GOP's demands a first in labor relations

[Bozita]

http://www.freep.com/article/20081214/BUSINESS01/812140489

GOP's demands a first in labor relations
BY JOHN GALLAGHER • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER • DECEMBER 14, 2008

Is a UAW contract worth the paper it's written on anymore?

Just a year after the UAW agreed to historic contracts with the Detroit automakers, its leaders have to reopen the contract in the most extraordinary, even humiliating, conditions.

Republican U.S. senators, who ultimately scuttled a loan package, were in effect demanding a rewrite of the UAW contract last week, something labor experts said was unprecedented.

Richard Block, a professor in the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University, said GOP senators' attempts to rewrite the terms of the UAW contract opened a new and -- for unions -- unwelcome chapter in labor relations.

"I can't think of any time when it's happened when the government wrote a contract," he said. "On the other hand, when you go to Congress, stuff happens."

Referring to efforts by Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee to craft new union wage rates to match those paid to U.S. workers in plants owned by foreign car companies, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told CNN late last week, "Who would have ever thought that a United States senator would sit down and want to negotiate with a union?"

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[Wapsie B]

1. By the headline I was thinking that maybe executive compensation

would be tied to company performance, meaning no golden parachutes for one thing. Boy was I wrong. :eyes:

[jimshoes]

2. Not to put too fine a point on it

but negotiate is not the word Corker has in mind. Dictate is more like it. And a bad precedent it would be too.

[zbdent]

3. so, the repukes are saying that no contract is enforceable?

[TahitiNut]

4. In many cases, it's ILLEGAL for a third party to interfere in a contractual agreement.

What Corker attempted would be tortious for an ordinary citizen. When Blagojevich attempted to extort the Tribune company to violate an employment relationship with an editor, that was clearly unlawful. It's NOT just an ethics-in-government issue. Just like "alienation of affection" is tortious in a marital relationship, the interference in a legal, contractual relationship between two parties can be prosecuted.

Caveat: IANAL.

[Ikonoklast]

5. Government dictating employee wages for businesses.

Is it Fascism yet?

Why stop with auto workers? Just mandate ALL wages by fiat, and that way we will all work for whatever the Republicans see fit to pay.