It’s the first nationwide UAW strike against GM in 36 years, according to Bloomberg.
So what? The UAW has been after this for a while now. And GM is incompetant enough to very nearly justify it.
What can they give? Not three years ago they were looking over the cliff and the workers were facing an uncertain future. What is it about unions that they would rather face self-immolation and certain destruction over nickel and dime raises than attempt to preserve the future of the company they work for, and by extension their futures?
I hope GM does give in, posts massive losses, and cuts a quarter of their workforce. Pyrrhic victories are rarely satisfying ones. I wonder how they’ll feel then, striking for a higher percentage of nothing.
It strikes me my comment seems dismissive. I’m just saying this barely qualifies as news (and not in a good way). The union has a death wish. The GM management is grossly incompetant. GM stock might decline, but I expect investors already sold if they were gonna.
Speaking to Airman Doors, the union official shave a vested interest in constantly picking fights no matter the circumstances. They get paid (much better than the works, I might add) if they are active and needed, and the best way to get that is to make trouble.
Remember the NHL strike? They discovered nobody cared about hockey?
Same, same. When GMC cars start to run low, nobody will even care.
This isn’t the same ballpark they were playing in during the 70’s. The unions had better support. They also pissed off much of America to the point of people don’t support them like they used to. All the union leader corruption helped to further the gap in support from people.
Man, if I was GM, right now, I’d just go, “Fuck it. I’m done. Sick of dealing with the bullshit. Sick of paying $5 billion a year in health care. Sick of struggling for market share. You wanna treat me like a bitch? Fuck it.”
Funny thing is, GM has been doing a lot better lately. Its financials are not great, but the company is off the edge of the cliff, unlike Ford.
Its models have been getting fairly good reviews as well.
Perfect time for the union to fuck everything up. Pretty soon they won’t have a hat left to shit in.
Maybe you didn’t notice it happening, but GenMot already went through that. They lopped off a lot of parts plants and product lines when they were losing money. They have a much smaller work force than they had just a few years ago. After all that happened, they’re making money again. That’s why GM is the strike target this year. The UAW always picks the most prosperous auto maker
It’s easy to think that the UAW is striking to get more, more, more. When all the dust settles, union members will be paying more for their health care than before. Retirees will get a klop in the chops, too. We won’t get as harsh a deal as General Motors wanted to give us, and that’s what it comes down to these days. The era of more, more, more is over.
I can just hear the conversation now:
“Who can we squeeze this time so that we can leverage the other companies into bankruptcy?”
“Wait, if they go bankrupt, who pays for our healthcare and pensions?”
“We’ll worry about that later, Bob.”
Yeah, it sucks when the gravy train stops rolling, doesn’t it? What you consider a cut is nothing more or less than normalization with the rest of what society is dealing with. It’s kinda hard to generate any empathy from the common man when you’re sitting pretty in comparison. Without that sort of emotional appeal the union doesn’t have a chance.
In other words, cry me a river. The union is valuing itself right out of a job.
I’m confused…you guys are talking about raises and all I see in the article that I read was about the health care plan and a possible $5 pay cut?
From the article:
"“I don’t think it’s a win for either side. It’s too bad it’s come to this, but we have given up a lot already,” said Pat Haley, 50, from Dimondale, a quality control specialist who has been with GM for 31 years.
He said he didn’t have a big problem with the VEBA, but he opposes a possible $5 an hour wage cut (dollar figures U.S.) and restrictions on vacation time."
It doesn’t seem to me like the union is asking for more, more, more but a $5 an hour wage cut seems insane.
I couldn’t give two shits about the UAW or GM at this point. I think they both have done more than enough to seal their own graves over the years. A prolonged strike will deal a severe blow to the UAW and it’ll be their rank & file who take it in the shorts. Of course a strike hurts GM badly as well, but one bargaining chip (I feel) in their favor: the US govt. will not allow GM to go under in any circumstance. GM is too much of an icon of American industry and culture for the current or future regimes to allow it to fail. It would be an indictment of American industrial might heard around the world.
When my company last year lost most of its contract money, I tried to negotiate a salary cut on my own. Turns out there wasn’t any money for even that, and I was laid off, along with a lot of other people.
Now, I do have a new job, and my old company has been sold. But it says a lot about customer-company-employee relations, doesn’t it?
GM for a long time sold cars nobody wanted to buy (LeSabres? Cavaliers?) and union guys held tight to their benefits and salary even as the company bled money like a stuck pig. The bad management on both sides led to this.
And now management finally has made some good decisions for a change. If the union backed them up a little bit more, they’d be able to ensure good salaries and benefits to a smaller pool of workers. That’s the best that can be achieved here, and for the UAW to claim otherwise in a quest to hang onto political power is sickening.
The combination of me having a short position on GM stock that’s finally paying off (it hit $36 earlier this morning, and is down to under $35 now), and the prospect of firesale prices on Corvettes makes it a happy Monday morning for me.
To me it just seems to be playing out like the Steel Industry in the (I believe) 1980’s. Undercut by foreign competition, unable to make a profit, and a union that can’t see beyond the end of it’s nose.
Good luck with your next jobs, guys, because you’ll all be unemployed before the end of the decade.
You can’t keep trying to get more milk from a dying cow.
Word. I knew a bunch of guys in the 80’s who worked at USS Fairless plant in Bucks, PA.
They bragged about sleeping for half a shift, not having to do things that common sense dictated, because it wasn’t in their contract, and that they’d be there for life.
Wrong. The plant closed, and they were all laid off. USX became tired of feeding the gravy train.
I think this is the end of the UAW. GM will simply close plants and import stuff from China. I don’t know what the UAW negotiators think, but they clearly don’t have a clue. Question: could the workers defy their own union and go back to work? that would be a kick.
Seems more likely that they’ll start new divisions without the old bloated UAW contracts, then close down the “traditional” brands. Somewhat like Saturn, but probably moreso.
That’s really the only way for them to survive, long term, unless the UAW suddenly “gets it”, and that seems unlikely.
It would also allow them to get rid of the bloated corporate management structure and failed marketing divisions and create a new corporate culture.
<<blink, blink, blink…>>
Er, um, what was a I dreaming about???
I have to say, as lefty-leaning as I perceive this board to be – and I’m not complaining about that at all – I think that as a public bell-weather this thread is very bad news for the UAW. I’m surprised at the uniform lack of sympathy to their position.
[sub]I don’t sympathize with it either.[/sub]
Bellwether, actually.
They’re all fucked. Not one person on either side has the balls to publicly call for what must be done.