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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16656 messages, Last post on Nov 08, 2009 at 10:40 AM
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Replying to: tlong (Jan 11, 2009 11:20 am) Thats a rare breed today. Any car buyer is rare and I posted all the imports parked in lots off the ports yesterday. Maybe we could stack them to save space? Isn't it bad enough that the transplants can't sell theirs? Why do they import them to park them here? http://www.newser.com/story/44666/us-ports-awash-in-foreign-cars.html "This is about power. And the business community is not going to give up power willingly." Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said as much to a meeting with analysts in October. "We like driving the car," he told them, "and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us." Throughout his run for president, Obama was explicit in his support for Employee Free Choice and his understanding of the forces arrayed against it. "If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union; it's that simple," he told union members in Pennsylvania in April. "Let's stand up to the business lobby." Nationwide, some 86,000 workers have been fired over the past eight years for trying to unionize (countless others have been threatened), and only a fraction of these get reinstated by the NLRB. So Lawhorn's return to the forklift is what passes for a victory these days, under the shredded protections of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, whose intent was not merely to protect the right to collective bargaining but to "encourag[e] the practice." But unionization rates have been crashing for decades. "Historically, unionization basically created the middle class," says economist James Galbraith. "First, by its direct effect on the wages and benefits of unionized workers; second, by its indirect effect on the wages of workers who weren't unionized; and third, by the impact unions had on the creation of the social institutions that underpin the middle class, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--the very structures of the New Deal and the Great Society." Since the election, the business community has savvily retooled its campaign. In a November 21 letter to Congress, the Chamber wrote that passage of the bill "would have a particularly devastating impact on small employers who, as the primary source for new jobs, would be counted on to reverse the current economic downturn." The bill, the letter went on, "is an awful idea in good economic times and a catastrophic idea in the difficult economic times now upon us." Days later, the Chamber presented new research claiming that unionization is a drag on GDP--an assertion that Galbraith and other economists find laughable. And the Chamber used negotiations over the auto bailout to claim that unionization bankrupted the industry. In fact, labor makes up a tiny portion of a car's production cost, but in a tense economic environment with spiking unemployment, such talking points easily gained traction in the media. As UC Santa Barbara labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein points out, the New Deal was not just a series of reforms that stabilized banking or stimulated the economy. "Those reforms," he says, "were backstopped by the organization of the working class, and those reforms continued for two generations." Any Obama-era reforms, he adds, "can and will dissipate" unless unions form an institutional bulwark against retreat. Then, unions were more than twice their current size and less allied with progressive causes, and so it was easier to frame the battle as a parochial fight between big labor and big business. "Labor's decline helps recast that dynamic," he says. "This time around it isn't about two special interests; it's about economic recovery and restoring the middle class." http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090126/kaplan/single |
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from just yesterday..."It would be nice for Audi to be different and build a plant in the north or midwest part of the U.S.,like around NYC ,Cleveland,Chicago,Kansas City,etc."... You must come back to reality...I would believe that ANY foreign maker coming here will simply avoid the North or the Midwest...too many northern cities are overrun by unions and the cities are a failure, too, not just having the UAW...NYC has the transit union screwing up the city, Detroit is an absolute mess, and would still be even if the UAW was never there...truthfully, conisdering it is known as the rust belt, I see NO advantages to locating in ANY northern city, and they will be surrounded by environment-ruining unions running the North...the South simply does not have that problem, they don't have workers with the you-owe-me-a-job mentality, and no bad work habits to break...and if ANYONE thinks that a former UAW worker does not have about 12 million rotten work (or non-work) habits to break, they have been living in fantasyland...UAW people have grown up with, and have developed on their own, the worst militant attitudes and work habits seen since the fall of Rome... If I had any kind of a job to offer, and someone noted on their resume that they even took a tour of a UAW plant 27 years ago as a school field trip, I would show them the door before they sat down for an interview...when you ingest a poison, there are often antidotes to save your life and help you survive...once you have the UAW poisoned attitude, even a religious epiphany cannot remove that welfare attitude.. No, they will look South as the North has been destroyed by all unions, not just UAW, but if you want to make cars, the North offers NOTHING...and please don't tell me about a trained workforce, as there is none up North...they are UAW trained, which means brainwashing to make anything but good product...it appears that the transplants train their workers that a good product is what means job security, something that people want to buy...the UAW just trains them that product quality is simply an accident, but you will demand your wages whether you work or not, whether someone buys your product or not... One would have to be an absolute fool to go anywhere but the South...and avoiding any vestiges of the union is Job One... |
