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See the entire I&I collection of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez here.
Creators https://www.creators.com/author/michael-ramirez
See the entire I&I collection of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez here.
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Didn’t the USA go through this same delusional power play a short while ago when the bosses of the union monopolies felt they were more powerful than anyone else and made similar demands as they are making today?
Hundreds of thousands of our jobs went abroad, manufacturing plants closed, town and cities suffered, too; many lost jobs and yet the union bosses got raises.
Why repeat that again, enriching so many foreign, not even friendly, countries, because the union bosses here made absurd demands?
Enact the concept behind “The Right to Compete” which requires all jobs or contracts with any public money supporting them to be bid openly between union and non-union providers of that service or else the job or contract will not be awarded. Fair to all and fairest to taxpayers to finally have a method to get the most competitive bids for our taxes.
Clearly, The Right to Compete policy is pro-labor in that it is fair to both union and non-union workers, to all workers, unlike how the system discriminates now against 95% of our workers who prefer not to join a union.
Primary driver now, is 100% the inflation of government payroll. The working class resent being covered in sweat and slag with limited advancement, while do nothings in government are getting massive pay raises. That is an argument I agree with.
However, these arguments have been around as long as I’ve been around. I’m from Hammond Indiana, a number of industries, but industries. Rail, Intermodal, Automotive and Steel.
In the 80’s the USWA is responsible for the rust belt, not greedy corps, it was the USWA overreaching by requiring employment numbers. They needed X number of members to pay their dues. so US steel out of south Chicago, and it’s ancillaries, Inland Steel, and I forget the other one, I never worked steel, virtually all of those plants became processors rather than honest mills. It was all exacerbated by lousy trade deals, that allowed Japan, at that time, to subsidize their steel, that they bought from china, and dump it into the US making US steel manufacturing appear more expensive at the same time USWA was making a move. Midwest steel has had a recovery, but it took almost 25 years.
UAW is not really making agregious demands, it looks terrible, and it is compared to the rest of the economy. the 45% is nonsense, but the majority of Auto Workers (I was one for a fair bit, so I do have some expertise on this) are already working 4 day work weeks. They work 10 scheduled, up to 12 in case of production recovery 4 days a week. They have, almost universally, 3 shifts. A, B and C. A is monday-thursday 6am-4pm (unless production requirements are reduced, then it’s 6-2) B shift is 6pm-4am (same stipulations) from tuesday to friday, and C shift, which is a split shift. 6am-4pm on friday and saturday, and then 6pm, to 4am on sunday and monday. That’s almost industry wide. HOWEVER; what makes the UAW argument NOW, look so terrible, and it is, but not as greedy as it might seem is that after the 2008 meltdown, some of the industries that got hit hardest were the financial sides of automotive industries. Ford got hit a little less than the rest, and every other one took the bailouts. Since things were so tough financially, and so many UAW workers were put on leave because of the fraudulent financials of the company couldn’t support actual production the UAW bit a bullet for the next 3 contract periods, even to the point of creating a tier system, that did nothing but piss off the workers. Ford, the one I’m most familiar with, suspended all automatic hires for I think almost 11 years I think it was. So there were relatively well payed temps who had been at the company for as long as 13 years, without having full benefits. Now what the UAW is collecting on past debts that the company took full advantage of during the disastrous decisions of the controlling company.
What the UAW is doing is excessive, but not egregious, with 1 exception. People with seniority get onto A shift, and there is at least once a month a sunday schedule, where the most senior, the highest paid of the membership work a 5th day at double time. This contract is calling for a double time plus 30%. That’s OUTRAGEOUS and they need to back off of that. I don’t think most members understand that.
And while I sympathize with the tactics of the motor companies, and the efforts of the UAW, they are FAR from the most screwed over of the industries I’m most familiar with.
Steel workers make good money, but they get to go home and not held criminaly accountable for any mistakes.
Auto Workers make good money, even when I was still there, and they get to go home at the end of the day, and don’t get held crimanally accountable for their mistakes.
the Intermodal guys. Trucks, direct delivery, trains, warehouse. They have had NO significant improvement in their standard of living in the last almost 20 years, and there is no way to advance through ranks, so they are static. There is already a major loss of people willing to drive trucks, and manage trains, and work in a hazmat warehouse, and NOTHING has improved for them, unless they move to North Dakota (Intermodal is another field I’m familiar with, my dad drove a truck for 30 years.)
Meanwhile David French is a millionaire, and he can’t even do the job he’s hired for.