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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kvkkc1 who wrote (35960)	9/9/2000 8:26:58 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Respond to of 769667

Re: "Management didn't build the shoddy product." C'mon, major. Even you don't believe that line of crap, do you? If you do, you need to have a long talk with your father, who was a proud union man. If not management, then who? The Easter Bunny? Here's how the game's played these days: Bored of directors all sit at a big table. Fifteen overweight guys in their 50s who like to talk about their golf games. Most of the members of the bored earn about 80 to 100 grand a year each for showing up for four meetings a year. They're friends of the CEO. He, in turn, serves on their boards. It's called a buddy-buddy relationship. Nobody asks tough questions on behalf of the shareholders. Nah. Just gets in the way of the golf talk. "Boys, we really got to bring this meeting to order," the CEO says. Gotta boost earnings by 12 percent every year ... for the sake of shareholder value. More important, we have to hit our targets so we can get those multimillion-dollar stock options. Step one is to downsize. Let's see how few people we can employ to make our widgets. Step two is to stall contract negotiations for nine to 14 months. We can send out press releases and say that the union is being unreasonable asking for that 3% annual raise. The longer negotiations drag on, the more money we save. Step three is to see how far we can stretch the contract and out-source. Step four is to send some of this work overseas. Hell, they don't have any quality control inspectors over there in Southeast Asia. No such thing as an OSHA in those countries either. Step five is to cut corners in the manufacturing process. Aw, hell, let's cut quality control's budget by 50 percent..... But wait, there's more to this story .... Step six is picking up the phone and saying "What! You mean we have to recall every widget we made the past two years!" This ain't Fantasy Land, Sarge. This is the real deal. Been there, done it. So you're right. Let's blame the unions.