Is the UAW responsible?

[chefdennis]

There is enough blame to go around form the management to the union heads the the labor force, done of them are blameless and they all have there share of good and bad people within them.

I am not one to bust unions, i am also not one to have the government bail them out (unions and employers). Its not the job of government to use tax dollars to help private business, yea they do it, but it is unconstitutional. Some have said. its a loan, no different then what they did for chysler before, well chysler is back again and in worse shape then before.

Let them file BK, re-organize and comeback more inline with the rest of the industry (ie. honda, toyota, nissan, subaru, and so forth) that builds cars and trucks here. companies file BK everyday and comeback, this would be no different.

LOL, they are even talking about, yea we will give GM the money, but you have to file BK also........... Forget the bailout, let the market take care of itself.

 

[FIS53]

I would have to say yes the UAW is partially responsible for the situation the auto industry finds it self. By no means are they the sole cause for all the problems, management must be held responsible as well for many stupid moves over the past decades. I can remember unions fighting flex production lines as it meant one less plant. Now they want them as they suddenly realize it means plant security.

I was union rep for the teamsters years ago and was present at a video that showed the Japanese union model and how it worked with management to acheive production targets, quality targets and employee retention targets. I remember that the upper union bosses were against us seeing this video and the lower union management guys all laughed at the video and said "We'll never do things like that here, they work too much with management and give them too much!"

But as noted in this thread is that the Japanese are not in the line for bail out money. Japanese workers are basically given jobs for life (or were, I suspect things have changed a little) and worked for the company as a part of the company. A little different attitude. Quality was always paramount from the information we were seeing and an air of co-operation between workers and management that just did not exist here in a unionized shop.

In the transport industry back in the eighties I was working out of an r&d office for a large transport company (owned several divisions) and one of the operations went on strike against managements warning not to. The unions attitude was "this division makes money so they have deal with us". The work they did went to other divisions including broker operations and one thing I saw was the union stuck with wanting to fight about a couple of greivances that had nothing to do with the contract, and having them settled before agreeing to the contract. I know this as my office was next to the board room for the negotiating team for the company (never closed the doors). Well the company setup a team to deal with the complaints and the union rejected the idea of dealing with them as separate from the contract. End result, the company closed the division and divided up the customers to the others and carried on business. So because of a couple of complaints that the union got all uptight about, over 100 drivers lost their jobs along with the dock guys and office people.

Rob

 

[houts]

I was at FORD this morning.. At 530am with a couple of skids.. got out at 11am... Waiting for the union receiving guy to unload me because the union shipping guy couldnt. Ohh, another driver took a picture of the union shipping guy sitting there with his feet on the desk reading the paper... WHY? because he can.. hes UNION!!!! God help us all

 

[houts]

Oh yeah.. they had a sign up of their break times so you dont disturb them.. start at 7am break 8-830 lunch 10-1030 break 112-130 done at 230. Wow, what a hard day

 

[Rabbit]

CNN weighs in-- What's on the line for the UAW - Dec. 19, 2008

 

[bryan]

HI
Yes,but so is management and even the consumer.When the price of gas was below $1.00 per gallon Americans and Canadians all bought large vehicles. It was so bad that some communities were implementing a no large vehicle parking on city streets policy. (Lakeland FL. in 2005) The big 3 produced fuel efficent cars but they couldn't sell them.We voted with our dollars and our dollars said more horse power, larger storage areas,more leg room and more cup holders.Then the price of gas went up and everybody was screaming more fuel economy.

Solution to problem, a Sprinter van with a 3 cylinder hybrid diesel.Look at all the space they would have for storage batteries.Seats 10 with 20 cup holders and you can stand up in it.Remove the passenger side battery and replace it with a pull out mini bar.