It is now a much greener city since it has quickly been turned into mostly vacant lots.
Isn't it wonderful?
No polluting factories!
No commuters or smog...
</s>
Posted on 01/03/2012 5:04:11 AM PST by Kaslin
For over a year, it’s been rumored that the United Auto Workers union (UAW) was going go after a major foreign auto manufacturer in the United States to force unionization upon them by a world-wide boycott.
A new report from Reuters, based on interviews of union and industry insiders, has indicated that the target will be not one, but two German manufacturers operating in the US, Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG.
Specifically, Reuters has learned, the union is going after U.S. plants owned by German manufacturers Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG, seen as easier nuts to crack than the Japanese and South Koreans.
It's a battle the UAW cannot afford to lose. By failing to organize factories run by foreign automakers, the union has been a spectator to the only growth in the U.S. auto industry in the last 30 years. That failure to win new members has compounded a crunch on the UAW's finances, forcing it to sell assets and dip into its strike fund to pay for its activities.
The UAW has seen its numbers of workers shrink over the last two decades as domestic manufacturers GM, Ford and Chrysler wrestled with high labor and benefit costs compared to foreign manufacturers operating in the US.
In fact, GM’s recent financial problems were, in part, caused by pension and health plan liabilities to UAW workers, necessitating a federal government bailout. In the $95 billion GM bankruptcy, $50 billion of it was benefit liabilities to UAW workers.
The head of the union, Bob King, has admitted that declining union membership rolls means that if the UAW doesn't "organize these transnationals [foreign auto manufacturers], I don't think there's a long-term future for the UAW — I really don't."
That’s correct. Because unless the UAW can figure out how to increase labor costs across the entire industry, foreign manufacturers will continue to beat American manufacturers in the number one cost for cars: labor. Labor costs, including benefits, put current per-hour employee cost for U.S. automakers [at] around 50 percent higher than the costs for their foreign counterparts,” according to NPR.
As I reported last March, the UAW’s honcho, King, gave foreign automakers including BMW, Volkswagen AG, Toyota and Nissan an offer they can't refuse: Unionize their workers or else he'll single out one automaker and put the screws to them with a boycott. Never mind that the boycott will hurt workers, consumers and the US economy.
Last year, sources close to one foreign car manufacturer told me that they thought the target would be Toyota. But that was before a tsunami set back Japanese auto manufacturing. German automakers are likely a better bet because German unions are willing to back the UAW.
“This will be the biggest campaign ever undertaken. It will involve hundreds of dealerships,” said Dennis Williams, UAW Secretary Treasurer, adding the union will ask for help from its retirees, community groups and other unions to help with the campaign, said the Royal Oak Tribune (MI).
“We will do whatever it takes,” said Williams.
Volkswagen employees about 2,000 people at its manufacturing plant in Tennessee, while Daimler employs 17,697 in the US, down from 22,476 in 2008.
“You can’t have a middle class here in the U.S. or around the world without organized labor,” said Williams.
The Tribune reported that "he UAW has 'enhanced' it relationships with unions in Germany, Japan and South Korea to help with the upcoming campaign."
In other words, King is uniting the "Workers of the World."
If they can't get what they want at the negotiating table, the UAW will now try the economic equivalent of a suicide bombing of the economy. Never mind that they already destroyed the US automakers and their employees.
But it may not be as easy as King thinks.
From Reuters:
Central to this effort is the belief that if car companies refrain from actively opposing a UAW organizing push, workers at German-American factories will gladly join the union.
Volkswagen tops the 10 best car ads of 2011
But that belief may be off-base. Workers know that almost every job lost at U.S. car factories in the last 30 years has occurred at a unionized company, while almost every job gained has come at a non-union company. And most of the factories the UAW is targeting are in the South, which is historically hostile to unions.
