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More than 49,000 members of the United Auto Workers walked off General Motors factory floors or set up picket lines early Monday as contract talks with the company deteriorated into a strike.
Workers shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the U.S., as well as 22 parts distribution warehouses.
It wasn't clear how long the walkout would last, with the union saying GM has budged little in months of talks while GM said it made substantial offers including higher wages and factory investments.
If corporations find it adventitious to automate or eliminate minimum wage workers with robots and such, than I'm sure the management at GM will find it adventitious to automate/eliminate +$30/hr union workers. For better or worse, this is not the 1950's anymore.
I know the media likes to find the dumbest people to extract talking points from, but this one raised eye brows early on.
"This will be my first contract," said UAW-GM Employee Caley Jennings. "I feel like for people that's new here, it should be a better experience than everything is corrupt."
Obviously, GM (or the UAW for that matter) is not dealing with the highest caliber of talent in many cases. For many, the alternative will be walmart, or work in a non union manufacturing environment for $14/hr, perhaps, if they can stomach that kind of pay cut for hard work. I think they would be wise to work with management to remain competitive, with the new auto market expected to continue stagnating or declining in the coming months. Automotive is, of course, extremely cyclical, and workers are at the mercy of these market changes.
For those old enough to remember, this is exactly why some companies moved overseas. I'm not sure what they are asking for this time around. Heard something about not liking $30 an hour? Is that bad for a blue collar job?
For those old enough to remember, this is exactly why some companies moved overseas. I'm not sure what they are asking for this time around. Heard something about not liking $30 an hour? Is that bad for a blue collar job?
New workers start at $18 an hour.
Considering that Costco pays much more that might not be a living wage.
But, either way, workers of all stripes are toast. To little too late....and these same workers (many) voted for Trump, who is wants to abolish min. wage here while raising car making wages in MEXICO to a minimum of $15 an hour.
This is not why companies moved overseas. They moved overseas for various reasons...of course many of them related to being able to pay slave wages and dump refuse in the water, etc........depends on what industry you are talking about!
Car makers were international businesses anyway. But the American car industry was a total failure due to bean counters and failure to innovate (read "The Reckoning"). Generations of car making WASPs never set foot in a factory - all the top people stayed in the glass offices and squashed the engineers and innovators. They ended up decades behind the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans because all they cared about was next quarter or next year.
Other American industries moved down South where wages were low and environmental and working conditions laws were not enforced. Then they moved to Mexico and then to Asia (many are still in Mexico).
But the single largest movements overseas were pushed upon vendors by the likes of WalMart who insisted that the vendors do so. That is the story of Rubbermaid and so many others. If Walmart was selling 6 million pieces of something they would pressure (TELL) the vendor to go overseas or lose the business. Period.
That's why Walmart is, by far, the largest US Importer of Containers of finished goods from China.
For those old enough to remember, this is exactly why some companies moved overseas. I'm not sure what they are asking for this time around. Heard something about not liking $30 an hour? Is that bad for a blue collar job?
I won't say bad or good, but that's about 55K or so a year and nowhere near the level that the American Dream was built upon. That is, it's not nearly enough to have just the head of household work and have kids and send them to college.
"The average Michigan family needs $52,330 a year to 'make ends ...meet"
Former generations of unions workers even had a Lake house (camp) they went to on weekends and maybe a boat. Both are impossible now.
So, whatever your outlook, no doubt we've went backwards. Now you basically work work work...just to survive. No "American Dream" is in play.
In the larger sense it doesn't matter much since the actual number of auto workers is so much smaller (automation)...but that would mean, in theory, that they could be paid better and not hurt the overall situation.
GM is a benefits provider that builds and sells cars to offset its overhead.
None of the US Car makers are successful businesses. Even the vaulted "Iacocca" turnaround was based on imported engines and parts and the like.
I'd say it's been downhill ever since there was competition. The American Auto industry is a perfect example of how to do everything wrong.
I am stunned when I found out who was the main driving force behind their bean-counting downfall - Robert McNamara, the same guy would counted Bodies in Vietnam was famous for creating the culture of penny-counting (and could care less about product) in Detroit.
It's proof positive that our way doesn't work. "Our way" being mostly about Wall Street and not about long term planning. Even businesses starting today have an "exit strategy" as part of their founding - that disgusts me!
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