Posted on 04/20/2006 10:18:01 AM PDT by Marxbites
The question should be, Where would autoworkers be without the UAW"?
In slavery? Working for pennies living on welfare perhaps?
I really don't understand how you all can say the things you do about union workers. I know plenty of Republican autoworkers just trying to make a good living while doing this dangerous work. Just the other day a worker died in the plant because he wasn't following safety rules negotitated by the UAW. The boss told him to do it another way and his life was lost as a result. Again, I don't understand how you can be this way to your fellow Americans.
My beef is not with the auto workers. My beef is with the BIG BUSINESS of union 'management'. BIG UNION organization's "dues", which are forceably collected from the poor workers, are used mostly to enrich the union management, support their political contributions, and in many cases well documented over the years, used for criminal endeavors.
You ask, "Where would autoworkers be without the UAW"? I'll tell you where. They could make more money if the company didn't have to factor union dues into compensation. 99% of business could afford to pay workers more than they earn/keep today after union dues are deducted. This amount would be lower than the total cost paid today by the company.
The math is simple. Take out the middle man, the union management, and allow comapnies and workers to have a direct working relationship, as they do in 85%-90% of all business in the modern world!
And tell me what unionized industry is healthy and doing well today?
Please document that accident you refer to with a link or website, then explain to me how the UAW can prevent stupidity?
Last, since I know you cannot debate, please go back to DU and never show your socialist colors here again!
Great post.
Bookmarked.
*Compensation costs today with a union.
*Compensation costs without a union, direct to worker, that allows workers to keep, net after taxes, more than what they currently make today net after taxes AND after union dues deductions
There must be a win-win there for workers and business. If there is, and I believe there is, we then need to take this case to the American people so unions get placed on the ash-heap of history, where they belong.
Your post is to the actual cause and demise of a one time great company.
In reading your post it somehow lead me to comparing the GOP
to General Motors Management.
The GOP has been at the controls for five years, and as a majority they vote like a minority. I have never seen such a group of spineless cowards allowing Harry Reid to hold them hostage is just unbelievable.
Some-one made a post this week on FR. that the Republican Party works best when they are in the minority, I am beginning to see their point, some dogs just have a better fight when their down. If there isn't a drastic change in the next year and a half, some of these GOPER"S are going to know this feeling very well.
Ah, the working individual would set his OWN employment contract, just as overwhelming non-union majority do based on their own apptitudes. It's called merit in case you never heard the word before.
Why don't you check the NLRB site to see just how many thefts of member's assets by union bosses occurs every single day?
BTW, the Autoworkers would have jobs because non-union employees cost less, duh.
You think the Union gives to sh@ts about you, like Americans think the Govt cares about any of us?
Get with the program pal, Unions and Govt are out for their own best interests, which if you've been awake during your life, you may have noticed by now that they both in fact are the largest, and growing, barriers to our pursuit of happiness.
It's called special favors for special groups that all the other groups pay for.
Blatant, immoral theft and no less.
Unions are collectivism, which in all non-voluntary cases equals coercion, which IS slavery.
BTW, roughly only 2% of all Union perpetrated violence ever gets convicted.
And for the thread at large this is worth a listen up:
http://www.freedomtofascism.com/w_low.html
You can toss in Ford into that category as well, in fact pretty much every single company that has to deal with unions. There was a time when this country really needed them. But those days are long gone. Instead, they have become a cinderblock tied around the neck of American industry and they are struggling to keep their head above water.
The Union Hunt for More Victims
by George Reisman
[Posted on Tuesday, July 05, 2005]
The New York Times has proved once again that it is a reliable font of economic ignorance. This time, it’s through an op-ed piece titled “A More Perfect Union,” by a lady named Ruth Milkman, whose credentials in economics are that she is a “sociologist” and “director of U.C.L.A.'s Institute of Industrial Relations and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.”
