rcl on November 3, 2009 at 12:40 AM

Must be a union boss or something!
Anybody with half a brain can see the UAW is out of control and crazy with greed and envy.

Keep being greedy folks, and keep watching our American skilled labor get outsourced.

KMC1 on November 3, 2009 at 8:00 AM

The UAW has done much more to ruin the American auto industry (and help the foreign auto industry) than any American auto executive ever has. Building bad products is self-correcting. Having greedy unions dragging you down is not self-correcting. It just gets worse and worse, until the company can’t compete and goes under.

If you haven’t had a job lately and can’t relate to a factory worker then put yourself in the production exec’s chair. The company just made $1 Billion profit and your bosses chose now to squeeze your crew for concessions to match the guys at your competitors who, even with the lower costs, still suck!

rcl on November 3, 2009 at 12:40 AM

For UAW parasites (proven parasites, by what they did to GM and Chrysler) $1-billion is just chump change. But to Ford, it’s the seed corn.

Keep being greedy folks, and keep watching our American skilled labor get outsourced.

What Ford needs to do is give them the finger and let them go suck up to obamamotors.

Then go hire people that are not union and give a hoot about having a job. They could retool in 24 hours.

workingforpigs on November 2, 2009 at 7:37 PM

What is wrong with you people? You’re all f’g nuts.

If you haven’t had a job lately and can’t relate to a factory worker then put yourself in the production exec’s chair. The company just made $1 Billion profit and your bosses chose now to squeeze your crew for concessions to match the guys at your competitors who, even with the lower costs, still suck!

If you’ve got a brain you’ll be in the vp’s face telling him he’s an arrogant fool! Negotiate a stable extension for 4 years or so and get back to work kicking GM & Chrysler’s ass.

These factories have peeled off tens of thousands of workers. I used to be a union contractor. The best thing about bad times is you get to can all the dead weight. The crew they’re running with now are the best they can get. That’s another reason why they aren’t going to sign. Good craftsmen know they’re worth it. They won’t eat shit for nobody. Don’t ask them.

Most of the comments here sound like they’re coming from spoiled college brats.

Then go hire people that are not union and give a hoot about having a job. They could retool in 24 hours.

Michigan unemployment is 15.3% for September. Wayne County (where Detroit is located) is higher. I personally know alot of people here in Michigan who would love those union jobs at half of what those union employees are getting paid.

Help it fail, I mean.

The UAW must take them down…….and they have the Fed Gov to do it now.

Pity Ford.

If you had a contract and the company’s beating the pants on the competition and making a profit why the hell would you vote for a PAYCUT.

Get a clue. Conservative doesn’t mean STUPID.

Ford shouldn’t ask it of them. They’re winning. Praise the guys and push forward damnit! Management should turn this into an onward & upward moment not a dogfight.

Calvin Coolidge Rules

“Just this once.” That’s what state and town governments all across the country say when they give in to the National Education Association, municipal police departments or the pink-collar workers at state capitals. Over the years our authorities have said “just this once” so often that our fragile economy is now hostage to these workers and the exorbitant pensions lawmakers have promised them.

What is it about public-sector unions that makes governments give in so often? Daily disruption, for one thing–unplowed streets, locked school doors, skies without air-traffic controls. Another is respect for public office. Most voters view respecting policemen, teachers and firemen as the obligation of a good citizen. And another is the enormous campaign contributions lawmakers accept from the public workers’ unions. In short, politicians believe they have to make concessions or they won’t be reelected. So they give in again and again, telling themselves, “Just this once.”

Courage of Conviction

There are two Presidents who wouldn’t give in–not even once. The better known is Ronald Reagan, who fired air traffic controllers when they went on strike in 1981.

Less known is Reagan’s hero, Calvin Coolidge. Ninety years ago, while he was still governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge halted a police strike in Boston by refusing to concede on even small points. Coolidge’s methods earned him the eternal hostility of the fastest-growing American political group, the Progressive movement. Yet Coolidge’s action didn’t hurt him politically. On the contrary, the Boston strike put Coolidge on the road to the presidency.

To gauge the scale of Coolidge’s bravery, it helps to recall how radical a year 1919 was. The Bolsheviks were solidifying their hold on Russia. In Europe politicians were making major concessions to striking socialists. Across the U.S. workers were unionizing and demonstrating to an extent never before seen. That winter in Seattle workers from many trades had joined shipyard hands in a general strike modeled on the Russian strike in Petrograd. Seattle’s mayor, Ole Hanson, was able to end the strike only by organizing 1,000 extra police and ordering them to shoot on sight anyone causing disruption. WWI veterans were restless, and riots were tearing at cities across the country.

