So why was the reason to enact the Sherman Anti Trust Act? To imprison Eugene Debs? Is this the Darwinism of capitalism? I agree that any spending, which tariffs would hinder, fueling the economy, therefore social spending/public works must also fuel the economy. If you were alive then social spending was tabu. However, spending on the war machine allowed those robber barons profit, hence it was OK then. The American were on rations and sacrificing. The corporations were doing their part too, making money from the war.
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