The purpose and substance of Ms. Milkman’s piece is an attempt to pump for the resurgence of the labor union movement via the election of one Andy Stern to the presidency of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Stern, who is currently president of the largest individual union within the A.F.L.-C.I.O, is threatening to break up the organization if his agenda of vast new union organizing campaigns is not enacted. His and Ms. Milkman’s goal is to bring about a repeat of organized labor’s rise in the 1930’s, when it increased its membership from 13 percent of non-agricultural workers to 35 percent by 1955. The further effect will allegedly be prosperity for all: “Given a chance, Mr. Stern's proposals can restore labor as the counterforce it once was in an era that saw remarkable gains in prosperity for all Americans.”
Ms. Milkman and the Times would have their readers believe that the growth or decline in labor union membership is something that depends essentially on the personality and skills of union leaders, that the right leaders were responsible for the growth of unionism starting in the ‘thirties and that union leaders less dynamic and less competent than Mr. Stern have been responsible for the decline in unionism in more recent decades.
This is simply dishonest. It chooses to ignore major historical facts that were crucial to the rise of unionism in the ‘thirties. These included the enactment of the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, which deprived employers of the ability to obtain Federal Court injunctions against labor-union coercion, and then the enactment of the National Recovery Act in 1933 and The Wagner Act of 1935, which compelled employers to recognize labor unions and to bargain with them under threat of being found guilty of “unfair labor practices” by the newly established National Labor Relations Board. By the same token, Ms. Milkman and the Times conceal from their readers that only the enactment of major new and additional legislation increasing the coercive power of labor unions could succeed in once again substantially increasing union membership.
The truth is that unions are essentially parasitic organizations that thrive only by draining and ultimately destroying the companies and industries they control. The essential goal of the unions is to compel the payment of higher wages for the performance of less work and less productive work. Unions are notorious for their hostility to labor saving machinery and to any form of competition among workers, for featherbedding practices, indeed, for “making work” by deliberately and arbitrarily increasing the number of workers required to accomplish a given task and sometimes even by compelling the disassembly or destruction of products already produced.
It should be no wonder that the percentage of the labor force controlled by unions tends progressively to decline. Where the unions hold sway, companies cannot compete. Their market share falls and they ultimately go bankrupt. The only way that unions can maintain any given share of the labor force is by finding new victims to replace the ones they have sucked dry. The finding of new victims, by means of new government intervention is the unstated agenda of Mr. Stern, Ms. Milkman, and The New York Times.
The actual effects of labor unions are arbitrary inequalities in wage rates, mass unemployment, and substantially lower real wages for the average worker. Labor unions are aptly described as a leading vehicle of what von Mises called “destructionism.”
Whenever a union succeeds in obtaining above market wage rates for its members, it also reduces the number of workers who can be employed in its field. This is because of the operation of one of the best established principles of economics: Namely, the higher the price of anything, including the wage of any kind of labor, the smaller is the quantity demanded of that good or labor service.
Thus, workers who could have been employed in the lines controlled by labor unions are instead displaced and forced to seek work elsewhere. The added competition of these workers in other lines then serves either to depress wage rates in those other lines, thereby resulting in an arbitrary, union-imposed inequality in wage rates, or, if those other lines are also unionized or are forced to pay union wages in order to avoid becoming unionized (which is often the case), to cause still other workers to be displaced. It should be clear that to the extent that the effect of union activity is to depress wage rates in other fields, the union slogan “Live Better, Work Union” turns out to mean “Live Better by Forcing Other Workers to Live Worse.”
If wage rates in all lines of work are forced above the free-market level either because labor unions are able to impose their wage scales everywhere, or because upward union pressure on wage rates is joined by minimum-wage legislation, the effect is mass unemployment. In this case, there is simply no branch of the economic system that is allowed to pay wage rates low enough to make possible the absorption of workers displaced from elsewhere by the imposition of union wages. The result is the kind of situation presently existing in France and Germany, where unemployment is in excess of ten percent. And, of course, the cost of supporting the masses of unemployed falls mainly on the workers who manage to keep their jobs. Here higher taxes are their reward for “working union.”
