http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080428_hope_for_corporate_america/

And this piece is astonishingly accurate but where was this analysis last year during the primaries?

Thank you so much for your reference to Mr. Hedges’ article. It is spot on brilliant and well worth everyone’s time to read. I will certainly buy his book when it comes out this summer.

Thank you so much for you reference to Mr. Hedges’ article. It is spot on brilliant and well worth everyone’s time to read. I will certainly buy his book when it comes out this summer.

http://www.newser.com/article/d97n2nvg3/labor-department-moves-to-rescind-last-minute-bush-administration-rule-on-union-finances.html

(You’re welcome.)

The problem is not that current UAW workers make too much money. In fact, newly hired UAW workers in a number of job classifications will make less money at a Ford plant than their non-union equivalents at a US Honda or Nissan plant. The problem is that back in the 1980s, Big 3 executives made deals with their unions to pay for all kinds of costs after retirement, and to continue paying workers that had been laid off. The executives thereby preserved their current earnings by not incurring large increases in wages, but left the next generation of executives holding the bag for these costs after the original execs had retired to Florida (by the way, local governments are doing the same thing with their public employee union workers right now). The problem is not that the people working on the line today are paid too much in current wages. With robots and just-in-time suppliers, assembly line labor only makes up about 10% of the cost of a car now anyway. The problem is that for every current assembly line worker getting paid, the Big 3 are paying 6 non-working former employees either nearly full wages for years after being laid off or are paying unsustainable retirement and health care benefits. The $78/hour figure you hear spreads the legacy costs over the existing workforce. They do not make anywhere near that much money today. Also, The US is not the only country with generous union contracts. Look no farther than Germany. Your Mercedes, if assembled in Germany, is done by workers who have a maximum 30 hour work week and 6 weeks a year paid vacation. Similar rules exist in France, Sweden, Italy and other countries. So, the UAW “legacy costs” are a big problem and cannot be sustained. But you cannot lay the failure of these companies at the feet of the current UAW wages.

http://www.campbell.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2222&Itemid=73

Here is more evidence of bad management practices in the auto industry, leading to higher per unit costs.
http://www.ad-mkt-review.com/public_html/air/ai200709.html

I’ve worked in union and non-union situations, and any threats I’ve recieved (there have been plenty, some obvious, some veiled) have always come from the union side of the equation. I’ve never been threatened or intimidated by an employer.

And to wobbei who dealt with over 100 hundred unions:
Of course, you like them.
If you didn’t have unions to “bargain” with, what would you do for a living?

My dues are going to hold classess for those illegal aliens who want to become citizens. All green cards holders aside.

I asked the State President of my union why we would spend money on this as there were American Union members who could be retrained.

It turns out according to their way of thinking, it was because they could “recruit” [sic] union members.

So much for American made.

Basically, it sounds as if Obama is continuing right along with Bush dismantling whereas he sees this as removing crappy law Bush started.

Framing this into the perils of self-regulation is a good one although how this information can be used to attack the necessity of unionization is also problematic. Compared to the amount of graft and bribery at the executive level, union corruption is peanuts.

Can I get an answer from a labour lawyer who can explain that the removal of LM-2 forms is a bad thing for unions? What I’m worried is that you can get a union leadership that can be immune from the membership and these forms may be the only way of forcibly extracting PROPER information with the weight of law behind it.

Another way of framing this is the possibility that union bosses can lie … and no one will be given proper information in order to counter it.

I’ve also did some basic research and noticed that they’re removing requirements for LM-2 (big unions) but not for LM-3 or LM-4 (small unions). Is this an omission or part of Solis’ plan of chummin’ up to SEIU Obots?

Nice job pricing auto labor out of existence, UAW. Enjoy your giant salaries and war chests while the individual workers you exploit continue to be buffaloed by your “everyman” bullshit.

Only 7% of the sticker price of the car is labor cost, btw. This idea of unions pricing themselves out of the market is just another one of those silly talking points the GOP likes to continually trumpet.

The whole economy is going down the crapper. You see over and over the government propping up those of means. It doesn’t bother to help those at the bottom, the 80% of America now, that don’t have anything to actually lose, now that many are losing their jobs, their homes, their healthcare…