Well the United Auto Workers has gone and done it again! Just when I thought that no one group of people could be any more stupid, the UAW proves me wrong! Union Workers, never content to work for the highest wages and best benefits in the country. Moreover, they never seem satisfied until they drive their employers and beneficiary out of business, so the union strikes!
US automakers are struggling with labor costs and exorbitant pension and healthcare benefits, the rising cost of materials, poor sales and incorrect product mix. Now the UAW has threatened a strike at the plate that produces GM's hottest selling car, the new Malibu. GM finally hits the target with a product, exactly the right car at the right time and the UAW strikes! How stupid is that? The leadership of the UAW must be out of their mind. This is the same old, tired scheme that the UAW has used to extort higher wages and more concessions from the company Instead of cooperating with GM and trying to save their jobs AND their company, they strike! Unbelievable!
My Dad worked in a UAW ruled plant for 22 years until the company finally tired of the constant threats of strikes, the petty "grievances’", the constant B.S. that comes with a union shop and just closed the plant. At the time, the company operated one of the largest manufacturing plants under one roof in the USA. They finally got their fill of the UAW Commies, closed the plant, moved to the south, and built a new plant. The new plant paid comparable wages to the union plant but the company could keep the workers that they wanted and the union could not force them to keep the malcontents, deadbeats and shirkers. Many of the best workers received private "invitations" from the company to move to the new plant at the prevailing wages. These "invitations" were made to the most reliable and skilled workers, shirkers and malcontents need not apply! My dad chose not to go because I was just short of graduating from high school.
When the plant closed in the early 70's the National UNION sent their thugs into the Local Union hall, seized the assets and all the Local funds to "protect" the workers! What a load of horseshit! They came in and seized the almost new Union Hall, they chained and padlocked the doors and threatened the local union officials lives if they "tried to stop them". All this band of no-necked Mafia thugs wanted was the money and property. I watched my dad work for 22 years, paying dues, attending meetings and loyally supporting his local. Just to watch their work and assets be seized by a bunch of east coast enforcers in the name of the "national union"! My dad's "pension" from the union; less than twenty bucks a month! Big deal, all it cost him was his job. Then and there, I was through with unions!
Go to ANY union web site and they will boast that they are "working to keep jobs" in "North America". Well they are fired! The UAW has cost the USA more jobs through their bull headed stupidity and single-minded "blinders on" thinking. Jobs go offshore for one reason, cost of retirees! UAW members worked all their lives in protected jobs and were paid some of the highest wages of the day; Few of them saved money for a rainy day; they had the pension plan and cradle to the grave medical coverage, all at the expense of the Company. They did not need to plan or save; THE UNION was going to take care of them. What a laugh! The unions brag that the benefits are provided by "the union", hah! Those benefits are PAID for by the Workers Sweat and the Company’s Money. All the union does is stick to the workers money like a pack of big blood sucking leaches! The union officials are the worst form of lecherous individuals that you can imagine. Just like GM, hundreds of US companies are folding or have folded under the oppressive load of pensioner benefits. Workers cannot really think that they are worth more to the company after they retire than when they are working for the company? I guess that they do.
Wake up Union Workers or more of your jobs will be shipped off to anywhere that the money grubbing UAW and their ilk cannot reach!