Hey I agree with you, I didn’t mean to suggest that unions are all bad. I believe that some of them serve an appropriate purpose and work well, but some of them are also painfully dysfunctional.
The executive salaries in the U.S. are beyond crazy. If you compare our salary ratio of (executives:other employees) globally, it becomes easy to see where a lot of the inequity in this country comes from.
Unions are good when they are properly run… are they properly run when some lazy ass that does nothing and makes as much if not mor than the guy next to him has to be first verbally warned then written warning then verbal and written at the same time, then 1 day suspension then 3 day suspension then 5 day suspension then 7 day suspension then finally terminated. this can take years and hours worth of paper work. if they aren’t doing their job fire their ass. why does the union protect those people. and when it comes down to a company closing its doors or the union taking a paycut or not taking the pay increase, they would rather close the doors. the union brothers take care of each other. been apart of it first hand. Wives were lost homes were lost, cars were lost just so they didn’t have to pay 7 more $ per month in health insurance. idiots
unions in 2008 are excuses for people to be lazy and not do their job and keep asking for more and more. unions in my grandfathers era were a voice for workers who werent treated fairly.
Unions still do that now, you aren’t reading about it is the difference…Do YOU want to go work for 40K and less per year on those assembly lines? What about working for them for 25+yrs and then not receiving your pension. It’s not as easy as all unions and UAW are the ones that suck. If GM would make a good product and didn’t overpay their CEO’s they wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with! Why do you think that congress told them to f off and devise a new plan, instead of just handing out money?
i dont know what this “cant get fired if your in a union” talk. i am part of a union and i bust my ****in back for eight hours a day, if i dont and become lazy or less productive i WILL get fired from the company i work for. i will still be in the union but will need to find some other company to work for. you can only do that a couple of times before no one will hire you. the only thing my union does for me is make sure i get my fair rate and my benifits are paid for.
Every union is different and every union contract is different.
yea but i work with a lot of different trades and i know what their contracts are. they make a fair wage, not what everyone thinks. they make most of their money from overtime. if anyone here worked construction in a “right to work state” you would quickly know the need for unions. there are tons of unions in this country and you guys can name 3 bad ones and generalize that they all are bad.
every person i know under 30 that is in some kind of trade union is a slacker. most of them are boilimakers.
what about the ****en bus drivers, they are crying they want their healthcare for free when just about everyone else with health benifits is having to pay more.
teachers unions are are bunch of assholes too. they want more and more money and they product they are turning out is worse and worse.
NFLPA, MLBPA…they also abuse their union power.
i work with unions at my job and they are quick to file a grievence but expect you to let stuff slide when it comes knocking back on their door.
i thought ford passed up…and gm and chrysler were supose to merge?
but then again they’re all trying to getballout money…soo…
yes sure…dont forget buicks experimental turbo engines
all the divisions went down because of corperate gm and chebby…
if all the divisions competed against each other like in the 60/s 70s they’d be better off…more spark for that innovation…instead of just cookie cutting every new model they comeout with…
either way though…the newest car i’ll ever own will be my 72…and other then that go toyota trucks ha
what experimental buick engine? you mean the Oldsmobile Turbo Jetfire? the turbo 215 was based off the buick block but was an oldsmobile creation.
olds is gone - get over it.
what does that have to do with me correcting misinformation?
everything
this is in the Trib today…
When President-elect Barack Obama said he wanted to “spread the wealth around,” conservatives warned that this sounded like socialism. No one expected Democrats in Congress to take this to mean redistributing wealth to the rich.
That, after all, is what an automaker bailout would mean.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are hemorrhaging cash and asking Congress to bail them out – with your money. Congress has already given them a $25 billion low-interest loan, and congressional Democrats want to give them $25 billion more.
Many factors have combined to bring the Big Three down, including poor management, too many brands, poor product design and too many costly dealerships. But the main reason they’re on the verge of bankruptcy can be summed up in three letters: UAW.
UAW workers are among the world’s most affluent. They take home an eye-popping $75 an hour in wages and benefits – triple what the average private-sector worker earns. They get seven weeks’ paid vacation and holidays.
UAW workers retire after 30 years on a generous pension. If they don’t qualify for Social Security benefits because they’re in their 50s, they get special bonus payments until they do.
Not to mention gold-plated health coverage. For $10 a month and a $250 deductible, UAW workers and retirees get comprehensive medical, hospital, surgical and prescription drug coverage. Most retirees in Medicare, by contrast, must pay thousands of dollars annually in premiums, deductibles and copays.
