How upset can we get about autoworkers making $57K a year and when the government bails out these huge banking organizations, where the workers there are making tens of thousands of dollars a year. In addition to that, any finger pointed at the UAW sisters and brothers has to point right back to the executives at the Big Three, most of whom have no interest in making less for a year or two, let alone four. YOur link is a good one. 

What is intense is that I think this is all up now, somehow, to divert and re-package the message on the Employee Free Choice Act. I have this gut feeling that the right wing business groups will, undoubtedly, use the auto industry financial needs as being needs due to their "excessive labor costs," and then twist that even more so into a reason as to why the Employee Free Choice Act is bad for the United States.

I think it is disgusting to think that if the big three were nonunion, none of these discussion would even be considered. What if AIG was union? What about Citi Bank? I didn't hear one reporter say, "Well, the AIG workers make a minimum of 120K a year, some a great deal more than that...and if they earned less, AIG would be able to handle its business matters."

CarGuy:My perception, which certainly may be wrong, is that Union members care more deeply about the Union and their leadership than they do about the companies for which they work?  Is this true, and if so can someone explain to me how a company is supposed to operate profitably and with trust in circumstances where this is a prevelant thought?"

No. I don't think it's true, because union members know themselves that the companies they work for have to be profitable, in order for the members to have jobs. There's a tension between profitability and fair wages that has been exacerbated by globalization and the assaults on workers in this country by business and government. Are we supposed to just accept our third world wages so we can compete with China or Burma? Or should we fight to be able to have a middle class in this country, with jobs that are relatively safe from death and dismemberment, fair wages and benefits for the work that makes companies be able to gain wealth. Without labor, capital is nothing, because capital can't produce anything. Labor is the means of production.

  The main reason i ask this is the OCC protest videos that i saw, where it was stated that management at OCC decided to award business to (non-union i think) contractors from another area of NY because they were going to complete the work for less than the local Union.  Isn't this a choice that we as Americans are free to make - build or buy something for less?

Certainly, it's their right. Just as it's the right of labor to strike or boycott OCC and let the public know how OCC does business by showing disdain for their employees and working people. There has definitely been a rebellion of sorts in the public's view of how unions aren;t the demons that business and government has made them out to be for the past several decades. and along with that will be public displeasure for companies that screw their employees, and they will show it by not buying products from companies who act without regard for the public and their employees.

I feel like Unions in America have become so misguided, different ways in different unions, that they do as much harm as good.  

I disagree. The thing is that this country is losing out to some European and Asian countries in wages for the median income, and yet our country has much stronger fundamentals in our economic output.

The number one thing killing Automakers (especially GM) is the exorbitant payments made to all retired, pension earning employees.  For a company so large to pay salaries of multiple times more employees than they currently employ, including the suppliers they purchased from who came from former subsidiaries is absolutely a death sentence for all but the most profitable companies.  Unless the government is able to free US Automakers from their responsibilities from union bullying over the last few decades, the bailouts will only be a short term solution.  Only a booming dominant domestic economy which is going to be all but impossible for any country in the world going forward, with the possible exception of China,  could allow this horribly flawed model to survive.  

 

The number one thing killing many of out country's jobs is health care. The European and Japanese and other countries' auto companies aren't burdened with the higher costs of health care that every business experiences here in the U.S. The pensions aren't exorbitant. GM screwed up by not funding the pensions in boom times, where they could have actually made money administering those funds (but instead squandered the chance.... they Big Business doesn;t seem like it knows how to handle money). The foreign firms that have set up shop in the South aren't paying much less than the American companies, once the legacy costs are taken out of the equation. But, the foreign companies are also going to experience those legacy costs in the next twenty to thirty years, just as GM or Ford is now, as they start to get retirees and their spouses drawing on pensions. Never mind the fact that the foreign companies have basically shifted many costs on to taxpayers in the states and localities they have moved to, something GM, Ford and Chrysler haven't had given to themThe other things that are killing the American auto companies are that the accountants have as much input into car design as car engineers do. Never mind that Wall Street has a focus on quarterly profits over long term growth. If a company decides not to put money into R&D because the quarterly profits might go down for a couple of quarters and don't invest in new technologies and designs, then they are going to lose customers. I'll give credit to them for getting quality up to the standars of the Japanese, but take away some because they haven't effectively conveyed that to the public in the U.S. or the rest of the world. And there is no "union bullying". The automakers signed contracts with the union members for wages and other bennies. The automakers also signed contracts with a lot of top execs who don't seem to know how to bring their industries into the 21st Century, and who have cost their companies in the forms of money, market share and customer satisfaction.

Fact:  if the Titans of the American Auto Industry are to survive, the industry has to move away from an us vs them battle between the corporations and the unions... regardless of who you place the blame on.  Period.  After my own dealings with our union, I don't believe that can ever happen without government intervention.

The union has made concessions to the automakers to help them get on their feet again. The UAW didn't cause the automakers to stick to just selling SUVs when everyone knew the market could change on the whims of OPEC and the Bush Administration making war in Iraq. The UAW didn't have a hand in how the companies were run. And the government didn't have to intervene to get the unions to the table for those concessions. The unions acted responsibly in the face of corporate incompetence and still had to take one for the home team.