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Technology Stocks : American Automobile Industry: Can it survive? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (313)	7/25/2010 9:39:58 AM
From: robert b furman	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 431

Hi Glenn, Great article that shows how far political support can allow an oligopic power to unions and that can take wages well beyond the global competitive norm. The ability of the UAW to strike one OEM as the others continued to produce: was to decide from two poor choices"pay too much vs parish". In the long history of UAW strikes the only manufacturer to break from the extortion of the UAW was Caterpillar.Their strike was enabled by management that knew how to run the plant themselves - which was much more mechanized do to the size of the equipment manufactured. Global trade given equality will result in strong unions killing the goose that lays the golden egg. The track record is obvious:train unions,miners steel workers and now autos. The scariest part is that most unioon workers are now in the employ of the government - parhaps and hopefully from my perspective ,that can be busted up and made efficient as well. Bob

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (313)	7/26/2010 12:25:22 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 431

"I hate my job," said one veteran worker, John, outside the gates one day last week. He would give only his first name. "And there's no way I would do this for $14 an hour. These new cats are getting screwed. This is [nasty] work. You bust your butt. You really do." Hardly getting screwed if the job benefits them. That level of pay for hard monotonous work, isn't something I'd want either, but no one is holding a gun to their head. So goes the UAW, so goes the American middle class." That's pretty silly. A very small part of the middle class are working members of the UAW. Also to the extent the costs imposed by the UAW reduce good high paying jobs for others, or cause an increase in what consumers have to pay for cars, they harm and/or reduce the middle class. The real problem though isn't so much the wages (although $28/hour and up, combined with their benefits might be high for their work they do, with "high" being determined primarily by what the market will bear, and secondarily by what competitors are paying) but other factors imposed by union contracts. Partially labor inflexibility (which might be a somewhat reduced factor now), probably most of all costs for retirees.