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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16738 messages, Last post on Dec 03, 2009 at 10:07 AM
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In this scenario, should GM and Chrysler go under, it's to my believe that another company will emerge and salvage the best GM still got left. Naturally, with the way things go at UAW I seriously doubt any of those new owners will ever agree to the UAW wage standard. If the UAW refuse to negotiate further I dare bet those companies will set the new plants down south where unions have no power. Another possible outcome is the death of UAW. As more and more leave the UAW membership to get a job the UAW may experience a slow agonizing death. We're in deep trouble and UAW expect us to help revive the economy. Well, the UAW simply forgets that it has the power to help as well, either they forget or they simply want everyone else to make sacrifices except UAW. |
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You are missing the positive ripple effect of Ch-11 bankruptcy protection: 1. The high interest debts will be written down. So the company will be much more viable. 2. If parts of the company does get liquidated, the resources and labor will be freed up for other opportunities.
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Replying to: wiseman (Jan 25, 2009 7:27 am) Does the higher wage fuel this economy and that of other nations? Absolutely and therefore its a good thing. Then how come they haven't saved a year's cost of living or more after decades under "UAW protection"? How do you know they haven't? I'm UAW and have more than that saved. "Two years" is part of "a year's cost of living or more." Do I have to explain what "or more" means? Or more means that we will be in this more than two years, and if we use your logic that we walk away from our obligations, such as a mortgage, this would never ever end. You, sir, frighten me. Your outlook is that of one which would make things worse and in no time the same banking institutions would be back fro more bail-out money, since they are getting homes back at an alarming rate. So, I see your solutions as problematic at best. Do I have to remind you that you were the one saying we only need to look at one year, when it was asked whether you were so pessimistic about UAW member's employability that they might stay unemployed for the rest of their lives. After unemployment runs out, they are excluded from being counted as far as the unemployment rate is concern? Are those who are under employed, such as working for Walmart less than 40 hours, included in the unemployment rate?
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bring out people's true nature. Too much good times makes them lazy. Hardships brings the best and worst of them. It shows the world whether they really have what it takes to survive or not. Those who don't will be forced to improve or wither and die. I believe the death of UAW and other unions will do the same. We will see these if overly spoiled and kool-aided bunch can actually develop themselves and live on without the protection of the union, independent one may say. Those who can't are the ones I refer to as no good, it's by-bye to them. Or at least there's still the infrastructure works for them.  People deserve nothing unless they earn it, and I've yet to see UAW do that. Death imo will fix this. I believe this is the only way to make these people competent again, not rising minimum wage (that will spoil them even more).
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Replying to: dallasdude1 (Jan 25, 2009 7:59 am) No, not at all. High nominal wage level is an impediment to economy (that's why businesses have been fleeing high wage areas). High productivity is what lifts both economy and the standard of living. High productivity leads to high wages, not vice versa. If you believe printing paper money alone brings prosperity, you can look to Zimbabwe for counter-example. "How do you know they haven't? I'm UAW and have more than that saved. " Then what's to complain about being given a push to find new jobs? "You, sir, frighten me." Reality is a pretty frightening place  I'm not at all suggesting what homeowners should do, but merely predicting what they would do to take care of their own family. You know what's even more frightening? If and when the government does the ultimate bailout, nationalizing all the big banks, it will be politically infeasible to foreclose, and people will stop paying mortgage altogether . . . regardless whether they can afford it or not. That's just reality . . . as real as if domestic carmakers kept making inferior products, people would buy imports. I'm sure that was a frightening thought to many UAW dreamers a few decades ago, and they chose to ignore that eventuality. "After unemployment runs out, they are excluded from being counted as far as the unemployment rate is concern? Are those who are under employed, such as working for Walmart less than 40 hours, included in the unemployment rate? " Are you saying that's all UAW members good for? That no re-organized carmaker or new carmaker or any maker of anything else would ever hire an ex-UAW member?
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"Everyone is not in the same boat as to assets." While I agree that everyone is different in assets, it simply means they need to manage those savings based on their different needs. Or they simply need to save even more. Say a UAW worker makes the $28/hr wage, but is married with 3 kids. He saved just as much as the next UAW guy, but the next guy is married with no kids at all. Crisis hits, and UAW guy#1 drowns in debt, while #2 still survive. Is that our problem? Do we need to simpathize with them? Hell no. In this example, if you can't afford having kids then DON'T. They're adults, they chose their lifestyle and now reap what they sow. Simply put, the lesson is if you can't keep up don't even step up. Sensibilities seem to fly out the window as too many people choose to live a dream. And then reality hits..... 
