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We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?
Jarred Diamond
Hmmmmm! Times were bad then? Maybe bad times are the wake up call for the UAW/the working class.
China's not exactly a communist country anymore. It's more like socialist-partcommunism.
Steve, I didnt have the plaid uniforms (those were like, in the 70s? :P ), but I did wear a burgundy tie plus a black suit with the school logo on it. Even now the students wearing those suits have a sense of pride, mainly because you need to pass the entrance test instead of being rich to enter (they give generous 100% scholarship to the excellent who cant afford it).
Awesome point.
Here's a good example:
In Japan, when a production plant need the workers " to do overtime this week to fix quality problems", the workers would just say "lets do it for our company" with no complaints, even the higher ups stayed. They even stayed overtime to practice and improve their skills. Then when said workers retired, they get all sorts of benefits including lifetime healthcare. They demand nothing, but get everything they deserve.
In most US plants, when they're told they need to do overtime, the workers will reply with such words as "hey thats not in the contract", "how many hours, how much extra do we get?". Then if they're not pleased they'd go on strike or class action. When the workers needed extra training, they'd say "do we get paid for it?". Then when they retire, they demand lifetime health care and other benefits.
See the difference? This is why Japanese companies caught up and passed the Americans.
Unions raise wages for all workers by setting a livable standard of wages that causes all employers to compete for skilled workers
Dallas, given the right tools my 12 y.o cousin can do what UAW workers do. "just place the metal plate on the press machine and you're good" LMAO :P
Why do you keep on dreaming that the workers are intelligent and skilled? I dare say this: give me the training and I can do their jobs in no time.
Perhaps you think janitors are skilled also? Or perhaps drive thru cashiers?
Your term on "liveable wage" in reality means: enough for you and your family for daily and feed them 3 meals a day. But no, in UAW (and perhaps yours) term it means "we get cable, cell, a car, healthcare, and a 2 story house in the suburbs". That's just idiotic, bud. They get what they earn, reap what they sow, no more and no less.
As long as there are poor countries in the world there will always be cheap labor everywhere.
I believe that, all things being equal, Americans will buy American. It just has to be as good as the competition; it doesn’t have to be better.
Ha, good point and you really missed it. To make it equal to competitors, not only the company, the workers must do the effort as well.
The sleeping giant is new and he/she/it has awaken. Worry not, the UAW will come to your rescue if and when they start to bully their way around.
The sleeping giant you mentioned is China of course.
Me? I'd rather die with my pride intact than get help from UAW.
The state also seeks to reduce work hours from 40 to 35 per week and eliminate paid holidays and personal days for members of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, which represents about 35,000 employees, according to documents detailing a contract proposal and obtained by The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer and The Columbus Dispatch newspapers.
Among other concessions sought are requiring workers to pay a portion of health care premiums and instituting mandatory furloughs, the newspapers report on their Web sites. --Plain Dealer
I believe state agencies had to cut budgets 5% or 3% as a part of slowing the spending. It's always amazing how the governments keep spending more and more because it makes the folks happy. But they really have trouble with cuts.
What's lacking? Pay cuts for legislators and adminstrators... How 'bout cutting retirement drawn by past legislature folk.
This is relevant because this puts more pressure on the UAW to do the same.
On the other hand the Dayton worker unions resisted giving up a 3% pay INCREASE in their contract. Dayton city workes
Instead there may be cuts in numbers of workers.
But I wouldn't have given it up either. The city manager was selected by mayor and council based on bias rather than ability. He has TWO full time assistants. No cuts in his office. Oh did I mention the city plans to put plants and grass on top of the city building for a large expense (must be a relative in the green-scaping business).
Or will the UAW follow the city workers' lead?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20090116/D95OELA80.html
Where's the cuts at the D3? Why aren't they cutting NOW (not 2010 or 2011) until they stop losing money?
Yes, this will take time but efficiency is the rule here. Bargaining is a waste. Fairness is efficient and motivating.
