[Don Corleone]

get out from under their crushing insurance and pension costs that the unions have trapped them in?

Companies never...repeat never..sign union contracts that they don't think they can live with. Hence..STRIKES occur. Yes.. some of these contracts in hindsight seem to be in bad judgement but at the time they were executed management felt that they could handle the provisions. It is continous and repeated bad decisions like these by the multi-million dollar a year executives that hamstring a corporation and leave it bankrupt while the members of the board walk away with millions in benefits as their reward for poor stewardship.

[wagglebee]

Yes.. some of these contracts in hindsight seem to be in bad judgement but at the time they were executed management felt that they could handle the provisions.

When Roger Smith, et al, made these provisions, GM could handle them. Anybody with an ounce of sense also knew that in 20 years, they probably wouldn't be able to handle them and I'm sure that senior management in the 80s knew this. However, they also knew it wouldn't be their problem and making this Faustian bargain would result in huge personal rewards for them.

[nicollo]

You all are forgetting the role of politics in all this:

Labor's Magna Carta: FDR Signs the Wagner Act

Don C wrote:

Companies never...repeat never..sign union contracts that they don't think they can live with. Hence..STRIKES occur. Yes.. some of these contracts in hindsight seem to be in bad judgement but at the time they were executed management felt that they could handle the provisions.

Tell that to Alfred Sloan. The Governor of Michigan and the President of the United States of America forced the first of these "contracts" upon GM in 1935 and 1937.