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Senate UAW Screw
Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune
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5 Responses to “Senate UAW Screw”
It amazes me to no end just how pro-Union, and anti-business this blog has become. It is as if the majority of posters believe that the UAW, who negotiated the contracts that caused the fall of the Big 3, are not at fault at all! Let's get a reality check here, people.
A reality check would include the fact that the UAW has already made concessions and is willing to make more. It would also include the fact that the GOP made a proposal that they knew couldn't be accepted just so they could try and sink the union.
It takes two to negotiate, it's not like the big three were defenseless children at the negotiating table who did not have access to the best lawyers and accountants money could buy to protect their interests.
Let's see what happens when we change a few titles and characters in the cartoon:
Santa becomes a donkey and his title becomes “Senate Democrats”, the comment balloon says “I see you been a VERY good contributor for decades. How much taxpayers money do you need?” And there's Donkey Santa reaching into a poor and rag dressed taxpayer's pockets.
Yah, that's much more accurate.
Oh, and Don Quixote- the unions have incredible legal and regulatory power behind them thanks to FDR and the NLRB.
“It amazes me to no end just how pro-Union, and anti-business this blog has become.”
It's not mis-named the Moderate Voice for nothing. As opposed to the real world, here there is a lot of presumption as well as assumption that there _should_ be a bailout and keeping Detroit and the UAW's decades-obsolete failed model alive. For what reason? To merely keep them alive and voting Democratic until the modern US auto industry also has its work force placed under UAW control and voting Democratic, too, and unionize other parts of the private sector (which, outside Detroit, is not unionized, as a rule), notably the service industries and others that are unlikely to vote with their feet by moving to better-run states or localities, because by definition they often cannot? Card Check!
As for Detroit and the UAW, failure of these companies is imminent (after decades of wrongdoing, not by “the recent slump in the economy” or any other false claim). So why didn't the UAW, on its own, insist on placing _all_ its members (not just new hires) under the “company saving” magic solution new contract (under which Detroit claims all will be well) right now, this moment, rather than waiting until 2010 for just the new hires to be subject to it? (And why doesn't the UAW lend Detroit the money it “needs” out of its own funds, or give it to Detroit in exchange for ownership? Or is ownership in these companies something that the UAW, which knows something about the condition of those companies, seen as an unwise investment decision?)
The UAW is a parasite that has killed the proverbial golden goose, while Detroit has been the willingly stupid host (thinking it's still the 1950s and 1960s, that the USA is a captive market upon which all bloated price increases and quality reductions can be dumped without penalty, and that they define “the” auto industry and can simply go to Washington and expect to be given a bailout if they decide that is in order).
Why hasn't the pension plan been terminated and dumped on the PBGC?
Why haven't all retirees 65 and over been put on Medicare, with their “Cadillac” [pun intended] health benefits ended?
Why hasn't the 2010 labor contract been advanced to _RIGHT_NOW_ and _all_ employees subject to it, not only the new hires?
Why hasn't the hemmorhaging of money been ended?
_All_ this, in addition to detailed, precise, _believeable_ plans for the companies' future, listing how they will become as quickly as practical like the _modern_ and _healthy_ US auto industry elsewhere, should have been done by Detroit before _ever_ coming to Washington (on private jets, in PR-stunt cars, on Greyhound or Amtrak, or however they come).