Regards,
OW
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I don't think the average UAW worker will wake up and smell the coffee until they find themselves sleeping in their Caddy at the WalMart parking lot. If the numbers are true and there are now 11.1 million unemployed, the 70k UAW workers at GM losing their jobs will be insignificant. The smart UAW workers (is that an Oxymoron?) will have saved a big chunk of that $100k per year they have been making over the last several decades.
If this recession turns into a depression which is not likely, those that have saved something will survive and those that have spent and lived on credit will not make out so well. Quite frankly I think selling 10 million vehicles this year is way overly optimistic. I would think 7-8 million more in line with the economics. There are millions of near new used cars on the lots. They will be worth more as they will be much cheaper to purchase. I think Rocky hit it when he said the car auctions were getting tougher to find good buys.
I don't think 5% or 10% will be near enough cut for GM and the UAW to survive. I think a minimum of 25% NOW for all employees not just the new hires. New hires are about right for all the UAW workers.
"After a decade of corporate cost-cutting and labor market deregulation, more than a third of all employees in Japan are non-regular workers without job security -- part-timers, contract workers and temps.
While firing regular, full-time employees in Japan is legally tough, laying off contract workers and temps is easier since they can be let go simply by not extending their contracts.
Nor are fixed-term employees usually members of the enterprise-based unions typical of Japan's organized labor."
(my emphasis)
Japan labor debate risks higher corporate costs (Reuters)
Legally tough - does that mean that Japanese corporations are family or that the "enterprise" unions were enterprising enough to legislate job security?
Lest you think that all those temps are running cash registers or sweeping up, remember that Toyota laid off temps too. (Forbes)
Now you're advocating child labor! Shhh! Corporate America might be listening and think this is a great idea. Heck, that's the way they do it in China! We've got to be competitive with the Chinese and other third world toilets! If little Chang loses a hand in that press, he might even get the princely sum of $40 and a bus ticket back to his rural village to starve!
I think you will see the cradle to grave mentality come to an end in Japan and Germany. With China now passed Germany as the number 3 economy in the World it will get more competitive. The UAW model is as out of date as the systems in Japan and Germany. Not to mention all the other EU countries that are struggling to keep from failing. If we had Japan's National debt we would be looking at close to $20 trillion instead of the $11+ trillion as of today. I just don't think the reality of what is happening has gotten into the rank and file of the UAW. They are living in the past and it is NOT going to return to 1955 when GM was KING.
Since the beginning of man it has been survival of the fittest. That has not changed, just gotten modified by politicians. Ask the guy sleeping under a newspaper how he is doing? He may be a PHD that cannot find a job. There is no perfect protection from changes in society. Not as many people want a Buick so it takes less people to build the ones they sell. Such a simple concept that GM and the UAW cannot grasp.
It's a SARCASM and obviously you failed to notice. I'm trying to say it doesn't take much at all to do UAW jobs.
Can't you see through such a simple sarcasm???
Heck, that's the way they do it in China! We've got to be competitive with the Chinese and other third world toilets!
I'd never say that, but otoh that's reality. Sucks don't it?
Btw, can you please not refer to 3rd world countries as toilets? That's just rude and as my parents are from HK origin I'm actually personally offended.
Many Japanese companies have gone past their prime. Plus the current generation workers aren't as devoted as the older ones.
Oh and one more thing:
I don't think we were put on this planet just to merely survive, but THRIVE.
Lemko, we're all put on this planet for ONE purpose only: to LIVE. Whether we survive, thrive, or die is up to each individual and his/her efforts.
My parents taught me this. They're rich enough to buy me anything yet they gave me just enough to survive (parents paid for college I admit, it's a family tradition as I will do the same for my kids). They enjoyed their Lexus and MB while I had to settle with a stripper '95 Kia I paid for myself. I learned this lesson: Survival of the Fittest, work hard and earn your success because it'll never come looking for you.