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Replying to: jimbres (Jan 11, 2009 10:31 am) AIG doesn’t break out its U.S. employment numbers, but it has 116,000 workers worldwide. Perhaps half of those are U.S. jobs. GM employs 96,000 Americans. Total worldwide employment is 252,000, more than twice AIG’s. Former AIG CEO Martin Sullivan earned about $14 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $53 million (including only 9 months in 2005, the year he became CEO). GM CEO Rick Wagoner earned $14.4 million in 2007. Total pay over the last three years: About $30 million. AIG is also offering controversial “retention bonuses,” ranging from $92,500 to $4,000,000, to a select group of execs deemed essential to the company’s turnaround. Congress has asked questions - but so far shown little outrage There’s only been one Congressional hearing on AIG, and that focused mostly on past practices. No current AIG officials have testified before Congress since the feds got involved. Wagoner has testified before Congress four times since November. And GM has presented a 38-page “viability plan,” that’s publicly available, showing how it would use government money. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke both support the AIG bailout, and they’ve steered money to the company without Congressional approval. GM’s most important friends in Washington have been the Michigan Congressional delegation, which obviously doesn’t have the clout it used to. Paulson has actually argued against using part of the huge $700 billion financial bailout fund to help the automakers, because they can’t pass a “viability” test proving they’ll stay in business long enough to pay back the loans. But AIG hasn’t passed a viability test either, and without federal help there’s little doubt it would be in bankruptcy. GM has a bunch: 64,000. Ah ha! Maybe that explains it. In fact, Senate Republicans who blocked a $10 billion emergency loan for GM and a $4 billion loan for Chrysler said they wouldn’t approve a Detroit bailout unless the United Auto Workers made much deeper concessions than they’ve already offered, essentially giving up any advantages they have over non-unionized workers in other states. So here’s one lesson: If you want a government bailout, try to have problems that are too complicated for most people to understand. And make sure your employees are the kind who wear a suit to work every day. Once you’ve satisfied those two requirements, ask for as much as you want: The coffers are open.
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Replying to: marsha7 (Jan 11, 2009 8:04 pm) VW would have probably given the UAW a shot at their new plant if not for the strikes this year against companies bleeding red ink. The UAW leadership is BRAIN DEAD! Tough labor climate isn't helping state BY TOM WALSH • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • August 3, 2008 When the top-level VW and Staubach teams came to Michigan for the crucial pitch in May at the Yarrow resort, their worst fears about Michigan's reputation for adversarial labor relations were splattered in headlines across Detroit's newspapers and USA Today: "Local UAW strike hits GM's popular Chevy Malibu," May 6. "UAW Turns Up the Heat," May 7 "Axle Union Reps Leave Talks," May 8. "Fear of the UAW probably drove the final decision," Hettinger told me last week. While some people in Michigan are quick to blame the UAW and other labor unions for all of the state's economic ills, others -- especially in the Democratic Party -- tend to dance around the topic. Labor has been politically powerful in Michigan for generations, and the UAW is deeply embedded in the state's fabric, not only in auto plants but in offices, casinos and on the boards of hospitals and charitable groups. The past 30 years of decline for Michigan's auto industry and its chief labor union should have made it abundantly clear by now. If we keep doing the same dumb stuff, we will get the same dumb results. http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3963871 While Michigan and Detroit may not be the most corrupt state in the Union, they run a close second to Illinois and Chicago. The UAW is a BIG part of that corruption. So your argument is valid, starting a business in the Midwest or NE is problematic. Though it seems that Indiana has had better success than Michigan. |