Worse, under the union contracts the automakers do not lay off workers when plants close. Instead they transfer them to the JOBS bank. There they get nearly full pay to not work. Detroit automakers actually pay thousands of workers six-figure salaries to sit around and play Trivial Pursuit.
Nice work, if you can get it.
It’s not so nice, however, if you have to pay for it when buying a car. Those gold-plated health benefits add $1,200 to the cost of each GM vehicle. Paying workers to play bingo in the JOBS bank adds an additional $200. Americans won’t pay for that if they have a choice. Competition now gives them one.
Detroit’s problem isn’t foreign companies using cheap labor – many so-called foreign cars are built in the United States by American workers. The typical hourly worker at Honda earns $43 an hour. That’s a good living, but $30 an hour less than GM pays. Union contracts have driven the Big Three to the brink of ruin.
Management also made its share of mistakes. Focusing on gas-guzzling SUVs was foolish in hindsight. But even that was brought on by the UAW. At $75 an hour the Big Three couldn’t compete in the small and midsize car market. So they concentrated on making the trucks and SUVs on which they could still make a profit. Until oil hit $140 a barrel.
And now it is time to pay the piper. The automakers would face restructuring in bankruptcy court. This would mean a fresh start for GM, which would order union contracts rewritten to reflect competitive realities. Pay would come down to market levels, the JOBS bank would disappear and UAW retirees would pay more for their health benefits.
The UAW, understandably, doesn’t want this to happen. It wants Congress and the president to give the automakers a lot of your money. A bailout would only delay the inevitable, but it would keep UAW wages and benefits sky-high for a little bit longer.
The UAW endorsed many Democrats in the incoming Congress and spent thousands of hours campaigning for them. The labor movement poured more than a half billion dollars of members’ dues into expanding the Democrat majority. Now they are calling in their chits.
Change we can believe in? Not quite. But at least taxpayers know what Democrats in Congress mean by spreading the wealth around.
James Sherk is the Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
best idea i’ve heard so far was to give anyone who buys a big 3 car in the next year a $5000 tax break.
Ask where that $75/hour figure comes from.
It’s the sum of all pay, including management, plus the sum of all current benefits, plus the sum of all pensions currently paid, divided by number of current employees. It’s a **** stat that conservatives will repeat ad nauseum to try to make it accepted fact.
Citigroup can get $80b but the automakers can’t get $25b? You’re a ****ing tool. The gov’t is just playing games with the big three; the money’s coming.
Do you know that for a fact? Do high level executives belong to the UAW? If so the point is it still is double what other manufatures payout. Then you add in the benefits…that is better than 99% of what other people pay/have…can’t lay off workers if a plant closes…if my work’s office closed odds are I would be out of a job…There are a lot of unions that do more harm than good and this is one of them.
The 75 figure includes everyone, not just union employees. It includes the CEOs.
What is your point? It’s not like GM didn’t set this deal up with UAW themselves. They agreed to a contract (actually they reneged on a contract, and hence why they had to renegotiate the last several times i.e. pension issues) by they I mean both parties. The GM continued to make SUV’s when they knew it was only an issue for them. They kept paying CEO’s exuberant amount of money. GM should be punished for making a bad business model, not bailed out. They should fire all those executives!!!
I say that Exxon mobile and the like companies should be the ones giving the big 3 a bailout. But Bush wouldn’t do something that would make this much sense. And trust me, they can afford it, even with prices declining now, they are still making crazy loot:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22949325/
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PainAtThePump/wireStory?id=6146013
Do you have a link that verifies this? The article clearly states UAW workers make $75/hr. I do not understand why this is hard to believe. If you look at how great their benefits are it sounds about right. It is not uncommon for a assembly line worker to take home over $100K in salary including overtime wages…So add in benefits and it sounds about right to me. I know this because I see these costs when working on budgets at the company I work for. You would be surprised what people make when you add in their benefits.
It comes off like you are trying to justify what a UAW worker makes. Yes GM (along with Ford and Chrysler) agreed to these contracts…but when there is always a threat of a huge strike what are you to do? They remind me of how the people in the hill district acted when the new arena deal was being made…trying to extort…get more than what they are owed. I do agree with you about the executives …it is unreal to make the money they make.
Not even going to comment on the oil company point you made…