Time To Disband Auto Workers Union

The Times had an interesting editoral yesterday on UAW. Made me realize that the only way to save the US auto indusytry is to get rid of the unions all together. They are crippling the auto industry and in turn the country.

The only way for GM and Ford to survive will be to move to the non union business model of Toyota.

Here is editorial:

June 14, 2006
Editorial
Wrenching Changes on the Line
The road back to prosperity will be a long and hard one for American automakers. Companies like Ford and General Motors groan under the weight of their history, manifested in the legacy costs that are a result of decades of promises to support workers and provide them with health care in their old age.

Foreign companies like Honda and Toyota have a double advantage. In the United States, their much newer manufacturing plants have hardly any retirees. Overseas, their workers can rely on national health care systems. Meanwhile, for American automakers, the costs are going only in one direction. In 1999, General Motors spent $3.6 billion to provide health benefits to 1.2 million workers, retirees and dependents. By 2005 the cost had ballooned to $5.3 billion for 1.1 million.

At the same time, vehicle production has been falling. G.M., Ford and the parts maker Delphi have all offered thousands of buyouts as part of efforts to restructure their inefficient manufacturing businesses, trimming payrolls to become more competitive. But that means fewer workers supporting armies of retirees, a demographic challenge not unlike the one facing the Social Security system.

The United Automobile Workers union has already made concessions on the superior health insurance its members receive. But slashing benefits is a short-term approach, and an insufficient answer when G.M. lost $10.6 billion in 2005.

In an ideal world, America would join the overwhelming majority of developed countries and hammer out some kind of national health care system. Failing such a sudden and unlikely onset of sanity, creative solutions are needed. Sen. Barack Obama has proposed striking a bargain with American automakers to help them with retiree health care costs in exchange for higher fuel efficiency standards. While we have some questions about how to make such a system work, it is at least a worthy new idea — one of a very few in a field desperately in need of them.

 

Don't forget job banks ...

http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/17/A01-351179.htm

I will say that it takes two sides to sign a contract so the head honchos at the Big 3 can't be held blameless for their current situtation.

 

I bet the unions would have less of a problem disbanding if they could get in on that national health care system the other countries enjoy.

 

Shame on those awful auto workers for expecting the health and pension benefits that the auto companies agreed to provide in exchange for their services. They're the ones at fault for this country's healthcare crisis, right?

 

It's time to disband this administration, which is right out of the Gilded Age / William McKinley playbook . . . .

 

Thank you! The problem isn't that the workers need health care, it's that health care in this country is a shambles. Fix that problem and I'm betting a lot of issues with a lot of industries could be fixed as well.

 

Yes, because this administration was the one who forced the Big 3 to give away the farm on health benefits, never foreseeing the day when the bill would come due...... :

 

If GM, Ford and Chrysler would only engineer their cars better, the union can stay. But American cars are built to fail. The transmissions of American cars fail at rates that would cause the entire population of Japan to commit hari-kari.

Some US cars look decent enough, but after a year or 2 start to fall apart.

Design a better product, and Americans will pay for it.

 

Pope: I'll respond to that irrelevancy with something far more to the point . . . even putting The War aside, this collection of male whores
takes a back seat to no adminstration in spending in order to prime the pump and serve relevent members of the
gang -- instead of maintaining any semblance of fiscal responsibility . . . there's a special corner of hell specially reserved
for these dirtbags.   Go ahead, and defend them -- if you dare.

 

Boom, as usual, is completely out to lunch on this issue.

Here's the key sentence in the editorial:

In an ideal world, America would join the overwhelming majority of developed countries and hammer out some kind of national health care system.

Yeah, it's all the union's fault. Codswallop.

 

How that is to the point of the problems faced by The Big Three, I'll never know.