Quite right.

Back to Toyota and other off shore auto companies coming to this country. For as long as they can they'll fight like hell to keep the unions out to preserve the companies decision-making.

Temporary, or conditional workers may be a problem, but it's the healthcare issue that will dominate. Maybe doing all the healthcare necessary to meet the employees on site will keep the costs down, but our run-a-way healthcare costs are going to be a problem as the unions will push for coverage of all employees.

Therefore, who's going to cover their own and their family's healthcare? The companies will never willingly cover all their employees.

Read Thom Hartmann's "Screwed: The Undeclared War on the Middle Class", then make up your mind about unions. One person in my family's history has died for the rights that so many non-union workers now take for granted. One might as well be behind George Bush and his "New World Order". Google that phrase too while you are at it.

LiberalImage.com

Thanks for the reading reference.

You do bring up a couple of points. The first is that the growth of the middle class both here and in Europe was largely the result of unionization. Unless there's the means to magnify individual power, the only rights/privileges given will be the ones the employer wants to give. Looking at the work force the tendancy is to get as many people work for you for as little as you can pay them - the race to the bottom.

The other point is that those workers who come in after the struggle - after the battles are won have little stomach for doing much. They don't see the relationship between the struggle and results of that struggle. Between what was done and what they have.

My friends and I, now retired - they from the private sector, and I from public - think that our generation was the luckiest in the history of the Republic.

Born just before WWII, coming of age around the Korean and retiring in the '80's - '90's have great retirement benefits and medical care.

The rest of you guys - you're going to have to learn what our grand-parents, parents and we, learned. Management is inherently selfish and self-serving. Maximization of profits. It's your role to wrench some of those profits for you and your families.

You deserve it.

If it's Toyota, Honda, Benz, Chrysler, or Ford. Go Get 'em!

The rest of us are screwed, you older folk just make sure you get your SS money and medicare covered (preferably from the rich but I'm guessing us young'uns will just get even more screwed).

Problem with unions with my generation is that we've been given the free trade mantra for most of our lives and the fact that the most visible union companies, namely the big 3 auto manufacturers, made inferior cars than the rest of the competition didn't help. Big 3 had a glimmer of hope with Saturn, when I was in college everyone wanted one (I wanted one too!), but they stiffled the brand since then (until just very recently). I hear the Millenials are more open minded about the big 3, but they're also more civic and environmentally aware such that if the big 3 keep going their gas guzzling ways they'd have lost another generation (if they haven't lost them already as I hear the most pampered generation are getting new xB/yaris/fit/versa as their first cars!).

As I recall, SS was not meant to be a full retirement program, tho I'm guessing that whatever amount was paid out early on probably, in many cases acted as the only program.

And in fact, I as a retired teacher do not get full SS. My teacher's retirement is my primary source of income.

However, as more defined pension plans are disbanded in favor of 401K's I suspect SS will become even more important.

For the first several years of Saturn, it was a joint UAW-Saturn management project. Don't know who blinked first, but within 5 years, that was all over.

The best car I owned - until perhaps the Prius was the '93 Saturn. We had 2.

It would be a shame if unions are allowed to slip into history.

Through the 60's the impact of unions were profound. If you weren't in a union, the chances were that, that company would pretty much match union wages and benefits just to keep unions away from the shop.

You can't imagine how many union families bought their first home and sent there kids off to college.

So, Good Luck Folks.

[threadjack]
You know, there once was a time and a place for the Unions. Just the same as there was once a place for the muscle car, steam locomotive, sidewheel steamboat, and so on. However, those have seen their time, and it's time to move on.
[/threadjack]

If anything, Toyota is leading the way in everything and is really the only auto manufacturer that lives up to their slogan these days: Moving forward. They have been for some time now and will continue to do so for many years. I believe that Toyota may very well run GM into the ground if they keep going the way they are now. DaimlerChrysler may be soon behind if they don't take a round turn as Ford is trying to do. Kudos to the CEO of Ford Motor Company for being humble enough to seek out the advice of a corporation who's assembly-line process has been well-renowned. Now, just maybe, we'll see something truly remarkable from Ford come out - not the ill-designed 'Flex' concept, the GT500, and the excessively overdone new F-series Super Duty lineup.

