The question of culpability makes it sound like a moral failure was committed. The problem is not moral but economic. The government gave the UAW a monopoly and they used it to screw their customers. This is what government enforced monopolies do, they screw their customers until the customers have an alternative, and then the monopoly gets screwed.
I could be wrong but I believe there are legal repercussions if the automakers don’t attempt to negotiate with the unions. There’s also the added headache of potential violence when the scabs (the unions won the propaganda war on that one) try to cross the picket line.
This partly why I’m in favor of letting the Big 3 go under and let whoever buys the assets renegotiate the contracts from scratch.
I’m not sure precisely how it all has to play out legally but a company has to deal with the unions by law.
They may not win that propaganda war these days. It was one thing when it was the poor worker versus the rich automakers. It is another when the very well paid autoworkers are bankrupting a company that will cost hundreds of thousands of other people their jobs if they refuse to bend to reality.
Agree.
Question for the anti-union crowd :
What would you do with the legacy costs of the Big 3?
Thanks for that. My ignorance of the law here is both deep and wide. I was under the impression, though, that later laws had weakened the NLRA, allowing for “permanent replacements” in a lot of cases.
Perhaps, but it sounds like GM is literally weeks to months away from complete collapse. They simply can’t afford a strike. A lot of these issues were fixed for new employees with the last CBA. The wage gap between foreign/domestic automakers for new employees is nearly, if not completely, closed. However, the problem is with the overpaid workers that were hired before the new contract, and the staggering cost of retiree benefits. Certainly the companies are going to have the upper hand in any negotiation, but I don’t the UAW is going to go gently into the sweet night. I mean, they are touting giving up forcing automakers to pay for laid off workers as a major concession. In reality, all that is doing is moving from insane territory back to grossly generous territory.
Well the blame for that falls squarely on the rest of the country for failing to provide what’s becoming a hallmark of first world nations, Universal Healthcare.
Not our problem. I’ve paid in full for all the UAW built automobiles (10) I’ve purchased over the past 38 years.
A Universal Health Care plan could solve at least one monster aspect of those legacy costs. Of course a UHC plan is a looong way off so is of little help in the near term.
UAW’s president? Got an independent cite?
p.s. My Google Fu is very weak on this - I’m not getting anywhere with my own searches.
I’m not sure they’re actually offering to give up payment to laid off workers. The statement made by the union president said they would “suspend it”:
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The United Auto Workers president, Ron Gettelfinger, said the union would allow General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to delay billions of dollars in payments to a retiree health-care trust and suspend a controversial jobs bank that pays laid-off workers.**
These figures I see that talk about the “cost of labor” influence on car prices seem to be a bit restricted, they seem to suggest that only the hands-on laborers wages add cost to production. But what about all the white-collar salaries, those stout laborers who haul spreadsheets from room to room and attend meetings. Though I 've never been quite able to discern their functions, I had the impression they were quite well compensated for their ah, drudgery.
One of the oddest and saddest ironies of the labor movement in America is how many working men struggled against the management class in order to secure wages that would allow for sending a son or daughter to college. So that they might become members of the management class…
Compared to what skillset? If you think they are well compensated then you need a ruler by which to measure it and a scale to compare it to.
Open to suggestion, what metrics did you have in mind?
Frankly, I’m equally worried about what the idiot Democrats in Congress are up to. Some of them, at least, have been talking about something close to a government takeover. Not through nationalization, mind you, but through making some government regulation positions who can, if not control, heavily influence what the Big 3 can do. Though it would serve them right, I’m highly skeptical the government dudes would have any idea how to run a successful business or what consumers want. I anticipate a lot of future bailouts, which does not please me.
The UAW is no more culpable for the fall of the Big 3 than the rank and file employees at AIG, Bear Stearns, etc. were culpable for their companies problems.
Sounds like they’ve been listening to Michael Moore on Larry King. He wants the government to force the Big 3 to make electic cars, buses and trains much like the government forced GM to make war materiel in WWII.
Apples and oranges. Rank and file investment bankers did what they always do, they pushed the envelope to the maximum that their companies allowed them to do to generate revenue that would generate bonuses this year (regardless if that cannibalized future revenue and bonuses). Wall Street is driven by this year’s bonus because everyone knows all bets are off on the following year. That’s changed a bit in the past decade as more bonuses are paid in stock grants/options that take 3-5 years to vest. For an ibank, employees are a variable cost and layoffs when the market slows is standard operating procedure.
UAW got job banks, gurantees on retiree benefits, etc.
It’s easy to slag investment bankers because they generally make more money than the average joe. However, very few make the multi million dollar bonuses.