Andy Stern, Ms. Milkman, and The New York Times are probably too ignorant to know that labor unions and minimum-wage laws cause unemployment. They all almost certainly believe instead that what causes unemployment is labor-saving machinery and anything else that raises the productivity of labor. It is on this foundation that labor unions have typically opposed all such improvements.
To whatever extent unions have succeeded in preventing increases in the productivity of labor, what they have actually succeeded in doing is holding down the supply of consumers’ goods relative to the supply of labor, because labor-saving improvements do not in fact cause unemployment. Their actual effect is to enable the same number of workers to produce more.
Of course, many workers have to change their jobs in the process. For example, if the average farm worker becomes able to produce fifty times more food, that does not mean that people will want to eat fifty times more food. They may want to eat only the same amount of food. In this case, forty-nine workers are made available to produce new and additional goods that previously could not be produced, from air conditioners to zoology texts, and including to some extent improvements in the processing, delivery, and preparation of food.
This description of matters is overwhelmingly borne out by economic history. In the last two centuries or more the average productivity of labor in the economic system has increased by well over a hundred times. The effect has not been the creation of a ninety-nine percent plus unemployment rate. To the contrary, the unemployment rate today is not very different than it was a century or two ago; indeed, vastly more workers are employed today than in the past. What is different today is the enormously increased quantity and variety of goods produced per worker and which are readily available to the average worker in his capacity as a consumer.
The effect of improvements in the productivity of labor is thus to increase the supply of consumers’ goods relative to the supply of labor. Whether one considers matters from the point of view of supply and demand or from the point of view of cost of production, the effect of improvements in the productivity of labor is to raise real wages. In terms of supply and demand, the effect of the increase in the supply of consumers’ goods relative to the supply of labor is that prices fall relative to wage rates. This, of course, means that the buying power of the average worker’s wages is increased and thus that he can buy more, which is to say, that his real wages are increased.
In terms of cost of production, labor saving improvements, in reducing the quantity of labor required to produce goods, reduce their costs of production, and thus, to the extent that prices are determined by costs, reduce prices. But note, because the reductions in costs and prices are the result of reductions in the quantity of labor required to produce goods, they take place without any necessity of a fall in wage rates. Once again, the buying power of wages is increased and the standard of living of the average wage earner rises.
Union leaders and their academic and political cohorts are incredibly ignorant of how real wages actually increase. Their focus is on raising money wage rates, which, as shown, can only result in arbitrary inequalities in wages rates and in mass unemployment. Utterly unbeknownst to them, what makes real wages actually rise are the progressive improvements in the productivity of labor that they fight at every turn in the irrational belief that those improvements cause unemployment. Indeed, the unions and their cohorts are not even aware that when they prevent improvements in the productivity of labor they are in fact holding down real wages. That is because their mental horizon is narrowly confined to the short-run interests of small minorities of workers—the workers who comprise the membership of their particular union.
Thus, a printers union would oppose computerized typesetting out of fear of its members losing their present jobs. Its narrow mental horizon leaves no room for recognizing that its members who become unemployed as printers could be employed in other lines of work. More than this, it leaves no room for recognizing that in opposing computerized type setting, which would serve to make the cost of production and price of all printed matter less, it actively combats the rise in the real wages of workers throughout the economic system who buy printed matter and other products whose cost and price is determined in part by the price of printed matter.
The unions and their cohorts simply do not recognize the essential, vital connection between real wages and product prices and so actively strive to keep prices up and real wages down. Whatever, their subjective desire and intent may be, they are profoundly anti-labor in the objective reality of their actual practice and the economic theories they hold which guide their practice.
Ms. Milkman concludes her article with a reference to a time of greater union membership, presumably the late 1940s and the 1950s, “that saw remarkable gains in prosperity for all Americans.” In her ignorance, which already takes for granted the allegedly positive effects of labor unions on the standard of living of the average wage earner, despite the diametrically opposite conclusion established by the science of economics, she apparently believes that such a passing reference to an historical association is sufficient to make the case for a labor union resurgence unanswerable.
