Strike!

A strike at GM. It's hard to know exactly what the United Auto Workers think they can get out of this. GM is not in the best of financial health. Its auto lineup is mostly boring and stodgy. And somebody has to pay for those rising health costs.

Comments

[dissent]

Well I for one am tired of these major employers knowing full well that we as a nation need to remove the burden of health care from employers and shift it to the govt, and doing NOTHING to support this effort, other than, of course, to open plants in Canada. (I believe GM pulled that one - in part because Canadian health care costs are lower.)

Maybe a strike will help to force this issue.

[Adam]

According to the news stories, the strike is not about healthcare. See this story, for example:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070924/auto_talks.html?.v=35

The UAW agreed to GM's demands in this regard. In fact, it's rather unclear what the UAW is striking over. None of the stories on the major wires that I have seen give a concrete reason, just vague complaints about GM being "one-sided," but nothing specific. Very strange.

[T]

"Its auto lineup is mostly boring and stodgy"

And doesn't work. Well, at least in the past. Maybe they've improved, but I doubt it.

[tom]

Now would be a good time to get a job at GM. Look at all the workers GM will need, now that the current employees have decided to quit. What, you say? If I decide to go to a GM plant and apply for a job, some GM goon will bash me in the head? But I thought Unions were the friends of workers?

Now we see who the real enemy of the Unions are. It is not the employer, for if the employer is squeezed too hard they will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The real enemy of the Unions are their competitors - the working man and woman.

The real strength of Unions come from the ability to use violence against non-union workers, restricting the labor supply available to employers.

Unions are about violence and should have no place in civilized society.

[Craig]

"Unions are about violence and should have no place in civilized society." - tom

I'd disagree. Capital is organized - very well organized, in fact (see the Chamber of Commerce, and thousands of PACs and industry lobbying groups for verification). If every union disappeared tomorrow, these lobbying groups would still be there. In fact, their numbers have only grown as union membership has fallen.

Workers have the right to be organized, too.

It's just that unions have lost all sense of what's best for their workers and care merely for their own survival and for pushing the preferred political views of the leadership.

Restricting the availability of labor through less immigration is probably the best thing unions could do to help their members. But it's not a direct benefit from the union and it's not a specific financial gain you can point to.