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Replying to: marsha7 (Jan 11, 2009 8:04 pm) A half-century ago, Mississippi's political godfather, the late U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, told other prominent Southern pols during a meeting at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis that the South will "fight the CIO" (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and unionism with just as much vehemence and determination as it fights racial integration. Semiskilled and unskilled workers present the main problems for the unions, because most of the skilled workers in the South have long been relatively well organized. In fact, several strong national craft organizations, including the International Association of Machinists, were founded in that region. The deep-seated, evangelical, fundamentalist religion of southern communities has played a part in Southern unionism. It has cut both ways, or rather both sides have attempted to use it to forward their ends. The social gospel would lead some churchmen to favor measures that would promote the welfare of the worker. Lucy Randolph Mason, as agent of the CIO, was at least indirectly responsible for the adoption by the Southern Baptist Convention of a resolution favoring collective bargaining. Since the main training in leadership, speaking, and organizing of the southern worker has been in his church, and since his religion has such an appeal for him, organizers have used hymns and church procedures in their meetings. When in 1949 a large conference of the CIO in Atlanta sought to invigorate its southern drive, national CIO leaders used religious slogans. This was to be "a spiritual crusade led by men with religion in their hearts . . .," ". . . the thing we are fighting for is Christianity." On the other hand, some southern brands of religion contain a fatalism and a pacifism, among other element, that are not conducive to the united action required of unionist. Moreover, from various motives, among them religious conviction, many Southern preachers have been either cool or actively hostile to unionization. Among those who adduce evidence of anti-union activity by preachers are Liston Page (Mill Hands and Preachers, New Haven, 1942) and Miss Mason (To Win These Rights, New York, 1952). The attitude of the press in the South is predominantly anti-union, although seldom as extreme and violent as the late Frederick Sullens, editor of the Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News, who wrote in 1937: Note to the CIO: If you want to start trouble anywhere in Mississippi, please pause and take this information. The Mississippi National Guard has been mustered up to 2,300. It has been made an effective fighting organization. The boys know how to shoot guns and are not afraid to do it when the command to fire is given. However, if communities oppose 'outside agitators', these latter can expect little protection from local officials, who reflect the attitudes of their communities, and, if the press seems to advocate disregard of the civil rights of objectionable people, the labor organizer may find his work dangerous as well as difficult. The extent of anti-union legislation by Southern states may be indicated by the fact that the eighteen 'right-to-work laws in the United States, ten have been passed by Southern legislatures--in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi. Louisiana had a similar statute, but repealed it in 1956. These laws vary in content, but are usually patterned on that of Virginia, which makes the union shop illegal under any circumstances. Their net effect on organized labor is nor easily determined, but it is clear that they represent an anti-union bias on the part of Southern lawmakers, who employ in passing them arguments not against the union shop but against union themselves. Paradoxically, the facts that wages in the South are low and that they are rising both militate against the unions. Low wages and small incomes make it harder for workers to pay union dues, to hold through a strike, and to see the usefulness of a long struggle. When wages are increased, frequently indirectly through union activity, the Southern worker is as likely to give credit to the employer as to the union.
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 8:20 pm) Again every thing you have posted is a smokescreen to avoid the issue of UAW running the Domestic auto industry into the toilet. And your lame arguments about all the bank bailouts were pushed by the Democrats not the conservative Republicans. The bailouts have done nothing to keep the country going. Just more graft to friends of the 110th Congress. The same bunch of losers that the UAW supports. Let them all rot in the same hole. |
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 8:54 pm) Those states at the time were predominantly Democrat. So what is your point? They did not swing over to Republican until a true Conservative was elected in Ronald Reagan. Even JFK was not as left wing wacko as today's Democrats that have corrupted the Unions in this country and especially the UAW. |
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Replying to: jimbres (Jan 11, 2009 12:55 pm) Your ignoring the price difference and comparing apples to oranges. Whats a 3 series BMW run? MSRP $36,300 Whats a Cobalt run? MSRP $15,660.00 Thats the plain Jane cheapoo too!
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Replying to: bpeebles (Jan 11, 2009 1:57 pm) Perhaps you could explain to me the risks of taxpayers building stadiums/arenas for billionaires? All I see is welfare for the rich and little risk and unGodly rewards/ill gotten gains/profits. AIG is a prime example of a $400,000 spa orgy after the bail out. Where was the outrage? If you have two children or more? Do you send only one to college? You do it for one, you MUST do it for the other.
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 11, 2009 9:12 pm) Thank your Democratic 110th Congress they fought hard for the bailout to their banking buddies. Name one conservative Republican that voted for the bailout bill.
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