Boston policemen believed their decision to join the American Federation of Labor might succeed. Their cause–higher wages, better conditions–seemed legitimate. Raises weren’t keeping up with the cost of living. Policemen, who got one day off every two weeks, were paid less than unskilled steelworkers. Conditions at station houses were atrocious. As a strike historian later reported, “In the Court Square station house, just behind City Hall, the bugs were so voracious that they ate the leather on the police helmets and belts.” Believing that public opinion was on their side, the police voted to strike 1,134 to 2.

Trouble came the very evening the police walked off the job. Gangs busted windows in South Boston. In Roxbury someone sabotaged rail switches, causing a streetcar to derail. Banks and big companies felt compelled to organize private guards, and Harvard University’s president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, admonished students to “prepare themselves” for possible service to the city. In the days that followed the rioting continued, yet Governor Coolidge kept his distance, leaving Police Commissioner Edwin Curtis in charge. Some took this as a sign of gubernatorial weakness. Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, offered a classic crisis compromise to Coolidge: Remove the unpopular Curtis, maybe raise pay and consider “the human side of the question,” and Gompers would halt the strike.

But Coolidge did not remove Curtis. Instead, he backed up the commissioner when Curtis fired the policemen–forever. Insult was added to injury when the replacement policemen received wages higher than those the strikers had been paid. Two things, Governor Coolidge said, mattered: First was respecting the local authorities–protecting Boston, at least in the initial stage, was Commissioner Curtis’ job, not the governor’s; second was to draw a bright line defining what actions within the law public-sector workers are permitted when they have grievances. Coolidge drew that line, saying, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

Coolidge’s bright line reassured people: We were not like Europe or Russia; there was a limit to how far the left could go here. Massachusetts soon reelected Coolidge as governor. The GOP then made him its vice presidential candidate. When Warren Harding died, Calvin Coolidge became President. And in 1924 Americans voted to keep Coolidge in office. In the 1920s the American economy grew fast, and workers’ wages rose. By the 1928 presidential election the Progressive movement had faded.

To fire a police force during a riot takes more courage than to refuse a union negotiator demanding an endless supply of Lipitor for city clerical workers. Yet Coolidge demonstrated that he was willing to risk his job to do what was necessary, telling one official during the strike: “It does not matter whether I am elected or not.”

Today many Americans see the economic threat voracious unions–public sector or private–represent. Voters are more open to cutbacks and less sympathetic to spending than lawmakers believe. The politician who tries the Coolidge method may find himself pleased with the results.

Amity Shlaes, senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations

Article Link here:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1102/opinions-amity-shlaes-current-events.html

emphasis mine

File for Chapter 11, reorganization.
Let the Judge kill the “out of compliance” UAW contract.
Kill the huge debts to the Union.
Come out in that 40 special plan debt free, government free and with the same contract the Govt owned auto companies have.

And the union workers are so specialized that they can’t be replaced?

But the truth is these workers are simply tired of getting it from both sides. They may understand the management side from Ford, but they are seriously mad at the Union side that has betrayed them one too many times.

The Union looks out for its own management, so members be damned. Members are only there to pay dues these days….

woodythesingingcowboy on November 2, 2009 at 12:06 AM

Then they need to work for a decertification vote. I think that the UAW has a conflict of interest anyway, and should be decertified for that reason alone.

I hate it for Ford because they’re doing it all the right way – their own way without government intervention.

I drive a Honda now but was definitely considering a Ford Fusion if/when the economy comes back around, but if these union fools screw this up, it will be Honda for me from here on out. They might as well wake up.

Sell lower Michigan to Canada for $0.05 an acre. Give the UP to Wisconsin. That problem is fixed…next

Jeff from WI on November 2, 2009 at 5:30 AM

The Canadians called, they said to “Stuff it, eh.” They don’t want Michigan even if we paid them to take it.lmao

But then what happens we have a ‘right to work’ and not enough jobs to go around?

Dark-Star on November 1, 2009 at 4:56 PM

Right to work always results in more jobs.

MarkTheGreat on November 2, 2009 at 8:38 AM

Yes.
“Right to work” means the absence of laws preventing you from agreeing to work for someone, not a guarantee of a job. It means that workers with jobs can’t screw you out of a job just to keep their pay unrealistically high.