UAW vs non-UAW

Wall Street Journal - May 23, 2007

...With the collapse of the DaimlerChrysler experiment, it might be
useful to stop referring to "domestic" and "foreign" auto makers. The
important distinction is between auto makers bound by UAW contracts and
those that aren't.

Chrysler's labor costs are $30 an hour higher than Toyota's, headed for
a gap of $45 by 2009. Chrysler pays the same wage to UAW janitors and
skilled craftsmen. It carries idle workers on its books when no jobs
are available. Most of all, it's on the hook for the untrammeled health-
care spending of 134,000 unionized workers, retirees and dependents --
an $18 billion liability that Toyota, Honda and Nissan don't face. This
alone adds a cost of $1,500 per car.

How it got this way is no longer interesting -- the tired debate over
which stick figure, "labor" or "management," is responsible for
Detroit's uncompetitive labor deals. Both operated under the incentives
of the Wagner Act, the 1935 labor law that entrenched the UAW as the
monopoly labor supplier to the Big Three.

Detroit draws on the same talent pool as the rest of global industry,
and must pay a competitive wage. Its executives are no more overpaid or
incompetent than anybody else's. Nor is it necessary to rub its face in
the superiority of the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. No car company
could humanly hope to compete in the basic sedan segment with a
deadweight cost disadvantage of thousands of dollars per car. Detroit
would be foolish to try...

 

In message George
Orwell sprach forth the following:

Should be fun to watch usenet's union baboons attempt to grunt rebuttals to
this...

 

On Wed, 23 May 2007 14:00:12 +0200 (CEST), George Orwell

Notice that this chickenshit posts behind an anonymizer. I suspect a
shill from the K St. gang.

 

Pretty much what I expected. Many American companies no longer provide
any health care for their retirees. This requires more to work until
65, so they can get on Medicare. Yes, there is Cobra, but most don't
have the $1000 or more a month to pay, and it is only good for 18
months.

-KM

 

....unless the employee retired under a contract demanding it.
Currenlty, many unionized (and recent union buster) companies which
have reneged on their pension obligations under ERISA are being hauled
into Federal courts for ERISA violations. With Bush Bird on the
skids, buried alive in his foolish "war for oil" backfire, and
Congress belonging to the opposite team, this may turn out to be a
losing proposition for the corporate creeps.

 

How it got this way is _highly_ interesting, if one studies the case of
Caterpillar.

In the '80s Caterpillar's union was looking for the same sort of
baksheesh the automakers' unions got, and went on strike. Cat stared them
down and said "NO". The strike was long and difficult, but Cat won.

Today, Caterpillar is the antithesis of the automakers, competing very
handily against foreign competitors, even at home.

 

Back then, the union thought the only competition was with Int. Harvester in
the US. They did not want to know that Kubota, Mitsubishi, and a bunch of
others were kicking their ass all over the world.

 

Not true: http://www.uaw.org/contracts/03/dch/dch02.cfm

 

In whose dreams? Koobies and Mitsies are trash. Post-strike Cats
aren't much better. The way they compete against jap trash is to
engineer every nickel out of everything they make. Look at a D-series
big bore versis the cheesy 3500 and 3600s made today. No comparison;
the later engines were designed to eliminate ANY assembly operations
they could and still throw the piece of shit together. The old
D-series engines were labor intensive, but much better engines (and
long lived) overall. To compensate, Cat just threw a ton of turbo
boost on the new ones. They're crap.

 

Huh? The words weren't from the poster, it was an excerpt from a
newspaper article.

 

Go back to sleep.

When the UAW contract is up in a few months, Cerebus could always start
liquidating if the union demands more of the same losing proposition.

 

Such crap that Caterpillar has been doing great and has rosey forecast in its
future. Contrast to the UAW shops.

 

So what if they were crap, they were selling. Many of the sales were to
foreign governments that put a bid out and the low price got the sale.

My point is that we are competing on a global scale. While the company and
union was arguing about wages here, the government of Burma or Sudan or
wherever bought the backhoe from Kubota.