Detroit unions did demand salaries and labor rules that ultimately crippled their companies. It wasn't the only reason for Detroit's downfall, but it was a major one.

I don't mean to fault the unions for looking after their self interest, because everyone does (and should do) exactly that. I would fault them for short-sightedness, as I said killing their golden goose, but there's plenty of short-sightedness to be found everywhere too.

But I'm sorry, you were demonstrating that union workers are selfless philanthropists, and I interrupted it with a bunch of math. Please, continue.

I was going with sustainable, better a long term steady job with decent pay and benefits (Naturally some basic management/Union trust is required) than a large payout followed by years of unemployment and minimum wage jobs flipping burgers which is what is going to happen to most of the laid-off Union workers , on the other hand if the company is going down either way I taking every thing that isn't nailed down.

Even if progressives could resist their urges and attempt to inflict–are you sitting down?–accountability on the workers by holding them to their bargain, with your numbers it's still a no-brainer. Workers would make as much in two years at $200/hour as they would in ten years at $40. If they really get the boot after two, they have eight years of vacation before plan B even catches up.

But I'm sorry, you were demonstrating that union workers are selfless philanthropists, and I interrupted it with a bunch of math. Please, continue.

Virtually everyone wants more money rather than less, including union workers.

Offer Union Workers $200 an hour and no job two years from now or $40 an hour and a steady job for the next thirty years and most of them will take the $40 an hour where as if you offer an American Corporate Investor a couple hundred millions today with a worthless corporation a couple years from now or $10 million a year every year as far as the eye can see you can expect them to take the $200 million.

Even the UAW has admitted some responsibility for Detroit's decline.

It was not greed that killed Detroit but the government's two fleets rule that killed them

Funny how that two fleet rule did not prevent Toyota, Honda, VW, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai from being profitable…

But at least we can agree that it is not Unions that killed them.

It was not greed that killed Detroit but the government's two fleets rule that killed them. Forcing the auto manufacturers to produce smaller cars that are less profitable rather than focusing on the larger more profitable cars brought down the US firms.

But the unions in Detroit ultimately killed their golden goose.

HORSESHIT!!!!

Unions did not decide which cars were going to be produced, what technology should be used, what the design should be or how the cars should be marketed. Management made all those decisions, unfortunately they were unable to think any further than the next quarter and made crappy decisions.

Democracy Now – David Simon, Creator of Acclaimed HBO Series “The Wire”: As Profit Motive Guts Newspapers, Communities Lose Out

Anyone listening carefully may have noted that I was brought out of my reporting position in 1995. That’s well before the internet began to threaten the industry, before Craigslist and department store consolidation gutted the ad base, before any of the current economic conditions applied. In fact, when newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, the industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street. We know now, because bankruptcy has opened the books, that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly a hundred reporters and editors in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits.

Such shortsighted arrogance rivals that of Detroit in the 1970s, when automakers offered up Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins without the slightest worry that mediocrity would be challenged by better-made cars from Germany or Japan. In short, my industry butchered itself, and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered free market logic that has proven so disastrous for so many American industries.

Greed, short sighted greed is what has brought Detroit and most American Industries to the edge of collapse. There is no profit margin that is ever good enough for Wall Street, give them a 10% ROI and they want 15%, give them 15% and they will want 20%, give them 20% and they will want 30%.

But the unions in Detroit ultimately killed their golden goose.

HORSESHIT!!!!

Unions did not decide which cars were going to be produced, what technology should be used, what the design should be or how the cars should be marketed. Management made all those decisions, unfortunately they were unable to think any further than the next quarter and made crappy decisions.

Democracy Now – David Simon, Creator of Acclaimed HBO Series “The Wire”: As Profit Motive Guts Newspapers, Communities Lose Out

Anyone listening carefully may have noted that I was brought out of my reporting position in 1995. That’s well before the internet began to threaten the industry, before Craigslist and department store consolidation gutted the ad base, before any of the current economic conditions applied. In fact, when newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, the industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street. We know now, because bankruptcy has opened the books, that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly a hundred reporters and editors in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits.

Such shortsighted arrogance rivals that of Detroit in the 1970s, when automakers offered up Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins without the slightest worry that mediocrity would be challenged by better-made cars from Germany or Japan. In short, my industry butchered itself, and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered free market logic that has proven so disastrous for so many American industries.

Greed, short sighted greed is what has brought Detroit and most American Industries to the edge of collapse. There is no profit margin that is ever good enough for Wall Street, give them a 10% ROI and they want 15%, give them 15% and they will want 20%, give them 20% and they will want 30%.

Why not allow are private employers to follow the same rules that the federal and state governments follow: open shop, limits on what unions can negotiate about and no mandatory dues.

Honestly, everything on that blog and in the article above just oozes “broken relationship.” Management and labor at any company both hope to reap economic success. The notion that they can do that by being at each other's throats, with a permanent mediator to keep the peace, is just plain daft.

Go back and read it again. The blogger (who's a woman, by the way) is mocking the attitude that says workers should have no rights.

There are plenty of people who think that unionization helped build the American middle class.

Let's be real. Employers don't ask for NLRB elections to preserve right of their workers to democratic self-determination.

Forced elections buy management time to bring in high-priced union-busting consultants who teach the bosses how to propagandize workers and fire organizers. Such tactics are illegal, but under the status quo, the penalties are trivial and enforcement is negligible.

As they used to say on the internet, read the whole thing.