Nero's Playing the Fiddle

I tried and tried to keep this rant to myself, but if I don't get it out before I go home, my poor dear wife is going to have to listen to me go on about it for hours.

The burr under my saddle is the whole auto industry bail-out debacle. I was listening to the news yesterday as they reported that the deal failed because the wizards at the United Auto Workers labor union refused to take immediate pay cuts down to the levels of their counterparts at plants from Toyota and Honda.

Are they serious? Let me get this straight: your company is within weeks of complete financial ruin, and has come to the United States Government (aka the American Tax Payers) to beg for a handout so it can survive another month or two. You come with only one convincing argument as to why you should be allowed to live: your employees would lose their jobs if you don't get help, and that loss of jobs would be bad for the economy at large. You come from an organization that has been mismanaged, lacks direction and vision, and builds pathetically crappy cars (except the Corvette, or course). You come essentially to beg for your survival.

What, in that scenario, could possibly allow you to think that YOU get to insist on any terms whatsoever? Beggers cannot, after all, be choosers.

And yet that is exactly what they are trying to do. The bosses at the UAW refused to accept any kind of lowering of pay or benefits for their workers until 2011. In other words, until 3 years after GM has closed its doors or declared bankruptcy! How does this make sense to anyone?

It seems to me that the UAW should have been grateful for any kind of help, as long as their workers could keep their jobs. Instead, the stubbornness and thick-headedness of the union bosses has essentially ensured that the jobs and futures of all their workers are now virtually guaranteed to be at risk.

Sure, GM has other options beside the bail-out. THere is always bankruptcy. But why on earth would the UAW prefer for their employer to go bankrupt? I am no lawyer, but I know enough about bankruptcy to know that a judge has the power to redefine contracts and obligations. That means a judge could, without even letting the UAW folks take a seat at the table, decide that GM only owes its workers 50% of the benefits they were enjoying, and drastically reduced wages for a dramatically reduced work force. A judge could do that.

I mean, I may be wrong here, but how is that preferable to taking a pay cut but keeping your job? This kind of lack of ability to compromise is precisely what killed the American auto industry in the first place. The unions do not care for the workers. They are a political party, and adhere to their party line, even when it does not serve the interests of their constituents. The UAW may have just killed GM.

If that is the case, then mayber GM needs to die, so that the membership of the UAW can finally wake up and see that their Union made them all unemployed and destitute, rather than improving their conditions, as unions are intended to do. Maybe if GM dies, the UAW will be killed allong side of it. Based on the last few actions of the UAW, it seems like that would be good riddance indeed.