Posted on 04/27/2009 5:51:59 PM PDT by MV=PY
The non-workers will own the means of non-production.
Is this a first
Have you ever worked with an employee owned company? Any worker who has a fertile imagination will find themselves despised. Unless they operate on the cooperative power brokers with the skill of Machiavelli, they will be ostracized.
The best approach to dealing with the government and UAW ownership of Chrysler and General Motors is not to buy a car from either of these companies.
Won’t the quality of cars from either of these companies be possible lemons?
Actually, my company has an ESOP, so all employees are shareholders. We don’t seem to have problems like you describe, but our culture is the opposite end of the spectrum from a union. I believe it’s because we all try to respect and trust one another.
Remember: Obama isn’t a Socialist/Communist because he doesn’t label himself that. :)
I can’t wait for their first STRIKE
UAW Would Own 55% of Chrysler Stock Under Deal
. . . thereby becoming a company union.
They would not want 100%. There would be no one left to steal from.
How incredibly criminal this is. What a travesty.
The United Auto Workers union would eventually own 55% of the stock in a restructured Chrysler LLC under the deal reached by the union and the auto maker ... Fiat SpA "eventually" will own 35%, and the U.S. government and Chrysler's secured lenders together will end up owning 10% of the company once it is reorganized.
[Snip]
Among the cost-cutting measures that the UAW leaders have accepted are a suspension of cost-of-living-adjustments and new limits on overtime pay. Workers will only be paid for overtime after they have worked at least 40 hours in a week. Chrysler workers will also lose their Easter Monday holiday in 2010 and 2011, according to the union summary.
[Snip]
To ensure all Chrysler stakeholders are equally sacrificing to help the company recover, Chrysler will provide the UAW with quarterly updates and contributions by "executives, CEOs, dealers, suppliers and other constituents.
[Snip]
In addition to cuts in wages and benefits, the loss of working members and their dues due to factory closings, will shrink the union's clout and give it less money for organizing and political operations.
Can you imagine what happens when the workers demand more pay and benefits and the UAW bosses tell them to pound sand the company can’t afford it? Or when the UAW bosses on the board want to close a plant and lay people off. How about cutting retiree’s benefits. Since they would be in the control of both sides of the negotiations the retirees would take it in the shorts to keep the UAW leadership in the style they’ve become accustomed to.
How do they negotiate for the benefit of their members when they control both sides of the transaction? Once they get control what outside capital in the firm will flee which will further strangle the company. Might force the union to put up union assets to keep the company afloat as the capital flees. That won’t benefit the individual members and retirees especially if the company circles the drain and continues on down.
No source of outside capital would ever invest in GM or Chrysler now. It is impossible to get any return on your capital let alone a return of your capital. Bond holders are about to get screwed like a third world country. Also why would you invest in America now?
I have no clue why Fiat would stay in the deal for Chrysler. GM and Chrysler will not survive. Obama will keep them alive until 2012 to get relected. If he wins he will finish off America. If he loses - they probably will die fairly quickly.
I understand Fiat isn’t putting in cash in. Don’t know the details on the acquisition. Don’t know what happens to the liabilities in this partnership. The government might as part of the deal take over the union pension deal and support it with tax dollars. We’d get hosed as taxpayers but it would remove a huge burden from the company give the exorbitant unions pension the full backing of the US treasury. Couple that with hosing the bond holders and giving the UAW a lot of control over the company. Fiat on the other hand is used to dealing with union management partnerships Italian style which is different than ours but with UAW ownership the workers may find that their side no longer represents them.
Nope, it is not the first. South Bend Lathe was going out of business a bunch of years ago. The union arranged an employee buyout of the company. After a few years, the employees went out on strike — against themselves. It is no longer in business.
You can read more if you Google it.
Liberals would never buy American because they prefer their Prius and have never bought into the “buy American” much.
Now I imagine conservatives are going to be a little averse to buying from a UAW\Obama owned company.
I wonder who’ll buy from them now.
A scorpion asks a frog for help crossing a river. Intimidated by the scorpion's prominent stinger, the frog demurs.
``Don't be scared,'' the scorpion says. ``If something happens to you, I'll drown.'' Moved by this logic, the frog puts the scorpion on his back and wades into the river. Half way across, the scorpion stings the frog.
The dying frog croaks, ``How could you -- you know that you'll drown?''
``It's my nature,'' gasps the sinking scorpion.
Does the UAW now put the screws to Ford & GM to better Chrysler's position?
This piece was written by British socialist Arthur Bough and appeared on his blog, in longer form.
Workers’ Ownership
The demand for Workers’ Ownership, and for Workers’ Self-Management based on that ownership is then fundamental to revolutionary strategy for a number of reasons.
1.) Workers need ownership of the means of production in order to build their own economic and social power within society on a more stable basis than could ever be achieved simply by wage struggles.
2.) Workers’ ownership provides the fundamental requirement for developing Workers Control of production.
3.) Workers’ Ownership demonstrates to workers that production can be successfully undertaken without the organising and directing force of either individual capitalists or their State.
4.) On the basis of Workers’ Ownership real solutions can be offered to the real problems of workers here and now rather than offering workers solutions based upon action by the Capitalist State, or solutions which basically tell workers that nothing can be done until the Revolution.
5.) On the basis of Workers’ Ownership, workers in Co-operative enterprises are not only led to the requirement to actively participate in the management of their enterprise, but as shareholders in that business they have a direct pecuniary interest in doing so.
6.) Out of Co-operative enterprise, and the Workers’ Control that flows from it, workers not only learn that they do not need bosses, but learn that they can run society more effectively than can the capitalists. They learn that the profit motive is not the only basis on which enterprises can act, and from the lessons learned in acting co-operatively within a single enterprise, follows logically the lesson that even greater benefits flow from a range of enterprises, communities and other organisations working co-operatively rather than competing against each other.
7.) On the basis of the fundamental changes in the relations of production that such co-operative enterprise brings about flows necessarily a different set of ideas, ideas based on co-operation not competition. On this basis is laid the foundations of challenging bourgeois ideas, and by winning the battle of democracy within the working class, as Marx put it, the starting point of positing socialist ideas as the ideas of the new ruling class, of placing the working class in its vast majority as the conscious force which not only recognises the need to demolish the old, but the need for it to construct the new. A construction based on its own tried and tested Co-operative forms created not from on high by some State, but as Marx suggested by its own hand.
I had a political science professor whose 1980 seminar on “Comparative Political Systems” (really titled “Marxism Here and Now”) espoused this very philosophy. It was obvious he had never spent a day in his life outside of academia. I, on the other hand, worked my way through college doing commercial construction. Unlike Prof. Hansen, I’d actually worked with the “workers” at Rome Builders; the very people who were to control the “means of production.” I knew what they were capable of and not capable of. They were most definitely not capable of determining what building to build or any other higher business planning.
I regret to this day that I did not suggest to Prof. Hansen that students should control means of production of grades, have the class vote ourselves “A+” and head off for beer. That might have actually taught the guy a valuable lesson in reality.
Prof. Hansen wound up at one point as Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. I never gave another dime to IU after that.
Boycott Chrysler. Had a Le Baron GTS years ago. Will not even rent a Chrysler product now. They picked the pocket of the creditors.
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