Organized labor and the Detroit mess
By indeedindeed
This entry was posted on November 18, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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November 18, 2008 at 12:45 pm |
solid article.
November 18, 2008 at 3:19 pm |
i just wonder if gettlefinger is the best spokesperson. I mean, I guess he acts like a man of the people… but not very charasmatic.
Is he the father of the superstar broadway sensation sara gettelfinger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Gettelfinger
November 18, 2008 at 4:09 pm |
Interesting take. The right-to-work laws that other states have, do not help Michigan compete for new auto jobs. There have been a number of new plants built in the U.S., as he mentions, but most of them are built somewhere besides Michigan because of the labor union issue.
I completely understand the Union’s refusal to budge on making Michigan right-to-work (which is a wish list item for conservatives in the state, albeit one that is really unlikely to happen). But it does beg the question is it better to keep the union strong while it slowly shrinks due to job loss, or significantly weaken it, but potentially attract new plants and subsequently a lot of auto manufacturing jobs. I don’t think that RTW would have the crippling effect on the union in Michigan that it has had in the south. In those states RTW was passed before the union formed. Here you would already have a strong union presence with a deep tradition in the state, that could make a case for new auto employees to join. It would diminish it, but wouldn’t kill the union.
Regardless as has been written about in a lot of the articles you have linked to in the last weeks on the auto bailout, direct labor costs still reflect a very small portion of the cost of making a car. And labor is something that every business deals with whether the labor is unionized or not. The problem for the auto manufacturers is all of the legacy costs. They pay billions in health insurance to retirees who no longer contribute anything to the making of automobiles. Some would argue the companies should have thought about this and/or planned for it along time ago. But there is no way that 30-40-50 years ago anyone could have planned on health care costs increasing at a rate that is exponentially greater than inflation. That combined with the fact that a lot of these retirees have been on the roll for a lot longer than they predicted because people are living longer. These are costs that don’t add any value to the end product but that the auto industry are saddles with, that make it very difficult for them to compete.
November 18, 2008 at 4:22 pm |
this probably can’t help
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_djgssszshgM/SR652xnt46I/AAAAAAAAAqs/7qEUg8GmJis/s1600-h/big3a.jpg