Let us note here that, apart from notable interruption by wars and depressions, the whole of American history was a period of “remarkable gains in prosperity for all Americans.” (Negro slaves, of course, were an unfortunate exception.) The gains of the late 1940s and the 1950s were not the result of labor unions but of the same forces that had brought about economic improvement throughout our history, without significant union membership. Those forces were, and are, saving and capital accumulation, scientific and technological progress, the profit motive, competition, and the price system, and, more fundamental even than any of these, protection of property rights and economic freedom.
Labor unions, then as now, were a force working against the positive effects of these fundamentals. They had greatly prolonged the mass unemployment of the 1930s, first by preventing reductions in money wage rates and then from 1933 on actually increasing money wages rates, in the midst of mass unemployment. The unemployment came to an end in World War II only as the result of a combination of massive inflation of the money supply coupled with the prohibition of union wage increases by governmental wage controls. In the absence of wage increases, the increases in the quantity of money served to rapidly increase the quantity of labor demanded and thus not only to eliminate mass unemployment but to turn it into an actual labor shortage by 1942.
In the postwar period, just as at any other time, the unions retarded the rise in the productivity of labor and in real wages. They accomplished this in part by the very success of their wage demands, which served to an important extent to deprive companies of funds they otherwise would have invested in improved plant and equipment, which would have raised the productivity of labor. To this extent, the higher wages won by the unions were, in effect, a case of eating the seed corn.
As foreign competition increased, with the economic recovery of Europe and Japan, the negative consequences of the unions became more obvious. Major American industries, such as automobiles and steel, became unable to compete because of the power of their labor unions. Their products came to be noted for their inferior quality, such as "Monday morning" or "Friday afternoon" automobiles, automobiles poorly produced because the necessary workers were not present to produce them or not in a proper condition to produce them. These were workers who also could not be fired because they were union workers. Inferior products, artificially high wages, and low productivity of labor. These were and are the destructionist contributions of the labor unions to the American standard of living.
And since the 1960s, they have been joined by the additional destructionist policies of the “Great Society,” above all, Medicare and Medicaid and the hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes required to finance them. These, along with the war in Vietnam, were accompanied by the acceleration of inflation and the abandonment of the remnants of the gold standard. And then, starting in 1970, came the EPA and OSHA, government agencies imposing further hundreds of billions of costs on business firms in vague quests to “protect the environment” and achieve “safety.” In 1971 came Nixon’s price and wage controls, with the controls on oil lasting until 1980 and causing the oil crisis of the time. Along the way, came the Departments of Energy and Education, with still more government interference and resulting paralysis. [1]
Still more recently have come first a stock market bubble and now a housing bubble, both set in motion by the inflationist policies of the Federal Reserve System and both causing a massive malinvestment and waste of capital. To this has been added huge government budget deficits, causing the waste of still more capital.
Real wages and the standard of living of the average American worker have been persistently and seriously undermined by these destructionist economic policies based on ignorance on the part of those the public naively expects to know better. It is no wonder that many American working families have grown poorer in recent decades. What else should one expect in the face of such an onslaught? The New York Times and its numerous allies in academia and in government are generally believed to know, and probably themselves believe they know, what they are talking about. Nevertheless, they simply do not. They are utterly and dangerously ignorant, irrespective of all the pretensions to knowledge they themselves may make or are foolishly believed by others actually to possess.
What plant had a death? I work at an auto company and I have not heard of any recent death. Outside of our stamping or casting plants, the typical UAW job is not dangerous at all.
And I don't beleive you for a minute that it is the Boss' fault. Keep trying to blame everything on salaried or management and you will keep dragging your company into the ground.
"My beef is not with the auto workers."
