If I were a United Auto Worker, and I saw a union steel worker, teacher, truck driver, or mine worker driving a vehicle that wasn't made by a United Auto worker I would feel extremely betrayed.
You make a good point. My ALPA magazine shows which suppliers I'm to avoid because of their anti-union practices.
However, the consumer drives the market. President Carter dropped the high import tariffs in the 70's because of consumer pressure. He did it with the agreement from the foreign auto makers that they would build a percentage of vehicles in the U.S. employing U.S. workers.
Of the list of professions you named, I bet the teachers are the most guilty of buying foreign cars...
For what it's worth, this former manufacturing turned service industry worker owns a 1998 Saturn and 2004 Ford (Built 1/2 mile East of KATL)
__________________
I'm moving to Canada...wait a second???
I will write my senator if the big 3 get a bailout without serious concessions from the UAW. I'll still be ****ed if they get one at all, but really mad if its given to them without strings.
__________________
Freight doesn't say, "I'm scared, p*ssed and calling the FAA ..."
The Auto Bailout plan apparently failed because the UWA refused to accept a pay cut. Chapter 11 might be the cleansing fire that American car companies need to bring their labor contracts in line with competition.
Skyhigh
__________________
Work smart. Work to live. Don't live to work.
The Auto Bailout plan apparently failed because the UAW refused to accept a pay cut. Chapter 11 might be the cleansing fire that American car companies need to bring their labor contracts in line with competition.
Skyhigh
Typical UAW mentality - gimme gimme gimme at any cost.
I had a Dodge truck and it sucked. So I should buy another one to support a poorly organized and managed US auto industry?
Quality and price is what should drive the market, not the flag it hangs in front of its headquarters.
Very well put. However you have to give credit to them in some minute way. The big three pay 22% tax, whereas the foreigns pay way less with no union contracts to deal with. It is kind of amazing the big three lasted this long. However, it might not be so much of supporting a bad auto industry as it is supporting your fellow americans in, what some would call, tough times. I don't support the bailout, but I do advocate buying american cars.
But I really can't disagree with you when you say that demand drives the market.
But don't assume all American vehicles suck. Did you try a Ford or Chevy truck? I'm partial to the Ford F-150.
Next question, do you think that pilots should take pay cuts due to a poorly organized and mismanaged airline industry? ....Just playing devils advocate.
Typical UAW mentality - gimme gimme gimme at any cost.
typical UAW, UMW, teamster, IUOE mentality. allow yourself to become a sheep led by wolves. some unions help you lose your job faster than they help you keep it.
How about the CAFE standards that were shoved down the auto makers throats ?
Amazing how the ppl who caused this problem are the same ones who also caused the the financial crisis but yet no one dares bring this up in the kangaroo court in DC.
__________________
Just doing that voodoo that I do oh so well .
December 17, 2008
The UAW's gorgeous golf course
Thomas Lifson
Big 3 execs may have their corporate jets, but the UAW has its own lovely golf course, the championship caliber Black Lake Golf Club, designed by Rees Jones. It's all a part of the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center the union maintains, and education, as everyone knows is a good thing, not a luxury. The Examiner and Michelle Malkin both feature stories on the facility, which, it turns out, is losing money for the union. Lots of money: $23 million in just the last 5 years. Luxury does have its price.
(from Michigan Golf via the Examiner)
Still, it does look a little bad to be asking taxpayers to bail out the union members, so they can keep their lavish health benefits and retirement/job banks perks (far better than what the average American enjoys), when the union owns a facility like this, allowing union members preferential access to tee time reservations.
Michelle links to this report demonstrating that the union itself is doing much better than GM, thank-you very much:
From a peak of 1.5 million members in the 1970s, the UAW ranks have dropped to just 465,000 regular members, according to its most recent federal filings.
In 2007 the UAW had receipts - union dues, fees and other income - of $327.6 million and it spent $330.3 million. While losing members, the UAW International, since at least 2000, has been able to hold fairly steady in the amount of money it brings in and spends, according to federal records. It has $1.2 billion in net assets.
The fact is that during the flush times of oligopoly, the UAW and its members were cut in for a very big piece of the action. Living high on the hog ramped up costs and left the American industry vulnerable to leaner and hungrier competition from Japan, Europe, Korea, and very soon, China.
Those of us unable to afford the no co-payment sort of health insurance UAW members enjoy, who do not have access to preferred reservations at fancy golf courses, and who do not have retirement benefits for life and a job that pays us whether we work or not, prefer not to subsidize the continued high life for people who killed their own golden goose.
Everyone must have heard by now the concessions demanded of the UAW in exchange for this "bridge loan." Sounds like the beginning of the death knell for unions? The current financial crisis apparently does not discriminate - it mows everything down in its path.
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
