The people here hate unions. That's fine.
But allowing ever-increasing relations with foreign countries and foreign companies, for the purpose of screwing the unions, is short-sighted because it facilitates other, undesirable, foreign connections.
Yes, the UAW are bastards.
But they're OUR bastards.
Who cost me a ton of wasted money until I wised up about 12 years ago.
Never again.
Yes, I hate to run a marathon with that cannon ball chained to my foot, but it is MY cannon ball!
The fact is that UAW kills the industry (and itself) by replacing free labor market with a socialist utopia where you get your pay regardless of your work. Even worse, you are *not allowed* to work better than others. No surprise that the industry is circling the drain. Read "Airframe" for a horror story of union's "work actions" and outright murder on the job. It's fiction but it's not far from real life.
And for a story, I had some Dodge Shadow in 1990s. On one cold, snowy night the head gasket blew, engine overheated and I barely made it home. Upon dissection the mechanic gave me a lump of cast metal and said "this is casting debris, it's not a chipped piece, it was in the block all along and broke off only now." It blocked the coolant flow, caused local overheat and the gasket burned up. I don't even want to think about the cost of that repair. Chrysler hasn't seen a cent of my money since then.
They aren’t my bastards. They’re part of the problem. If you want Americans to buy more American cars the path isn’t pricing out the foreign cars, which just rewards the American companies for poor performance and gives them a reason to over price their cars, the path is to let the free market inspire the car makers to compete. They need to make cars that are better than the competition, period. If they can’t do that then they should go out of business, period.
I read an estimate that unions have COST the average worker about 15% in wages because of their drag on the economy.