Senators to UAW: It's payback time

[babylonsister]

Senators to UAW: It's payback time
Daniel Howes


They failed repeatedly to organize the foreign-owned auto plants proliferating down South, even now.

Their political action committee pumped millions -- $1,918,450 this election cycle alone, to be exact -- into the congressional campaigns of Democrats and only $12,500 into Republicans, according to opensecrets.org. In their 1999 contract, they won Election Day off and used it to back their (generally Democratic) candidates, a source of recurring irritation among the southern GOP stalwarts.

They ignored the Republicans, even auto state Republicans, who represent the so-called "New American Manufacturers" in places such as Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.

Those are the same states whose senators stood astride the $14 billion auto bailout bill Thursday saying, "No" -- imperiling life as generations of United Auto Workers have known it.

Now a federal bailout for Detroit's automakers appears close to dead, delivering a crushing blow to a Michigan economy reeling from high unemployment, skyrocketing home foreclosures and sagging tax revenue. The obstructionists: southern Republicans determined to use a financial crisis to rework corporate balance sheets and rewrite collective bargaining agreements on their terms and timetables.

more...

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081212/OPINION03/812120397

[Venceremos]

1. k&r

[Phred42]

2. Where has Union leadership been the past 28 years?

hiding under a rock somewhere and utterly ineffective.

Union leadership needs to be straightened out along with the Sr Management of Corporate America

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Ineffective? Please enlighten us.

[tomreedtoon]

4. Really kind of obvious.

They didn't organize the workers in the South that are working on a fraction of the UAW's standard wages.

They didn't convince the states with right-to-work laws (like mine) to end that prohibition.

They didn't prepare the rank and file workers to protest in the most physical way possible, which is what won the unions their rights in the first place.

I say it again: it's been a long time since River Rouge. I bet you don't know what that is, without looking it up on Wikipedia, do you?

[Phred42]

6. Gee let's see. There has been a steady decline in membership since Reagan

:shrug:


There are other examples but that alone should be enough

[Waiting For Everyman]

5. It's the same bunch that shot down mortgage and bankruptcy relief all year.

Long before the obvious consequences of doing nothing happened. We didn't have to get to this point at all.

What a coincidence.

[Daveparts]

7. State Laws make it impossible

To organize, in a right to work (Slave) states because the employee works at the owners pleasure.
He or she may be terminated for any reason what so ever, because its the bosses birthday or because his car isn't washed. Then all burden of proof for wrongful termination falls on the employee. You must prove the employer fired you capriciously while you will not have access to plant records or employees.

You can not force anyone to join the union, so while you pay your dues your co-workers do not have to but receive the same benefits that you do enjoy and even more because the boss likes them they are not in the union. I know of one plant where lay-offs were done by clock numbers per union agreement but call backs were not. The boss always had special projects for his favorite non-union employees.

So how do you organize a people so under the gun? Trained and indoctrinated since birth to believe that unions are the communists in disguise. Living in fear for their jobs believing that brown nosing and ass kissing the boss is the road to the good life.

Why the hell do you think these plants moved to Alabama and Mississippi in the first place? It's well educated work force? GE opened a plastics plant in Alabama and when they opened the employment office and began testing potential workers one year later did not have one applicant that could pass the algebra portion of the application.