UAW sets unions back decades

KeyStone wrote:

Well, the UAW has finally done it this time. They've given the right wing all they need to make unions look like villains for the next fifty years, and given governments enough justification to dismantle unions across the globe.

http://www.wheels.ca/reviews/article/485635

At a time when the big three auto-manufacturers are struggling for survival, the US government is demanding that UAW wages fall into line with the Japanese auto workers. 

But the UAW is not willing to make that concession until 2011. 

So in essence, we have workers working for a non-profitable business on the verge of bankruptcy that make considerably more in wages and benefits than their counterparts at Toyota and Honda (who still do pretty well). But rather than accept a lower wage, these union employees are now asking the American public to subsidize these companies and top up their wage. 

I think most Americans have no problem topping up the wage of a single mother earning minimum wage, or the handicapped, or even someone who is just out of work, but to ask the American taxpayer to chip in so that people making 80,000 a year (with phenomenal benefits) don't have to take a paycut, is just absurd. 

People haven't begrudged auto-workers from making very good wages, since they were merely sharing in the profits of a massively succesful business. But they aren't exactly succesful now, and these autoworkers still seem to feel entitled to the wage that they were earning previously despite everything going on around them. 

The golden goose of auto-manufacturing is dead, and not far behind, is high-paying union jobs for the foreseeable future. 

 

Yeah, blame the unions. Try this: why doesnt the largest market for auto consumption demand that foreign workers must be paid roughly the same wages as domestic workers? Time and time again, workers are told that they have to reduce their wages so that companies are competative in the international market, but no one ever suggests putting into place regulations that increase the wages of underpaid workers elsewhere. Its the lowest common denominator that rules, and everyone talks as if its just natural that workers should be paid less, not more, if others are taking less -- that is the way the market works, right?

But, speaking of the market, if the US used its market clout it could easily force Japanese automakers to increase the real wages of Japanese autoworkers to the level of American workers, but such ideas are never put forward. The US government could make the Japanese manufacturers pay an import tax, which would be used to compensate American workers whose jobs were damaged by competition that did not pay the same scale of wages as American workers.

In fact the US did precisely this in the 1980's with Harley Davidson motorcylces, which was unable to compete with the cheap new motorcylces coming out of Japan. In order to save Harley Davidson, the US merely had to flex its market muscle, and the Japanese ended up bailing out Harley Davidson, in effect.

But of course the "level playing field" arguement is always used to decrease the standard of workers, and no one every suggests putting into place legislation that ensures that foreign companies do not take advantage cheap labour markets, and so, we must deregulate, we must decrease health and safety standards, and we must drop our wages.

What does this mean? This means that the "level playing filed" argument is a bunch of BS and just an excuse for making workers accept pay cuts. God forbid that Japanese workers being paid more. It is a cudgel used on all workers everywhere to threaten them, when in fact, all that is needed is the will to force an international labour standard upon all manufacturers, everywhere.

But our governments will never do that because it interferes with the freedom of the hallowed market.