"People have a different opinion in the South about unions," said Robert Plisko, a retired autoworker who helped UAW organizing efforts at German and Japanese plants in the 1970s and 1980s. "It's a lot harder now than it has ever been, and I don't see it getting any easier."
German auto executives declined to talk in detail about the UAW's push. Privately, they remain wary of the union and its confrontational past. "They view the UAW as a disaster," said a Wall Street banker who has worked extensively with the industry.
And they’d be right.
The UAW has pushed the domestic auto industry to the brink of death.
And the only way they can survive is by using the old mob tactic of firebombing a competitor. But that tactic will likely backfire, as consumers, already resentful of union and government interference in the auto industry, simply shrug their shoulders and buy Volkswagens and Daimlers anyway, perhaps not in spite of, but because of the boycott.
Consumers of the world unite.
If GM can’t do better then the Volt and rolling out cars with missing brake pads, then I think the unions should look at themselves before others.......
“You can’t have a middle class here in the U.S. or around the world without organized labor,” said Williams.
What a stupid statement. We already do have a middle class without the unions......
I'm sure there's an executive order waiting in the wings if all else fails. Its all a matter of 'fairness'.
The UAW credo says that when you find yourself in a hole the best option is to keep digging.
Unions is what drove businesses overseas
If the UAW tries this boycott, it may just backfire. There could well be more people opting for a Daimler Benz vehicle in support of that company than those who are boycotting them.
As long as the federal government will bail out the companies, screwing the investors and giving the union everything it wants, they have every reason to want to bankrupt all of them. As long as they’re protected from the negative consequences there’s no incentive for them to do any different.
Every Volt costs the American taxpayer $250,000 in various subsidies.
The UAW can only be successful to the extent they are aided my the Media.
It would be easy for foreign manufactures to run ads describing the extent to which they manufacture quality products, HERE IN THE STATES, WITHOUT NON-VALUE ADDED UNION INVOLVEMENT.
The unions remind me of cancer, now attempting to spread to the healthy parts of the body.
Unions are cancers. Outside of the education racket, they were in remission.
I don’t pay a lot of attention to boycotts, one way or another, I look for quality for the buck. Besides if I boycotted everything that has ever been mentioned as worthy of a boycott, I’d be hard pressed to buy almost anything.
I practice personal boycotts without trying to persuade others to do likewise. For instance, I’ve refused to buy anything at Best Buy for years and never will again, for an excellent reason but that’s me, perhaps you (collective “you”) have had nothing but good experiences with them.
UAW
United Against Work.
Or United Against Workers
That’s the sad part.
The members don’t realize that the union protects the worst and caps the wages of the best.
“It’s a battle the UAW cannot afford to lose. By failing to organize factories run by foreign automakers, the union has been a spectator to the only growth in the U.S. auto industry in the last 30 years. “
Could be a clue in there somewhere.
Very little difference between the UAW and the Mafia from what I can see. However, since the UAW doesn’t have to worry about RICO, they can operate completely in the open with the full support of the government.
It would be just a great start to the year to have the UAW fail at this. I doubt the workers will find any advantage to join the UAW, especially in right to work states.
FAIL UAW, FAIL.
Best news all day. Of course they will fail, the workers in the transnational factories don't want them either.
The UAW and Machinists unions must be CRUSHED
Unions are a protection racket for the least productive employees. Compare this statement with the following one. The correspondence is illuminating.
Those most enamored of communism/socialism are the least productive members of society who want those goodies that accrue to the most productive. Their agenda is detrimental to a productive society resulting in their attempt to hide that agenda by calling themselves progressives or liberals. These communist/socialists who call themselves progressives or liberals now control both parties and those two parties are rapidly bringing this nation to rule by man, loss of all property and enslavement.
Are we going to allow them continued control of the debate and blissfully accept their utopia?
The UAW should be investigated under the RICO Act.
UNIONS are a CANCER that MUST be EXCISED
Isn't it wonderful?
No polluting factories!
No commuters or smog...
</s>
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.