Mine is. The UAW is directly responsible for the socialist governor that MI has in office. They are directly responsible for the socialist Senator and Congresscriminals we have representing us. These are the folks that elected for environazis over their own interest.
And their about as flexible on the job as they are with their votes.
Yes, mismanagement has caused as much of a problem and government intervention is another third rail. I have spoken to many, many, many UAW folks and the majority of them are sheep being led by the nose. Many of them even think they work for the UAW, not for their employer.
Sorry, unions were NEVER needed. Like me, you got the Progressive side of the story from our self interested and UNIONIST educrats.
Do you really think THEY would tell us that during the migration from agrarian life to city & factory life, which was fraught with strife, that American's standards of living actually began a huge increase during the industrial revolution? That commodities were falling for nearly the whole last qtr of the 1800's due to innovation and productivity gains? That is until the Industrialists and Elites witnessed, then copied the socialism/fascism and corporatism they saw and envied that the Euro-dictators were getting fat on while growing their power?
The progressive era has been the most propagandized period in history, hyped by those historians and academicians who supported the agendas they themselves benefitted most from -ever bigger Govt.
What boggles my mind is if you left all the money given up in taxes for unnecessary wars (WWI which begat WWII), welfarism and corp subsidy, in the hands that truly earned it, and it compounded within those families for the last hundred years or so - just how much more wealth and less poverty would we Americans have right now??? I surmise it's HUGE.
KO'd em fer sure!!!!!!
Here's more grist for the coercive Union mill - let's see him explain this away too::
Markets, Not Unions, Gave us Leisure
by Thomas DiLorenzo
[Posted on Monday, August 23, 2004]
In Human Action Ludwig von Mises wrote that labor unions have always been the primary source of anti-capitalistic propaganda. I was reminded of this recently when I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming one of the bedrock tenets of unionism: "The Union Movement: The People Who Brought You the Weekend."
Well, not exactly. In the U.S. the average work week was 61 hours in 1870, compared to 34 hours today, and this near doubling of leisure time for American workers was caused by capitalism, not unionism. As Mises explained, "In the capitalist society there prevails a tendency toward a steady increase in the per capita quota of capital invested . . . . Consequently, the marginal productivity of labor, wage rates, and the wager earners’ standard of living tend to rise continually."
Of course, this is only true of a capitalist economy where private property, free markets, and entrepreneurship prevail. The steady rise in living standards in (predominantly) capitalist countries is due to the benefits of private capital investment, entrepreneurship, technological advance, and a better educated workforce (no thanks to the government school monopoly, which has only served to dumb down the population). Labor unions routinely take credit for all of this while pursuing policies which impede the very institutions of capitalism that are the cause of their own prosperity.
The shorter work week is entirely a capitalist invention. As capital investment caused the marginal productivity of labor to increase over time, less labor was required to produce the same levels of output. As competition became more intense, many employers competed for the best employees by offering both better pay and shorter hours. Those who did not offer shorter work weeks were compelled by the forces of competition to offer higher compensating wages or become uncompetitive in the labor market.
Capitalistic competition is also why "child labor" has all but disappeared, despite unionist claims to the contrary. Young people originally left the farms to work in harsh factory conditions because it was a matter of survival for them and their families. But as workers became better paid—thanks to capital investment and subsequent productivity improvements—more and more people could afford to keep their children at home and in school. Union-backed legislation prohibiting child labor came after the decline in child labor had already begun. Moreover, child labor laws have always been protectionist and aimed at depriving young people of the opportunity to work. Since child labor sometimes competes with unionized labor, unions have long sought to use the power of the state to deprive young people of the right to work. In the Third World today, the alternative to "child labor" is all too often begging, prostitution, crime, or starvation. Unions absurdly proclaim to be taking the moral high road by advocating protectionist policies that inevitably lead to these consequences.
Unions also boast of having championed safety regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over the past three decades. The American workplace has indeed become safer over the past century, but this was also due to the forces of competitive capitalism, not union-backed regulation.