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Replying to: wiseman (Jan 25, 2009 7:59 am) 1. The high interest debts will be written down. So the company will be much more viable. 2. If parts of the company does get liquidated, the resources and labor will be freed up for other opportunities. Those employees were "demanding" too much for jobs that are not "worth" the cost? Who determiness what the "worth" is? Consumers. What it boils down to is that consumers want autos cheap and they don't really give a crap what the standard of living is for the people who make them. As a society, we have decided there is little we can do to get consumers to pay more on behalf of the employees who produce their goods. But we also recognize that we cannot have a functioning and civil society in which auto workers get paid only what unfettered market forces will deliver to them. So we let them unionize, which is their way of extracting a bigger share of the economic pie than they would otherwise be able to extract. You can be offended by this notion, but unions are hardly the only devices by which workforce participants battle for bigger slices of pie than they would reap in a perfectly efficient labor market. CEOs achieve the same thing by way of the disgraceful corporate governance practices we use. Hedge fund managers basically sucker people into paying them on an absurd compensation scheme. These people also demanded way too much for jobs that are not worth the cost. Yet we are told we are not supposed to begrudge them their wealth because they earned it in the free market. We are supposed to ignore the fact that that market was not really free. Meanwhile you would have us be enraged at the union workers who are basically doing just the same thing, but coming out of it with far less wealth, and whereas the CEO deserves his deal with the golden parachute, the union worker is screwing us all over? You say unions started for a good reason. What was that reason? Was it not that labor was unable to achieve acceptable living standards when it was every man for himself? Is that not true today? Looks to me like it is. And look at what the result of that has been over decades: households went from one earner to two earners to two earners plus borrowing on their credit cards and taking out subprime mortgages in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living. Our society let them borrow because we wanted them to spend so that someone else somewhere else in the economy could make money. We know that the net result of that was an increasing share of that money ended up in the hands of the very wealthy. Now the debtors are saying, guess what, you won't let us extract enough wages out of the economy to make a living, so f- you, we are not going to pay our mortgage and our credit card bills. Banning the unions won't solve the underlying problem, which is basically income inequality has gotten out of hand and it can no longer be masked by letting people borrow to sustain their standard of living. I don't know what the answer is. There are too many auto workers and their wages are indeed too high to be competitive. But those people have to be allowed to extract a living out of our economy, do they not? If someone follows the rules and works hard, shouldn't they be able to have a reasonable standard of living in the richest country that has every existed on the planet? I have always been a believer in free market and the invisible hand and low taxes and all the rest. But now I look at what is happening in the economy, and I contemplate the reallocation of resources that is going to have to take place in the coming recession, and I see some problems that look very intractable for the free market to solve on its own, unless we as a society are willing to just allow the least skilled among us to live in poverty and squalor as they compete with one another for the crumbs we are willing to throw to them to make our cars and other stuff for us, and I just don't think that's the kind of country we want to be, nor is it sustainable in a free nation.
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Replying to: tlong (Jan 24, 2009 10:56 pm) Regards, OW
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Replying to: m4d_cow (Jan 25, 2009 8:21 am) Kids or no kids, some folks just live beyond their means. They fail to save for any reason. These folks will be in dire straits even if GM remains solvent. There are many folks who are employed and just don't think about the future. I, myself, can't see why they don't think as I do. We should acknowledge that good hard working people have no ability to manage money and are forced to seek protection under bankruptcy. Having seen this first hand, I have no solution, other than putting them on a budget as the bankruptcy court/trustee does. Hence, their right to self determination ends. However, this is not mutually exclusive to UAW workers. Many find themselves in poor financial condition, from all walks of life. Why ever did the banks and credit card companies ever lure these folks into borrowing? There is always going to be some bad debt in any economy and its just taken into account. That and the fact that interest rates factor in a certain percentage of bad debt within an economy. We failed to factor in the current enigma or at least its size and we find this nation in very hot water. Prudent or not prudent we will all suffer from miscalculations of few. As the inventory of homes increases, and interest rates as low as possible, price is what has to go down to lure buyers. So, the value of your home and mine decline to the point that price meets demand.
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Replying to: cwalti (Jan 24, 2009 11:56 pm) Regards, OW |
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