Would you trust this kind of disgruntled workforce to build your car?

What’s Wrong With This Picture: UAW On Strike Edition

Unions killed the GM and Chrysler...unions like government live to establish unchangeable rules of operation while business thrives on innovation. What kind of labor innovation have the unions fostered. It's always been "you can't do that or you can't do this".

American unions were founded on the "progressive" revolutionary theories popular at the turn of the 20th century. Mr. Gettelfinger's speech shows nothing has changed. It's not doing the best for the company and the product which inevitably helps the worker. Instead, he's just in a perpetual war with "the man".

Quote Of The Day: The View From The Bunker Edition

"Most employers have vigorously opposed unions with every means at their disposal. These pro-employer, anti-union forces continually attack unions and workers that want to form a union…

…Let’s be clear, the contempt for the UAW was so deep that some of them were willing to let the industry collapse in the hopes that they could destroy us. Even the former president recognized the insanity of what they were willing to do.

Ron Gettelfinger fires up the troops in his final address as UAW President, as quoted in the Detroit Free Press. Gettelfinger’s paranoid take on the auto bailout is eerily similar to that of the far right wing, in that they both place the UAW at the center of the bailout. In this analysis, Detroit’s decades-long fall from grace on countless industry competencies was almost incidental to the political battle over the survival of the UAW. Objection to the bailout can only be explained by hatred for the UAW. Or, to paraphrase the proud father of the auto industry bailout (himself no fan of the UAW), “you’re either with us or against us.” Gettelfinger need only look to the deep divisions within his own union to understand the folly of such gross generalizations."