The following says it all. Will they try to Change [pun intended], or will they seek Change to the conditions and a better deal in other ways from Obama and the next Congress — will they take the low rather than the overdue road? It may be interesting, or disgustingly predictable.

“Can Detroit's auto giants do in three months what has stymied them for 30 years?”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-…

Now, the most interesting item to date isn't the way some here in Detroit and elsewhere say the bailout was proper, or that Detroit and the UAW have not done anything wrong (that's so sickening it cannot manage to draw laughter any more), but the continued idiocy of the UAW, but which is also already happening as some of us have suspected. UAW people, at least one supporter in Congress, and who knows, likely Detroit's management as well, plans to get a better deal out of the Obama administration next year. Will they make any kind of serious effort at all to do anything next year once they're given the money? Already we hear lunatic nonsense from governor Granholm, about this being only a “down payment” and vast sums being expected in order to finance (for Detroit alone) the magic new electric cars that will save Detroit and make it prosperous (while eliciting a warm glow from a grateful as well as gullible public, no doubt).

“Unfair and unenforceable.

Remember those two words before you count on the UAW accepting those ginormous concessions for auto workers in the Bush administration's rescue plan.

You'll be hearing them a lot and for good reason. …

The union will talk about making General Motors wages and work rules comparable to nonunion plants in the U.S. owned by foreign automakers.

But not by next year, not on the terms of their harshest critics, and not after already agreeing to a two-tier wage system in the last national contract.

That's part of what's already been branded unfair by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

And the unenforceable part?

That's the word U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Flint, kept using Friday to describe the worker give-backs in the Bush plan.

Unenforceable because the president won't be around when it's time to measure progress at turning around GM and Chrysler LLC next March.

Both the union and the congressman held their noses at the Bush plan Friday, and will bide their time during the last days of this administration.

Both are counting on President-elect Barack Obama to look for change …”

Gettelfinger's statement on the UAW's Web site said as much, acknowledging the necessity of the bridge loan from Bush while looking directly to inauguration day.

'We will work with the Obama administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed,' he promised.”

http://www.mlive.com/flintjournal/voices/index….

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Now, one of a few things I was refraining from commenting on these past few days (like Bush's doing the bailout so as not to “dump a catastrophe in Obama's lap” — this, after Bush returned from Iraq) is this:

“If a CEO is recieving a thousand times the wages of a line worker”

The UAW is ridiculous, and needs pay cuts and work rule changes and other reforms (no more thirty-years-and-out nonsense; the pension plan that exists now should be terminated and given to the PBGC, etc., JOBS bank abolished immediately, and so on).

We know the UAW pay is excessive. How does Detroit executive pay (not to mention management layers, etc.) stack up against that of the executives in the “transplant” operations? If assembly worker parity or something close is sought, what about the same for executive pay?

The Democratic Party has failed twice in the last few months. The Democartic leadership seems incapable of going to the media and explaining what its proposal is and what it hopes to accomplish.

There is no reason for theRepublicans to propose anything while the Democrats are being inept and incoherent. Poorly formed, ill concieved ideas should always be rejected even if there are no good alternatives.

Bureaucracy- Toyota has ten levels of management between shop floor and CEO. GM has forty-three levels.

Honesty-Unions gain strength with their constituents (the workers who belong to them) in direct proportion to how unethical or incompetent the management of the company is. The more unethical, dishonest, inefficient, and ineffective management is (as occurs when you have LOTS of managers in many layers without effective accountability or firm responsibilities), the more visceral and vicious your Union negotiation tends to be, and the less concern said unions will have about the overall health of the company *(and why not-the Board of Directors don't care, the President-levels don't care, why should the line workers? When you know for a fact your job's already on the block for outsourcing, “Get what you can while you can and stick it to the man” tends to be the result.)

Outsourcing: GM has outsourced enough of their subassembly and production overseas and offshore that the impression in the trenches (and on the shop floor) is that the company's going to leave anyday, anyway, regardless. This creates hard lines, as the workers simply presume the company's out to cheat and abandon them, and when those subassembly parts keep showing up defective, late, wrong, etc. it impacts the view of Quality on the line as well-again, if the Executives are compromising the product to gather fat golden parachutes, and reaping bonuses while the company's actual profitability tanks, why should the workers expect any different?

Bad quality leads to something else-customer dis-satisfaction. Customers flee, cutting more deeply into profit and sales. It is possible to show a quarterly “Up” every quarter, and lose money for the year, and that's exactly what the Big Three have been doing.

Engineering/intellectual Capital: GM Ford and Chrysler treat engineers differently than Toyota, Honda, and Subaru. The way that engineers are treated at the “big three” is atrocious-they're effectively living the Dilbert Cartoon in Real LIFE. This does not lead to good, innovative design. It leads instead to Engineers leaving the company for someone that will treat them with some dignity-like the Japanese companies, who value Engineering talent and try to nurture and reward it. This impacts everything from quality of the end product on up to the quality of initial design.

Finally-the expectation. If a CEO is recieving a thousand times the wages of a line worker, it should be (but is noT) expected that said CEO is doing a good job. This is clearly and blatantly NOT THE CASE with the Big Three (or, for that matter, Boeing). CEO pay is too high not because it's too high, but because the executives in question have not delivered that level of performance, and continue to not deliver it even under extreme stimulus conditions (like, say, the company being on the verge of bankruptcy and fading fast).

Notably, all of these problems are present somewhere else-Government itself. Oversize management sectors that are not accountable for their results, overpaid and overcompensated senior managers who don't perform, elected “board” officials who have little to no understanding of the entity they are supposed to be overseeing, a culture of neglect, carelessness and capriciousness that erodes the morale, competence, and willingness to address realities throughout the structure. The problems of Big business are the same problems Big Government currently has, only in microcosm, and without the ability to tax-at-will to stave off insolvency.