No offense meant, but imo those who think they're born to thrive and success should come to them just like that (read: birthright) are better off dead.
They are dead. They just don't know it!
There are 2 rules everyone should follow:
1. Don't complain. 2. Don't explain.
Organized anything with the intent to coerce is destined for failure...whether a management or a union.
Regards,
OW
Rod Lache, the Deutsche Bank automotive analyst who set the target price for GM shares at zero, told the Society of Automotive Analysts that GM might have to consider bankruptcy given complications that arose with the rescue of GM's minority-owned financial arm, GMAC.
"The probability is greater than not that there will be bankruptcy" at GM, Lache said, "but not the kind of disruptive, scary bankruptcy with calamitous impact that a lot of suppliers are afraid of today."
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that it is unclear what kind of reductions the union will have to agree to under the terms of the loan agreements.
"We are still trying to figure out what that means," he told the newspaper. "We have no documents, no contact with the federal government."
GM may still go Bankrupt
Regards,
OW
I do own one group of people a lot of credit toward the success I had attained - the Teamsters Union. Because of them, I was able to earn enough money to put myself through college and didn't incur a lot of student loan debt.
Did you stay with the Teamsters long enough to get vested in the pension plan? What was your opinion on the way they did business? How many times did you go on strike? Did you feel the company was getting a fair shake from the Teamster employees? As a 37 year Teamster retiree I am curious.
Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and ’40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions/UAW's; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management – all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
“Wal-Martization” of the economy, the proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs and the disappearance of jobs that provide entry to the middle class. That’s surely part of the explanation. But public policy plays a role – and will, if present trends continue, play an even bigger role in the future.
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You would also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you’d try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you’d cut back on health care for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you’d do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you’d privatize and or outsource government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees
Current policies will eventually create “a class of renters in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can’t compete.”
So where is the rags to riches of Horatio Alger? Whereby a person of good moral character could go beyond the stigma of being caste into the role of POOR. Isn't that what America is about?
In Japan, when a production plant need the workers " to do overtime this week to fix quality problems",
Kenichi Uchino had kept meticulous records of his work time, which totaled a stunning 155 hours of overtime in the 30 days before his death. Toyota claimed that he had only worked 45 hours of overtime -- saying that the rest of the time was voluntary. Almost six years later, in November 2007, the court recognized 110.5 hours of overtime (putting aside the hours Uchino had worked offsite) and judged that, indeed, Uchino had died of overwork.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/100793/toyota_driving_automakers'_global_race_to_the_bottom/?page=entire
I would say that is still the case. You have articulated how your children have gone to college and succeeded. How well you have done. Were you born into wealth?
Uchino had died of overwork.
You seem to want it both ways. You have used Japan as a shining example of socialized middle class. Cradle to grave for all. Now you show us the truth. There are many sweatshop jobs in Japan. I personally think there are more opportunities today than when I got out of HS in 1961. If I did not have a great pension I would start a business and make a lot more. Hard to get motivated when you have enough to live on comfortably. There are 30 million illegals that will tell you that this is still the land of opportunity. They pay big bucks to get smuggled in. They take big risks. Must be some truth in it. Not everyone can get a cushy UAW job. NEVER have been able to. That was kind of a who you know or who you were related to industry. Kind of like the CEO thing on a less grand scale.
Hence Americans should exploit the child labor in these poor countries? Hard to believe that those nuns taught you that. I too, went to a parochial school and opt to champion the cause of the working class and poor. If it takes the UAW to bring them into the mainstream middle class, so be it. There ought not be any poor countries. The producers/workforce of any consumer product ought to be able to purchase it. The mainstream media has made the typical UAW worker an evil person. You need to realize that they are but humans, such as yourself, and aspire to make their lot in life better, by means of honest labor. Demonizing them isn't going to make them so.
Luke 3:11 And he would answer and say to them, "The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise."