The problem with GM, et al is not the union, so much as these corporations lack of vision.

One factor you can see around you is the anxiety of business in this country towards unions. If they think the union is coming in. . .they'll do anything to bust it.

Look at the off-shore movement of manufacturing jobs. Those jobs are not going to countries which are matching us in pay/benefits, they're going to countries which use child labor (banned in this country in the 1930's to insure adults would get those jobs). Conditions which this country (and even Europe) rejected by mid-20th century are rife in those off-shore plants.

So, what are you saying praying. . ., we should race them to the bottom? The 40 hr workweek is passe? Health benefit - undeserved? Send the kids back into the sweatshops?

Boy, it's not that unions are past their time, it's that the anti-labor spirit stalks the land.

I was saying nothing of the sort. If that were the case, then I'm wondering how Toyota has managed to develop a very satisfied, efficient workforce without using those things you mentioned. Why doesn't Toyota simply move their production lines and customer support to India? Why doesn't Honda move their stuff overseas as well? More and more companies based here in America don't seem to care about funneling money back into America and do that very thing. I suspect that because of the effect of the unions the domestic car manufacturers will be forced to maintain "X" percentage of their workforce here while foreign automakers willingly support the American workforce.

No, I'm merely saying that it seems like auto unions (and some unions in general) are more focused on money than anything else, and because of that the product produced by domestic automakers is incomparable to what foreign automakers produce. My wife's 2003 Dodge Intrepid SE was lacking in quality compared to the Toyota Prius which replaced it. Why? How does a subpar finished product show me that an auto union is a good thing?

Again, the foreign automakers managed a quality product without the auto unions. So how is it that the domestic auto makers stand to benefit with the auto unions? You see, if the corporations were focused on the right things, such as quality of life for the workers (as in the case of Toyota), then there would be no need for an auto union. So, I guess to protect the workers from "The Man", an auto union still has its place. Until it helps to benefit the consumer, though, I refuse to believe in it, and I still think its time has passed.

Also, tell me this: if we went into another major conventional war, would America be able to produce war machines the way she did during the second World War? I say, "No!" Because the unions would cause so much politics and red tape, workers would not get fired on the spot for lacking performance as happened during that time. If you were a shoddy worker during WWII, you'd get fired on the spot and replaced. It was just that simple.

Here's another example of why I have no faith in the unions: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/s...200704172.html

Is THAT what a union does for me? Produces a ship for my Navy (or Coast Guard in that case) that places the lives of the crew at risk and makes me afraid to go underway on the very ships friends of mine go underway on? A union is good because it manipulates and bends the will of corporate America to its whim? No, I say, and my opinion still stands. The union had its time, and is needed no longer.

It's great that you can find isolated incidents of subpar performance by union labor, but consider the opposite end of the spectrum where corporations bully people into less desireable work conditions. Wal-mart is probably the best known example with their exploitation of overtime hours and ILLEGAL ALIENS at minimal wages. But this thread is not about illegals so much as exploitation. That kind of crap simply doesn't happen in your average union work environment.

Most people are well aware of the missteps of unions because they involve large groups of people, but it's the individual that gets canned for filing an on-the-job injury claim you rarely if ever hear about. How do actions like that benefit our society?

I'd say more, but I need to go to work myself.

LiberalImage.com

Ok, you're citing to me another corporation that is sending all of our profit to China - a union would be useless in the case of Wal-Mart to begin with. All Wal-Mart cares about is profit.

"...it's the individual that gets canned for filing an on-the-job injury claim you rarely if ever hear about. How do actions like that benefit our society?"

Ok, how about the multiple fraudulent worker's comp cases that have screwed over so many corporations in the past?

As you said about me, you're pointing out an isolated incident.

And as for the "isolated incident", as you call it, how can you trivialize a $24 BILLION screw over that places the lives of an entire ship's crew in peril because of poor craftsmanship?

Well, we're all entitled to our opinions. A thousand people could send me hate mail telling me why unions are great and my point of view is screwed up and I still would stand against, not for, the unions.