An unsafe or dangerous workplace is costly to employers because they must pay a compensating difference (higher wage) to attract workers. Employers therefore have a powerful financial interest in improving workplace safety, especially in manufacturing industries where wages often comprise the majority of total costs. In addition, employers must bear the costs of lost work, retraining new employees, and government-imposed workman’s compensation whenever there is an accident on the job. Not to mention the threat of lawsuits.
Investments in technology, from air-conditioned farm tractors to the robots used in automobile factories, have also made the American workplace safer. But unions have often opposed such technology with the Luddite argument that it "destroys jobs."
Mises was right that unions have always been a primary source of anti-capitalistic propaganda. But since he wrote Human Action American unions have also been at the forefront of lobbying efforts on behalf of the regulation and taxation of business—of capital—that has severely hampered the market economy, making everyone, including unionists, worse off economically. The regulation of business by the EPA, OSHA, FTC, DOE, and hundreds of other federal, state, and local government bureaucracies constitutes an effective tax on capital investment that makes such investment less profitable. Less capital investment causes a decline in the growth of labor productivity, which in turn slows down the growth of wages and living standards.
In addition, slower productivity leads to a slower growth of output in the economy, which causes prices to be higher than they otherwise would be; and fewer new products are invented and marketed. All of these things are harmful to the economic well-being of the very people labor unions claim to "represent." (Incredibly, there are some economists who argue that unions are good for productivity. But if that were true, corporations would be recruiting them instead of spending millions trying to avoid unionization).
Mises also pointed out that as business becomes more heavily regulated, business decisions are based more and more on compliance with governmental edicts than on profit-making. American labor unions continue to call for more regulation of business because, in order for them to survive, they must convince workers—and society—that "the company is the enemy." That’s why, as Mises noted, union propaganda has always been anti-capitalistic. Workers supposedly need to be protected from "the enemy" by labor unions.
However, the substitution of bureaucratic compliance for profit-making decisions reduces profitability, usually with little or no benefit to anyone from the regulations being complied with. The end result is once again a reduction in the profitability of investment, and subsequently less investment takes place. Wages are stunted, thanks to self-defeating unionist propaganda. The well-paid union officials may keep their jobs and their perks by perpetuating such propaganda, but they are harming the very people who pay the dues which are used to pay their own salaries.
___________________________
Thomas DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln (Three Rivers Press/Random House, 2003). His latest book is How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present (Crown Forum/Random House, August 2004). tomd@mises.org. Comment on the blog.
Not from what I've seen at the Shreveport and Arlington GM plants, it's not.
I agree. However, with the right business and political leadership, led by someone strong enough to break the grip those criminals have on their nose, they can be swayed into sanity and away from the bondage they now are held in.
There is hope for much (not all) of the members...but the union management...not a bit.
I would say there is hope for a few of the members, but for the majority there is no hope. That majority gets their talking points from the likes of kos and the DUmp. Many of them are proud that the State of MI has an economy in the crapper, they figure that it will get R's out of power.
They don't understand economics, despise their employers to the point that their employers don't make a profit, then don't make the connection when layoffs and benny reductions occur. They do only what they are told, get drunk or high on breaks, cover each other to ensure that a day off rotates between them, harass and assault co-workers, vandalize their employers property, vandalize the product being assembled, etc. etc. etc......
The connection isn't made how their actions actually will cost them their jobs. They are the ultimate leech.
bump for later
Only because like labor, corps also get Govt largesse.
Just like the railroads who captured Govt to regulate for them, (by their own industry appointees), such that barriers to entry got erected for the upstart competitors who were nipping at their heels profit wise, where now kept at bay. The upstarts who were risking their own capital versus the taxpayer's, never foolishly invested "free" money that they, unlike the bigs, never had. The malinvestments and complacency of the Bigs, operating with lots of OPM, is exactly why the upstarts WERE more competitive and had to be quashed for the cost of campaign contributions.
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