G. M. On Strike

[Ron61]

Well I don't agree with one thing their Union Boss said. Not everyone will be hurt by this as the Union upper levels will not only get their full pay but extra because they have to party overtime.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070924/...ut6UCHHZJkM3wV

Ron

[trularin]

Yup, they are on strike.

The plant was emptied a while ago.

Kind of weird. People shouting and marching as you pull in from lunch.

[Wayne Maybury]

The UAW had 1.5 million members in 1979. They are now down to just over 500,000 and they still want to strike???? What part of biting off their nose, to spite their face, do they not understand?

Less and less UAW members are getting very well paid and also getting great fringe benefits but if this trend continues much longer, there aren't going to be any union jobs left in the automotive industry.

I would love to see the off shore car companies trying to produce their cars as quickly and as well as they now do, if their employees were members of the UAW.

[Ron61]

Wayne,

It has been my belief for years that the only people that gain from this type of stuff is the high ranking Union Officials. They still get paid plus extra for all their hard work and overtime. Now you know why I quit the Communication workers of America many years ago.

Ron

[Sharroll Celby]

Anyone know the pay range for the striking UAW workers?

I would rather have a good job with LESS money than NO job.

I dont imagine the corporate bosses get the same pay cut as the assembly line workers would.

[BMK]

Ford over here was also crippled when a supplier had internal union strife.

The supplier stopped negotiations over a work agreement with employees and the unions marched them all out.

Now back and not much better off. I estimate it will take each employee months to break even after the strike. All the hours and overtime lost..

[Wes Tausend]

...

It is easy to see that this will not work out too well.

In another thread, I once simply compared the auto manufacturing business to a row boat. The boat is starting to sink. Unbelievably, the guys rowing it want more job security, for that is claimed to be the main issue in this strike.

The highly paid captain steering it, has been so busy avoiding minor floating debris, he hasn't been watching where they are going overall. He'll soon be going down with his ship along with the rest.

The flaw to all this is that who will buy cars in the future? We can't do it if all our jobs disappear beneath the surface. Even Henry Ford knew this when he started. He paid high enough wages that the workers could afford to buy their own product. This is everybody's problem. We are hemorrhaging jobs.

The UAW guys rowing were probably rowing as hard as they ever have. They better keep on rowing and start steering a bit too.


...

[Ron61]

With all of the downsizing and companies moving out of the United States, job security is not going to happen. As I stated before, the only people that come out ahead on these strikes are the union bosses and in my case the telephone companies. The company actually encouraged the union to walk out for a few weeks as the computers work better without the people screwing them up and the company saved millions on pay, benefits, and troubleshooting as we could monitor all computers from a central location and then just dispatch one person to any one that had a problem. The union in this case has long outgrown its usefulness and is just a means for some high union officials to keep cushy jobs with high pay.

Ron

[Wayne Maybury]

Wes

Interesting analogy. I would like to add a comment however. While not all of the guys steering the boat are doing a great job, some of the guys rowing are not pulling very hard and some are actually drilling holes in the bottom of the boat. By the way, there are a lot less unionized boats to row now and if the trend keeps going there will not be any unionized boats at all left to row in a few more years.

Just look at the fact that the UAW has lost 2/3 of their membership in the past 28 years and they are going on strike for job security. If the UAW is so good, why have they not been able to unionize one single "none big three" auto plant in the US? Honda, Toyota and all the rest pay their workers about the same as the GM, Ford, and Chrysler but they can throw out the bad apples and keep the workers that want to put in a good day's work. Not all unionized workers are bad, but unfortunately, the bad ones are protected by the union. It doesn't take too many to poison the entire work environment.

Wayne