“Blaming the union for bad management decisions or for obtaining contracts favorable to union membership is just like blaming a customer for negotiating a lower price when they purchase a car.”
That is a poor analogy. Imagine if you went to buy a car, and the dealer says “Until you buy a new car from us, we are going to keep your old car”. Sound like a fair negotiation, or does it sound like extortion? Unless you meet union demands, they keep you from doing business. That gives you 2 choices, bankruptcy now or bankruptcy later. They chose later is now it is here, the parasites are about to kill their hosts.
Its the same story in cities and states thoughout the country. They are all going bankrupt because of union labor costs. In states like NY which have HUGE numbers of state workers, politicians know that if they cross the union they will targeted for defeat. Instead they give in to union demands for more money and benefits for less work (that is ALWAYS the union demand). It works well until the tax money runs out.
Wherever you have big unions you have failure and bankruptcy.
I realize there is a problem making an argument by analogy and I should not have engaged in that tactic.
My basic point is that there is an over emphasis on unions being the cause of the demise of General Motors. The hourly work force of GM was unionized when the company had over fifty percent of the market and was making huge profits. It was not union contracts or workers who made the bad decisions on design, product mix, resource allocation and other issues leading to loss of customer loyalty and financial stability.
When the company was flush, everybody was happy and almost no one was holding management to account. Product mix was allowed to go stale, quality was allowed to deteriorate and resources were diverted from the core business to unrelated ventures. Instead of exercising foresight and making decisions for the long term good of the company, management took the short term approach. They bought stockholder support with dividends, made the board of directors an extension of management, and bought labor stability with ever increasing benefits.
When Ross Perot was kicked off the board for warning of the problems now occurring, he was bought off for a billion dollars when a billion was a lot of money. The Japanese moved in with a long term approach, offered quality products that people wanted to own, and built them in right to work states with a compliant work force. GM failed to recognize the threat and continued to operate as if there would be no tomorrow.
Now it is all the fault of the unions. I am sorry but I still fail to see the logic in that argument.