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The Ford Truck plant at Louisville, KY has just been hit. THAT one is going to hurt.....some of Ford's largest and most profitable vehicles are built there.
If the strike was pointless, it would not have reached the widespread state it is in.
"Pointless" isn't the right word. "Silly" is a better word. The UAW is trying to hurt manufacturers by holding them hostage so that they have no choice but to give in to their demands. Its like holding up somebody with a gun, they give you their money because they don't want you to kill them. If you or I do it, its called "extortion". When a union does it, its called a "negotiation". There is a reason why unions became the playground of organized crime.
What bit is saying is manufacturers will take this opportunity to learn how they can manufacture these vehicles without these UAW workers. Automation, moving production offshore. There is a reason why foreign carmakers now make more cars in the US than US carmakers do...and that reason is the UAW. The UAW has forced domestic carmakers to build cars overseas to get away from their unreasonable demands and tactics, while foreign and non legacy carmakers don't have to deal with that, and they can happily build cars here.
The strike is silly because the UAW (and by extension, the workers) are striking themselves right into irrelevancy.
Companies don't love paying executives any more than they love paying labor.
This is ludicrously naive. Major corporations' CEOs sit on each others' boards and rubber-stamp each other's pay. Is there anyone who believes that the US automakers are a billion dollars more prosperous now than a dozen years ago because visionaries like Farley and Barra have been running them? https://fortune.com/2023/10/13/big-3...worker-strike/
This is ludicrously naive. Major corporations' CEOs sit on each others' boards and rubber-stamp each other's pay. Is there anyone who believes that the US automakers are a billion dollars more prosperous now than a dozen years ago because visionaries like Farley and Barra have been running them? https://fortune.com/2023/10/13/big-3...worker-strike/
You mean the leaders who charted the way back from the massive worldwide financial collapse that almost bankrupt these companies just over "a dozen years ago"? Why yes, yes I do believe that.
Do you believe its because of the people who stick the headlights into the front of the cars? I'm naive?
You mean the leaders who charted the way back from the massive worldwide financial collapse that almost bankrupt these companies just over "a dozen years ago"? Why yes, yes I do believe that.
Do you believe its because of the people who stick the headlights into the front of the cars? I'm naive?
Yes, I mean those "leaders," two of three of whom would have gone under and had no companies to "lead" today except that US taxpayers stepped in to save them through George W. Bush's multibillion-dollar loan guarantee bailout as the companies they "led" teetered on the brink of insolvency. Those "leaders."
Another thing you conveniently forget: Those bailouts were intended specifically to save a mlllion good American jobs at a moment when we were on the brink of careening off the cliff into a new Great Depression. GM in particular broke faith with America when, given this new lease on life, they used it not to help America, but to in effect become a Chinese company with Chinese manufacturing workers. Why? Because your "leaders" got more money out of their stock options when most of their factory workers and suppliers' employees got pittance sweatshop wages, while Mary Barra's personal pay skyrocketed in the last 3 years by 40% to over $20 million a year.
I also read on this board that unions are unnecessary and the strike is "pointless" because workers at the Japanese brands' US transplant factories are about as well paid as their UAW counterparts. This shows a basic ignorance of management/labor economics. Decades of history have proven that those workers are well paid precisely BECAUSE their employers know they have to stay roughly competitive with their unionized counterparts. This is why ALL US workers have seen their pay and working conditions deteriorate in the 40 post-Reagan years when private-sectory union membership has decayed from 29% of workers to under 10%, as the decline of unions has yielded a decline in workers' leverage.
There's a reason why billionaires have systematically assaulted unions in legislatures, courts and workplaces for generations, and it isn't because they're a class of visionaries who are simply looking out for the well-being of their enterprises whlle reluctantly accepting mammoth "competitive" pay packages for themselves. I'm amused to read on this page that the US auto corporations simply MUST pay their CEOs tens of millions annually to stay "competitive" for CEO "talent," yet somehow this immutable law suddenly becomes null and void when we start talking about the pay of their minions.
One final note: The "pointlessness" of the strike. Don't take my word that the UAW's fight has ramifications far beyond its own ranks. Just read the news, as GM has already conceded a pay raise for the nonunion workers who build their EV batteries. The UAW's fight has ripple effects on the pay and benefits of workers far beyond its membership. Whether one thinks the workers or the CEOs deserve that money, the stakes are the furthest thing from "pointless."
Good chance they do that anyway. Why? Because people want cheaper products. I saw the same mentality decimate the once proud southern textile industry.
We are coming to a very bad place.
People want the impossible. They want themselves and others to have a flexible, high paying job here in America. They want the products and services they buy to be high quality and last a long time, but be low in price. And they want companies to make a lot of profit so their 401ks grow for retirement.
Something has to give. That give usually starts at the bottom.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. It wasn't the last one here, but I thought it deserved an equally considered response.
I agree with some but not all of your points. I agree in particular that we Americans have to be thoughtful as consumers to reward responsible employers, not sweatshop operators, with our dollars. We don't do that enough, although for many of us that's a choice of necessity rather than morality—some people can only afford to buy Walmart groceries, for instance.
That, in turn, leads to our more fundamental problem: the corrosive effects of our billionaire class's unquenchable greed. It is a fact that income inequality is at one of its highest levels in American history. This is not an abstract statistic. It hits all of us in our real, daily lives. It means that there IS ENOUGH MONEY for everyone to have a decent life—including a real, honest-to-god pension like my dad had, not the 401(k) Wall Street casino we've been conditioned to accept as normal. It's just that we're now deemed undeserving to share in it as our parents and grandparents did, because the billionaires can never be truly satisfied until there is simply nothing left for anyone else. That is the reality that is choking us all. By definition, our corporate-owned mass media will never raise our awareness of this reality. It is up to us to discern and act on it for ourselves. All the best to you, and to all of us.
This shows a basic ignorance of management/labor economics. Decades of history have proven that those workers are well paid precisely BECAUSE their employers know they have to stay roughly competitive with their unionized counterparts. This is why ALL US workers have seen their pay and working conditions deteriorate in the 40 post-Reagan years when private-sectory union membership has decayed from 29% of workers to under 10%, as the decline of unions has yielded a decline in workers' leverage.
How many people do you employ? I've been an employer since I was 22 years old, I have a firm grasp of management/labor economics thank you.
There's a reason why billionaires have systematically assaulted unions in legislatures, courts and workplaces for generations, and it isn't because they're a class of visionaries who are simply looking out for the well-being of their enterprises whlle reluctantly accepting mammoth "competitive" pay packages for themselves. I'm amused to read on this page that the US auto corporations simply MUST pay their CEOs tens of millions annually to stay "competitive" for CEO "talent," yet somehow this immutable law suddenly becomes null and void when we start talking about the pay of their minions.
The reason why worker pay has declined is supply and demand. If they had more jobs than they had people wanting to work, then pay would go up. The bottom line is pay has decreased because the demand for labor talent in the US is much less than it once was. Paying workers a wage that doesn't economically make sense for their employers is not a solution, helping people find ways to gain skills they can use to do jobs that are going to be around in the future is.
09-26-23, 09:01 AM