Acts 20:35 "In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
Labour rids us of three great evils: irksomeness, vice, and poverty.
Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)
The Estate tax was originally levied to increase military funding, not for wealth redistribution. It has been increased and decreased many times since the 1700's. Your claim that reducing the estate tax as only a tool to expand the divide between the haves and have-nots is a bit of an exaggeration. It affects less than 5% of the population. From everything I've read, in 2009 the amount of federal income from the estate tax will be at most $50 billion. Pretty much chump change in a economy of nearly $14 trillion and $2.5 trillion in federal income.
I was a math/physics major and went on to be a career college student with a thirst for knowledge. For a while, about 3 years, I taught college classes. Born to middle class family and given the opportunity, I'm well off. I've always done several things at one time. At one time I also worked 3 jobs. Relationships with others have paid off beyond my wildest expectations on all levels: mind, body, and spirit. I'm amazed how fast time passes as I get older. I'm quite sure if you stay active, you can fool your body as regard to aging. Most weeks I'm in the gym for three days and sometimes even more. Then understanding is something given from above and no PHD and or book learning can give you what meditation/prayer, fasting, going into a zen comatose trans, or nature can give.
Then the UAW also represents many an aerospace worker and not just auto workers. Didn't have any relatives and or friends to thank for my present job. Then again, I'm multi faceted and don't rely on one source for income.
Aerospace
The UAW Aerospace Department coordinates bargaining for UAW-represented workers in both the commercial and defense sectors of the aerospace industry. The department works closely with UAW CAP and the UAW's Government Relations and Legislative staffs in lobbying on issues affecting workers in the aerospace industry. It also works with the Machinists (IAM) and other unions representing aerospace workers through the Aerospace Council of the International Metalworkers Federation to advance the common interests of workers in this increasingly global industry.
No doubt about that. My great-grandma just had her 107th birthday and going strong. She's in a nursing home now, but at a 100 you would have found her outside with the hedge trimmers and walking to the grocery store.
It's wild that my 78 year old grandma is still having to worry about her mother.
Who works at McDonalds. According to me, they are children too. Not grown-ups.
They are teens. When/where I grew up, the first job was given when you turned 21. I used to be shocked that Americans make their kids work at such young ages of 16. Now Americans are shocked that Chinese make their kids work at even younger ages. It is all relative, my friend. There is nothing wrong with so called "child labor".
You like scripture. Did you forget Jesus saying the poor you will have with you always. Don't you think sharing the manufacturing jobs with countries less fortunate is the way to bring them into the 21st century? Would that not be sharing what you have? We only have to go across our Southern border to find those that are weak and poor. I think sending them jobs is as much doing the scriptural bidding as anything you have suggested.
You seem to think we have a problem with UAW workers making a living wage. That is not the case. It is a Union driving a company into bankruptcy that has over half the American people pointing fingers at the UAW. You see when someone is making more than you and they are begging for a bailout the natural tendency is to say NO WAY. That is where the average person in this country is at. The UAW autoworkers and yourself are not mainstream middle class. You are well into the top 5% of American workers. Middle class in this country is currently at about the starting wage in a UAW job. I know a lot of people that would be happy making $15 per hour plus benefits. There are Teamsters in San Diego where the cost of living is probably double Michigan, that are making $18 per hour. That is what the market will bear.
There is nothing wrong with child labor as long as they get a smoke break :shades:
I started pushing my grandmother's lawnmower door to door in Los Angeles when I was 6 years old. I sold stuff door to door. I wanted to make money to buy models. My mother supported my sister and I without any Welfare. She was too proud to accept it if it was available. Where was the UAW when I could have used them? Running up the cost of cars is what they were doing in the 1940s and 50s. The UAW has a long history of driving up the cost of living for the rest of US. Why should we support them now?
Note that they said it was a family values/good for America thing. Even the well to do were shocked at this gesture from GW. (wink) (wink)
Advocates of repealing the tax still claim that it puts small farmers out of business — but most of the world now knows this is disingenuous.
