Posted on 11/21/2005 7:00:40 AM PST by traumer
"Regardless none of us want to see people suffer... "
I disagree. There are many here who delight in union workers suffering. They view a union worker's existance as an affront to them.
The people to blame here are the union leaders, and corporate management. If I ask for $100/hr and you agree to pay it, then you go broke, it's my fault? No, you are supposed to know what you can pay, my job is to do what you pay me for, right? Unless you hired me as your business manager, that's the only way I can see the employee being to blame for taking what's offered.
Management never held the line, and didn't care if they had to raise prices to compensate for overpaying unions.
Unions got too powerful, and too corrupt, but management didn't fight.
Regardless who is to blame, this is a sad story for all of us. GM is big, very big. And the loss of jobs will affect the economy in a big way. Might want to move some of your portfolio into bonds.
"I find it odd that foreign auto companies come here, are unionized, and they make a good profit."
I don't think they all are unionized, are they? (e.g. the ones down south).
Anyway, even if they were all unionized and under the same contract, it wouldn't catch up with them until a lot of their employees started retiring.
That's the way it is w/ the old American car makers. They were able to promise those guys the moon as long as it was "later on somtime". Now that later on is here, they'll end up dumping their unfunded liabilities on the US gvt via PBGC.
"What do union haters make of that?"
They never acknowledge it. They continue on with their venom of how the union is the same thing as communism.
If you mention the GM plant in California that was closed down, and Toyota reopened it, and made a profit, they won't even address that point. They continue to blame the workers, (who happen to be their neighbors), and root for the jobs to go to China, (which happens to be communist).
Idiots who favor hate over logic. And I re-iterate, are just as un-American as DU'ers.
The middle class of America is being destroyed bit by bit and the sheep see only their own welfare.
If GM goes bankrupt, the likely scenario is that they will dump their pension liabilities on the taxpayers. The major airlines will do the same.
You got this exactly right. Some of these morons think it is better to provide jobs in a communist country than seek to provide jobs in America.
It was once said that the Mafia, the government and big business are all the same. Please add communism to the mix and remove the Mafia. Only the Mafia works for the benefit of its family. American government and big business work to do the most damage possible by doing as much business with communist china as possible.
Somehow many people on FR have the idea that the purpose of the U.S. constitution is to provide business with as much profit as possible without any consideration as to the damage done to our nation's welfare and security.
"If GM goes bankrupt, the likely scenario is that they will dump their pension liabilities on the taxpayers. The major airlines will do the same."
Seems to me there are 2 classes of union bashers here:
Business owners who hate any and all unions. Even if they currently don't deal with a union. The other type is the guy who isn't in a union, and is jealous of what union employees have.
Either of those two groups is so filled with hate, they don't see the ramifications. They look forward to buying a $17k Trailblazer, and figure that it will offset the tax burden, (it won't).
See, you'll have the pension funds abandoned due to bankrupcy. You'll have people who become unemployed and won't recover from the blow, and will remain on the public dole. You'll have people who do pick themselves up, but go to another job making a fraction of what they formerly made, (therefore, pay less taxes).
To be sure, there will be some who prosper at an alternate form of income generation. They will be the minority.
In the meantime, our enemy, China, will grow richer and stronger. Don't forget for one second that China is not a friend. Their system is as incompatible with ours as the muslim system, (sharia law), is. China is communist, don't forget it.
None of that matters, our fellow FReepers are just giddy looking forward to that $17k Trailblazer. (Which won't happen, GM will maintain prices and increase profits short term with their Chinese labor).
I asked him what he saw as adequate pay for labor. I got no answer.
Unions are bad??? Yes many are. However if one reads history, this country had only a tiny middle class until unions arrived.
Andrew Mellon raged at Henry Ford because he was paying his workers $5 a day. Ford was told that laborers had no need for money, only enough pay for subsistence.
My question about GM (and Ford)...did the management and the unions
sleepwalk through the 1980s?
They must have been too busy planning on how to get rich off GM, even if
they killed it...
while the rest of us watched and learned from the Chrysler/Iacocca saga.
And believe that they have no right to strike. When countered with the concept that a man has the right to withhold his labor because forced work is slavery, they fall silent with a commensurate blank look on their face.
Clarify?
Unions have out lived their usefulness. They are committing murder in the State of California, they condone illegal immigration, and take their members money and use it for political causes, mostly liberal.
"When countered with the concept that a man has the right to withhold his labor because forced work is slavery..."
It's called "quitting"; no one is forced to work anywhere in America.
No argument with the above. My concern is the argument someone (can you say Carl Levin, Debbie Stabbenow?) is gong to make, and soon that the PGBC must be bailed out with taxpayer funds. If we take a foolish agreement made between myopic management and blind unions, which was never sustainable, and then transfer it as an obligation to a non-party (to the collectively bargained suicide pact)we will be destroying justice and our economy.
What middle class there was at the time was gone. What was left was the ruling elite and the unwashed masses, who could be shot on the slightest pretext.
I hate to see unions gone.
we're already headed there with unions. Illegal immigrations is pulling wages down, buying power is being eroded, and nothing is being done to protect the middle class.
Amen...There is another thread just posted where GM says that.
The supermarket workers that used to have great benefits and higher wages, are now being hired in at minimum wage and having to pay the union benefits with that.
What is the benefit?????
"Breaking on Bloomberg and Reuters. GM will cut 30,000 jobs in massive restructuring. More...."
thats hardly the same article.
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