No deal
UAW to America: we broke it, you fix it:
DETROIT (AP) — Festering animosity between the United Auto Workers and Southern senators who torpedoed the auto industry bailout bill erupted into full-fledged name calling Friday as union officials accused the lawmakers of trying to break the union on behalf of foreign automakers.
The vitriol had been near the surface for weeks as senators from states that house the transplant automakers’ factories criticized the Detroit Three for management miscues and bloated UAW labor costs that lawmakers said make them uncompetitive.
But the UAW stopped biting its tongue after Republicans sank a House-passed bill Thursday night that would have loaned $14 billion to cash-poor General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to keep them out of bankruptcy protection. The Bush administration later stepped in and said it was ready to make money available to the automakers, likely from the $700 billion Wall Street bailout program.
Still, autoworkers remain angry with the senators who tried to negotiate wage and benefit concessions from the union, then scuttled the House-passed bill that would have granted the loans and set up a “car czar” to oversee the nearly insolvent companies and get concessions from the union and creditors.
“What this is is the Southern conservative senators trying to destroy the United Auto Workers, trying to destroy unions,” said Mike O’Rourke, president of a UAW local at a GM factory in Spring Hill, Tenn., Corker’s home state. “It’s a sad day in America when the senators turn their back on Main Street.”
No, it’s a sad day when union goons refuse to accept the reality that their own greed and corrruption has brought an entire industry to its knees, and is now trying to make “Main Street” look more like Red Square. Bill says:
Right. The automakers are supposed to give up everything, but the unions, which are primarily responsible for the wretched position the manufacturers find themselves in, give up nothing.
This is the classic lefty definition of “bipartisanship.”
Sure enough. And “compromise” with them always ends up looking a lot more like “my way or the highway.”
- Entries
The postwar scramble gave us the 50s dreamland--the best years for American autos no matter how you cut it. Detroit was really spilling blood, gunning at each other via styling boards, and the aftermarket builders--the pioneers of hotrodding--were building onramps to the future in terms of both styling and performance.
Then came the 60s and companies like Packard, Studebaker, and Kaiser--Studebaker offered four-wheel disc brakes as early as 1963, by the way, and Kaiser was happy to sell you a motherfugging fast blown factory engine--fell down dead. Not so much competition, and they got lazier. Styling went straight to wide-track bloat--T-birds porked out dramatically, for example. Muscle cars were a subset, a cool zit on the inflated ass of the overall auto business.
By the 70s there was no styling, no performance really, no nothing. Product from Motown just plain sucked rancid bone.
As soon as they could, management stopped performing at all. That's my point. They stopped advancing on any front, ceased improving product, as if the '76 Granada was the crown of creation, or the 75 Mercury Grand Monarch with the crushed-velvet full-brothel trim package was something to be proud of.
It wasn't. It was an oversize box of slow boredom.
During the 50s and 60s, as I remember, Ford was the bigest manufacturer of glass in the world. It could not all have been for Mofoco products even including Canada, tractors, and the South America/Asian markets. It'd be interesting to know what the hell happend to Ford's glass business. I notice they are not begging as frantically as the others, but memory also tells me that Chrysler is owned by Chrauts these days. Unless they sold it. Those supposed management wizards, they're out there with a tin cup too.
Here's my point--this isn't overnight, this crap, and while management may well be victims of the unions just now, they've done plenty of really expensive and wasteful screwing up down the decades, right, left and center. And I think some of that screwing up has a really long tail that's dragging around here in the 2000s.
My gut here: management already had the industry taking a knee. The unions have merely brought the other patella to the shag for a posture of complete submission that seems to be corporate de rigueur these days
(That does not mean that unions do not have a role - it is just after legislation was passed to end the real oppressive practices of the old 'grind their noses' industrialists much of their reason for existence disapeared.)