“Family farmers and ranchers are insulted by those who use farmers as the reason for eliminating estate taxes, when the real beneficiaries are the nation’s multimillionaires.”
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december302008/ocpp_12-30-08.php
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6856.html
Just what does this have to do with the UAW sinking the GM ship? The wealthy never have paid big estate taxes. When your hero old man Joe Kennedy died and left $400,000,000+ no taxes were paid. He has it all safe in an offshore trust. Your heirs are more likely to have to pay estate taxes than the ultra wealthy. It was not that long ago it was $600k and many widows lost their homes that could not pay the taxes. If the husband dies and leaves apartments as the sole source of income and they are over the amount allowed the widow is stuck selling them to pay the tax. We are talking money that was already taxed heavily. Where do you get your lame ideas from?
“Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I (the Lord) therefore command you, Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land."
"A wise man understand the rights of the poor, a foolish man has no such knowledge."
Not much UAW news - not really much coverage about the Tonawanda layoffs or the new administation's check card plans. There's a little press coverage about the 'Buy American' movement, but that's not an official UAW policy I don't think - more of a sideline by individual UAW members.
Seems that a few pages back someone suggested that you might be in UAW management, as you have such a working knowledge of UAW.
Your response was that you had at one time held a low level position or two for short periods, but are really just "Rank and File".
In several post you have mentioned your travels to various auto plants, dealerships and so forth, and what is happening there. Also a tremendous working knowledge of the UAW inter workings. I don't understand how an assembly line worker is able to do what you say you have done. I did ask what you do as a "Rank and File" but got no response, unless I just missed it.
You speak of your extended education:
>"I was a math/physics major and went on to be a career college student with a thirst for knowledge. For a while, about 3 years, I taught college classes. Born to middle class family and given the opportunity, I'm well off. I've always done several things at one time. At one time I also worked 3 jobs. Relationships with others have paid off beyond my wildest expectations on all levels: mind, body, and spirit."
Yet you are simply "Rank and File" UAW?
This would suggest that you could do better financially as a "Rank and File" auto worker than applying your extended education.
In your heart, do you really feel it perfectly OK for a person with a high school education or equivalent to be installing parts on an assembly line and be earning as much as a college graduate that has gone the extra mile to get a good education ?
If so, shouldn't every working person in the United States have that same privileged? Doesn't it seem reasonable that the burger flipper, the guy on the back of the garbage truck, the Walmart workers are just as tired when they go home as the UAW worker and should have the same pay and bennefits. Doesn't it seem reasonable that when the burger flipper is making $28 and great bennefits, that the $3 burger will increase to $10 and the $200K house will increase to $700K because everyone involved in materials, from the lumber jack to the delivery truck driver, to the laborer, to the carpenter, electricians and so forth are all making the same pay as the UAW worker? Doesn't it seem reasonable that the UAW worker would suddenly find themselves making no more that the most menial of jobs, and not being able to afford any more than the school janitor, and "DEMAND" more? Then shouldn't everyone else get more? Where does it end? :confuse:
Thanks,
Kip
"A wise man understand the rights of the poor, a foolish man has no such knowledge."
I believe that Jesus was speaking of the poor that were in a circumstance that they could not get out of, such as widows. orphan, blind, lepers and so forth.
Keep in mind that one or more religions consider "Sloth" to be one of the 7 deadly sins. That would include those that think the world owes them a living. Those that could do better, but don't.
