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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16663 messages, Last post on Nov 08, 2009 at 9:32 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 06, 2009 6:05 pm)
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Replying to: dino001 (Jan 07, 2009 5:36 am) |
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 06, 2009 5:50 pm) We have a consumer economy with no consumers, and until we recreate working wages, coupled with corporate AND personal fiscal responsibility, deflation, monitization, and public works projects may save the country and government, but we will avoid becoming a second rate nation state by sliding directly into the gutter. China can’t keep loaning us money to buy their unsafe, cheaply made products forever. Even they will eventually demand cash. And not American Dollars, cash that has value and the ink is dry when it hits their hands.
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Replying to: lumoy (Jan 06, 2009 7:48 pm) I won't say that is the norm but some people do work that much. My FIL is a retired iron worker from LTV. He worked doubles 3-4 days a week for years which basically doubled his pay. He always worked 16 hours on holidays getting double time plus 8 hours on those days. Granted, with his job he wasn't tied to an assembly line. He was in plant maintenance so, many of those hours were spent reading a news paper or playing poker. Heck, he told me back in the late 70's he got a DUI on his way home from work after working a double on New Years eve and a crane operator brought in a couple coolers of beer. Nice. I think I posted an article a while back from about a fork lift operator at Ford who had donated nearly $1 million dollars to higher education. He had been working for Ford over 40 yrs and worked all of the o/t he could get earning $100k+ a year and I believe that was in the late 90's to early '00s. I agree that most worker probably don't work 5+ 16 hour days. |
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Replying to: lumoy (Jan 06, 2009 7:48 pm) That happens at many plants. Same thing at the steel mills. It's probably cheaper in the long run to offer o/t when needed vs. hiring an additional employee with all of the benefits. Plus when things slow down it's very difficult to lay anyone off in a union environment. My FIL had 32 years of service when LTV went belly up in late '99 and he still was near the bottom in seniority in his department.
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Replying to: lemko (Jan 07, 2009 6:24 am) There are MILLIONS of well paid people in the USA. The Feds and State governments employ many millions of Union workers. The UAW is a small segment of the population. There demise will have little impact on the rest of the USA. Obama has said he was going to expand civil service jobs by close to a million. To keep this in perspective. The good paying UAW jobs at GM are about 70,000. Not sure how many white collar workers at GM. My guess is they will have a better chance at maintaining their standard of living. I listened to a GM engineer with 30+ years service. He claimed each time the UAW got a fat raise the company would trim the engineers wages and benefits. No love lost between the white and blue collars at the automakers. So much for the UAW bringing the standard of living up around them.
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Replying to: dieselone (Jan 07, 2009 6:33 am) I can relate to that. After 37 years in the AK Teamsters I was still number 2 on the seniority list in my unit. The senior technician retired the year after me on his 75th birthday. He could not afford to retire earlier with a 50 year old wife and 12 year old daughter. He loses over half his retirement so it will carry over to his wife. He is also getting $2300 per month SS until his daughter reaches 18 years of age. Hope he gets a few good years in retirement. I could not hang on to reach number one. I was tired of flying 3500 miles to work every 3 weeks. |
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Replying to: manegi (Jan 06, 2009 10:17 pm) Look at Argentina. Less than 100 years ago, it was one of the world's richest countries (#4 based on per-capita GDP). But starting in the 1930s, it closed off its economy & imposed tariffs on both imports & exports. Within 20 years, it was a 3rd-world country. Consumers suffer when an industry is protected. Prices go up while quality & selection go down. Once protected, an industry spends less time satisfying customers & more time seeking political influence so that it can continue to keep outside competitors at bay. Political maneuvering replaces the free market. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 07, 2009 6:38 am) use your common sense--if gm engineers lost wages and benefits after uaw hourly bargaining--do you think it might have prompted some of them to join the uaw and get them back--chrysler engineers were in the uaw. we even called the non-union white collar staff our unpaid union members. indeed the pattern of passing along the same uaw negotiated benefits to the white collar workers got so strong that we had groups of non union white collar workers suggesting what new benefits should be negotiated. i wrote the organizing leaflets for the tech center engineers warning them that what GM gave them by fiat was not guaranteed by a written contract. I spelled out that they were getting the same or better benefits to keep them from organizing now but that some day they could be taken away since there was no contract requiring GM to pay these benefits. well as you know they didn't listen. non union GM salaried retirees no longer have health care. GM couldn't afford it and they had no legal obligation in that regard. uaw retirees covered by a contract do--absent bankruptcy, establishing the vebas and national health care that is. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 07, 2009 6:38 am) I listened to a GM engineer with 30+ years service. He claimed each time the UAW got a fat raise the company would trim the engineers wages and benefits. As you know I was also an engineer with many years of service at GM and from the 80's thru the 90's it was the opposite of what you heard. Union got an extra holiday we got an extra holiday. Hourly got COLA (cost of living adjustment) we got COLA. etc. BUT in the early 2000's when GM started to restructure and downsize, salaried lost beni's before the UAW and then used that as a bargaining chip. What we were unhappy about, at least the ones who saw the vehicle balance sheets, was the huge overhead that was calculated into each vehicles cost. Sure lots of it was legacy but those cost kept us from putting in content. |
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