Where Would General Motors Be Without the United Automobile Workers Union?

or we could rephrase the question and ask where america would be without a relatively affluent blue collar class? ...which sure as shit wouldna happened without the normalized UAW-big three relations that emerged postwar, setting wage and hour benchmarks.

of course now blue collar affluence is shrinking rapidly, and the UAW is a bunch of shitmonkeys. but they're no stupider or more complacent than the ass kittens in GM management, who have elevated parochialism as their highest value.
 
highwayman said:
I can sum the answer in one word... PROFITABLE...
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You're kidding, right? GM hasn't truley been profitable since 1986. The unions are a problem, sure, but the lackluster styling, and cookie-cutter designs from division to division are also to blame. Add to that the fact that they have an annoying habit of introducing a great model, and then cutting options for every year thereafter, and you have a recipe for disaster. Blaming the union is just trendy for them, and you fell right into it. When Ford started having problems, they cut white-collar jobs. When GM started having problems, they blamed the union. See a pattern here?
 
Gato_Solo said:
You're kidding, right? GM hasn't truley been profitable since 1986. The unions are a problem, sure, but the lackluster styling, and cookie-cutter designs from division to division are also to blame. Add to that the fact that they have an annoying habit of introducing a great model, and then cutting options for every year thereafter, and you have a recipe for disaster. Blaming the union is just trendy for them, and you fell right into it. When Ford started having problems, they cut white-collar jobs. When GM started having problems, they blamed the union. See a pattern here?
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Yea...Greed on both in the board room AND in the trenches...

Too bad there are not many Lee Iocacas around to cut the dead wood...
 
highwayman said:
Yea...Greed on both in the board room AND in the trenches...

Too bad there are not many Lee Iocacas around to cut the dead wood...
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Here's the deal, though. Who, greedy or not, are the ones actually building the product, and who, greedy or not, is making more money? If you want to be profitable, the last thing you should be doing is sacrificing your workers. I think there is plenty of blame to go around on this, but I also don't believe the union is the prime suspect...
 
Quiet ya durned Canadian!

tons of good teamster jobs got shipped up there to
you ice ridden folks

the one's they din ship to Mexico
 
Winkster, when I was HR at the hotel I worked at, I had to deal with Teamsters. They were the "labourer's" union there. Without exception, every union rep was bottom of the list for doing the job they were actually hired for.
 
well we all know what it is like if you under perform
out in the real non-union world don't we

here's yer pink slip
 
Couldn't do that, could we? The only benefit I ever saw from that union was them protecting the one's that most needed firing. Lord knows, with existing Quebec labour protection and minimum wage laws, they didn't acheive a damn thing on that front.
 
well then we will export a few million illegal
Mexicans and you can put them union boys
out in the snow
 
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