Kip
There is this strange mentality in the UAW ranks, that feel that everyone should make the same amount and that it will not affect the overall lifestyle that Americans enjoy, vs a less fortunate country. It is an idealistic utopian mindset that has no possible chance of happening. Lenin tried it, Mao tried it. The USSR is finished and the Chinese are moving into a market economy faster than a high speed train. They just past Germany and will overtake Japan before 2010. Unions that keep up with the market will survive. Unions tied to government will survive. Unions such as the UAW built on sand will fall apart. They went from the top to near the bottom in 30+ years time. They have lost over a million good paying jobs due to lack of responsibility to the members. The UAW has time and again shown poor leadership. Just as GM has had PP leaders, so does the UAW. Together the UAW and the D3 have just about destroyed the domestic auto industry. The only possible survivor is Ford. They did some things that were right. Like sell properties in the dying rust belt, while they had some value. I am sure that Ford has less than 50k UAW workers currently. They will not last more than a couple more years. As Ford builds new state of the art facilities in other countries. GM just did not have the leadership needed to make the hard decisions. They will muddle along with UAW bailouts till it is obvious they are finished. And they ARE UAW bailouts. There is no love lost between the liberals and GM.
Christianity, and twisting it, manipulating it, and perverting it to suit their own purposes. One only need go back in history and see how slavery was justified. Better yet look at the Crusades. Like any large organization (UAW included), its been my experience, about 10% of the membership is actively engaged and or active. The path they choose is whats good or evil. In Christianity and its claim to know TRUTH and or discovered TRUTH, I might suggest that when one sees TRUTH, look again, GOD is multi faceted and you may even find TRUTH in other sects.
Also a tremendous working knowledge of the UAW inter workings. I don't understand how an assembly line worker is able to do what you say you have done.
Thanks for flattering me. However, I'll have to fess up, I'm not an assembly line worker. I've been interested in the Lean Manufacturing from day one and its integration into auto plants. Then again, I mentioned Black Lake here in this very forum months ago. Until some recent corporate owned right wing media outlets did, no one ever questioned Black Lake. So if they let others think for them, then take the word of these others as gospel. I know that the UAW is neither broke and asking for a bail out. Its the Big Three whom need help. Whats with the attack on the UAW as if its an evil within our society? If you take the time, you see the Saturn plant as an experiment, Toyota/GM in California joint venture, automation/cell manufacturing in the deep south, and the many other UAW efforts with management as a relationship of joint cooperation by all parties to better themselves/live in harmony. However, the media portrays and the general public buys the image of the UAW being evil. The UAW is, like any large organization, a sum total of its members. They are Americans, no different than you or I. To knock down the UAW for no good reason is just simple scapegoating. You need only to look at motives. Political motives and envy motives are easy to see. We can see who owns the media outlets and yet they use the "liberal media bias" as if it were fact.
Yet you are simply "Rank and File" UAW?
As if that were a bad thing? I'm I to toot my own horn here? Or, are you superior to the simple rank and file? Did you come from some fine bloodline? I'm just not sure if your that idle rich/leisure class/elitist aristocracy?
In your heart, do you really feel it perfectly OK for a person with a high school education or equivalent to be installing parts on an assembly line and be earning as much as a college graduate that has gone the extra mile to get a good education ?
I'm not knocking education. Its a great thing. However, economic logic would tell us that earnings are a factor of supply/demand and therefore beyond educational attainment. Then too, if there is an employee who produces at twice the average of others, does he get twice the pay? It would be well worth that to the employer, since the employer would save on the cost benefits of having to hire an additional employee to meet this same production. Folks use logic and even statistic to further their own ends. So they feel the AMA is a just union and the UAW is an evil union. We are led to believe that a limit on the supply of doctors is a good thing. Therefore you don't mind paying more for medical services, lots more. Then you do mind paying more for UAW/autos? Face it the extra cost of the average UAW/American made car isn't a real issue. Otherwise they wouldn't be selling them at all.
Then shouldn't everyone else get more? Where does it end?
