Dead men walking…they just don’t get it yet.
I was a union member, once, a long time ago. And I don’t understand this attitude. Local 23 is out of their fucking minds. Take a pay cut and save the factory for better times? Or lose your job, and the factory, permanently?
Admittedly, that’s a hell of a pay cut, but let’s be serious here…how much money do you really have to make to stand around all day and stamp out car parts? $30/yr base seems reasonable to me. Twice that seems somewhat ridiculous. And don’t forget, that’s base wage, not total including benefits.
When I quit my job at Stewart-Warner back in 1981, I was making $18K in a skilled position (not stamping out parts all day, which paid a lot less). And I was in the next-to-highest labor grade (the only people who made more were the machinists). I don’t see how that position, even if SW was still in business, could possibly have done much more than double in the intervening 29 years. But then, the UAW assholes did always manage to get a better deal than we Steelworkers.
The 32-year-old mother of two who recently took in her mother and her stepbrother and whines that the pay cut and attendant increase in health insurance if Norman bought the plant would put her at the poverty level…I wonder how many nice TV sets, computer game consoles, and so forth she owns? How many expensive pairs of tennis shoes do her kids have? How many iPods? Does she have a relatively new GM car? Are her mother and stepbrother incapable of working (or bringing in a Social Security check)? Has she even considered eating ground beef instead of filet mignon? (Yes, I exaggerate.) Or buying the store brand instead of the national brand?
I’ll bet if her grandmother or great-grandmother (anyway, whichever lived through the Depression) heard her whining about “poverty”, she’d probably slap the shit out of her and tell her to make do. And tell her and her mother to go find decent husbands. (Yes, I am a male chauvinist pig. Live with it. Kids need fathers, not babydaddies.)
This is one time I feel sorry for the UAW reps. Here they are actually facing reality, and trying to save jobs for people who seemingly don’t deserve the trouble they’re going to. You couldn’t pay me to be in their shoes right now.
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The union leadership at that plant are all transfers from other closed GM locations. They do not care if the plant closes they are assured of a job at another GM plant — with seniority. If the plant closes they get the contractual closing benefit — in some cases 90% pay for four years.
The UAW “owns” barganing rights at the facility, so Newman cannot just let the workers go and reopen with new workers. It is an Alice in Union Wonderland world.
A thousand people would be in line tomorrow for $15/hr plus benefits jobs, but these union assholes would rather see the plant and jobs disappear.
I would be most unhappy with a 50% pay cut (I bitched about a 10% cut last year). But 50% of something beats the hell out of 100% of nothing.
Your last sentence hits the crux of the matter.
I would be hurting with a 50% pay cut. But in this economy, I’d suck it up and be happy I had a job.
I can never remember who said this, but I always liked it: “Why is it the people I’m supposed to feel the sorriest for have the biggest TVs?”
And always seem to have the money for a latte in the morning?
It is the same scorched Earth policy they destroyed Anderson with. So the GM gypsies will shut down this plant, and then move on to another town, using their seniority to keep hold of their $29/hour wage and $46/hr overtime, as plant after plant closes in their wake.
And these jackasses wouldn’t even allow the rank and file to vote. How there is still a UAW hall standing in Indiana, I have no idea.
It’s not just the $29 per hour, it’s the fact that benefits cost more than the actual wage. If I remember correctly, the labor cost to GM counting benefits is now $72 per hour. The problem isn’t just the high wages, it’s the inherent cost difference between what it costs the company and the worker takes home. The workers can’t grasp that they’re only taking home $24 per hour after tax and drove the company bankrupt because their labor costs the company $72.
Can’t grasp, or won’t grasp?
Sometimes I think it’s more of the latter than the former. After all these years, their sense of entitlement is stronger than their sense of self-preservation.