They say shoplifters cost the consumer more, as cost are passed on. So is it reasonable to assume that CEO abuse is also borne by the consumer? How about when companies pay for naming rights (such as ENRON, which is now Reliant) for stadiums/arenas, superstar endorsements, and a host of other gimmicks? Reliant is a public utility and this cost is egotistical, at best, since it will not bring in any more business. I would argue that if you pay them more, they will spend more. This will create the very same multiplier effect that supply side/trickle down economics argues. If you pay the UAW wages, you will avoid more taxes and govt income will rise from the extra taxation. Its no secret that taxpayers pay out about $2,000 a year per Walmart employee. Do you want poor folks going to the emergency rooms and running up ten or more times the cost at a health clinic? One can only wonder why such systems work in other countries?
BTW, my mom had to pay Estate Tax on her inheritance from her dad. His total estate was well below $1 million. No, she didn't have to pay federal estate tax, but got hit for state estate tax. My Grandpa was a 43 year United Steel Workers Union employee and certainly not rich. Yet, still got hit with Estate Tax. Not that my mom's really complaining. The few extra hundred thousands are making her and my dad's upcoming retirement a little more comfortable, hardly the kind of money that a generation of offspring will live off of.
As I'm sure your well aware, any cost incurred by the company is in the end paid for by the customer. Thus our friendly discussion regarding the UAW and whether they provide value to the company/employee/customer/economy or not.
However, economic logic would tell us that earnings are a factor of supply/demand and therefore beyond educational attainment
Supply and demand has shown that the UAW worker can and will continue to be replaced in Mexico and other countries. If the UAW leadership was cognizant of the fact that Supply and Demand is the rule in a market economy, they should have made concessions 30 years ago when they started bleeding jobs to the greater supply of workers in relationship to the demand. No company in their right mind is going to pay a lug nut assembler $30 per hour when there are those willing to do it for $15. I think the 2005 UAW contract bears that out. For every entry level job the D3 has offered under the new contract of $15 per hour they have had 1000s of applicants. If they could get rid of all the dead weight in the UAW they could fill those $30 per hour positions in a week with people that would love to have an entry level job that pays $15 per hour. So you can feel good about getting supply and demand correct. Much of your other deflections are purely your political views. Which we have debated ad infinitum on another thread. You will never convince me you know what you are talking about as I will never convince you.
Certainly you would have to agree that the UAW wages provide more purchasing power to the worker/consumer. The value stream is a method of looking for no value added and or touch value. If anything the factory workers touch the product and therefore are considered value added/touch labor. Which brings up the postal service, which might be replaced by computers, real estate agents, auto sales, insurance/managed health are also suspect in this new economy as they are considered necessary evils in the schools of business these days.
This entire thing reminds me of the house slave and field slave story. Since the house slave was close to the master/owner, he/she felt a special bond. When master was sick they took care of master. They tended to master and his family. Considering themselves as part of the extended family of master. However, come auction day they were on the block, just like the field slave with no special considerations.
Yeah, thats where were headed. Yeah, map that value stream. I do know that it will evolve into this in time. Just wish that the attrition time would be longer to avoid the hardship/displacement.
Jello Globalization; Note the Hispanic overture; Jello = Hello
You seem to think that this only applies to blue collar workers and or UAW represented workers. After you have seen a forum member here discuss the opportunity of going to Mexico to get dental work done. This is the classic dog chasing his/her tail race to the bottom. Why do people think they need to work harder and receive less? After a while you have to think about it. Who the hell is going to buy anything made in the USA? Will anyone in America be able to afford to buy anything, with their wages cut to compete beyond reason? Globalization claims the transition period will occur. If you look at many of the companies which came down from the north, to avoid unions 30 years ago, now they have the "parity" which makes them equal. 30 Years is a long time, before those folks in China will be able to buy American made goods. Thats assuming there is a manufacturing skill set left in America.
Obama, and his public works program does not address the prima donnas white collar class. If anything this will be the same as those tax cuts/stimulus checks. They stimulated China more than America. I will go out on the limb and make the assumption that more illegal aliens will benefit from the Obama public works program. Then the program will encourage more illegals to enter the borders. Which is what globalization is all about. Allowing capital, labor being a subset of capital, to move freely.
Jello Globalization