Ford layoffs and unions: what they are leaving out.

auto industry complaining about unions raising the cost of their autos too much.....

Ford created unions after WWII to attract employees. They created benefits and pensions to compete. Japan did the same thing.

Now for the kicker......

The American industries are basically saying that unions caused Japan to not have a military to finance.

What does that have to do with an edge on competition???? Most of you may say.....

Those of you with an answer to that question, please. You have my ear.

Originally posted by accountability
Ford created unions after WWII to attract employees. Those of you with an answer to that question, please. You have my ear.

I have absolutely no idea where you recieved your "information." It is wrong! The unions srtuggled through the US GREAT DEPRESSION in the 1930's--before WWll.
Because Ford Motor is most closely associated with the UAW (United Auto Workers), I went to the Union website www.uaw.com... and found a History Timeline shows the UAW being formed in the early 1930's.. www.uaw.com...
On the Timeline, after clicking on " 1937-1941 The Fight For Ford", you will see the first paragraph of an article. It is reprinted below.

"Henry Ford’s hostility toward unions was well known in Detroit and throughout the nation. He openly flouted the Wagner Act, remarking “We’ll never recognize the United Automobile Workers Association or any other union.” "

www.msnbc.msn.com...
As far as coffin nails go for the North American auto industry goes, the Geely is a railroad spike.
The only way the big three will survive, is that if the chinese buy them out.

Otherwise they are toast.

But executives at established auto makers say they aren’t too concerned about the threat of competition from Chinese brands any time soon, citing quality and other factors.

Ha!, they are so funny!
(look how the Hyundai changed over time)


[edit on 23-1-2006 by Toadmund]

There is a lot of blame to go around. I am certain that there is a fair percentage of mis-management at Ford, GM and others. Just like there is mis-management at many other firms across this great land. But the point is competitiveness, and the benefits aside from standard wages is what is killing the auto industry.

If you look at the benefits comparison for salaried workers to UAW workers, salaried paid 27% of their health care premium costs last year compared to 7% for a UAW worker. Seems disproportionate. So I asked everyone I knew. I pay 28%, most of my co-workers do the same, and almost all my friends pay between 19 and 32%. A few paid little or nothing...yep, you guessed it, union workers.

I have nothing against a person getting a fair wage for a day's work, and according to my research, UAW averages $25 to $27 per hour for straight time. Seems fair. But what about all the other perks? What's fair there? It is unrealistic in this day and age to expect to pay nothing for health coverage.

Coincidently, this very same issue is what's troubling the transit workers in NY. They don't want to have to pay for health care.

Why can Japanese Management, American Workers and Japanse Engineering technics learned from Americans after WWII produce a superior car all the while American Management, Foreign Workers and Foreign Engineering produce crap? Ford will soon be bankrupt due to their stupidity as well as GM will be soon.


Toyota will be the largest Automaker in the world in less than 12 months.....

Toyota employ's 200+k United States Citizens, more than Ford and GM combined.

I am a UAW member ,I wish I was making $27 per hr .More like $14 .and can not aford insurence for my kids,its cheaper just to pay cash.And no I don't work at FORD

[edit on 23-1-2006 by deadcatsrule]

Is that the Union is the problem with the price of an automobile and the price of producing an automobile. The truth is antiquated development and overpaid execs along with very inept management.

In my Unininformed opinion, the only way that Ford and the other American car producers will survive is if they take the cutting edge and develop and produce automobiles that run on alternate fuel sources. They will have to have these factories manufacturing the new wave of vehicles within the next 5 to 10 years. The reason being that if the Oil situation continues to be out of hand and having gas prices go through the roof, an alternate fuel source vehicle business will eliminate that need from the economy and the dependence. If they can do this then I can see them being the supplier of vehicles to the world as everyone else tapers off of the oil supply. The Middle East could cease to be such a drain on the American economy and they can bring the troops there home and the Middle east can sort itself out.

Will It Happen? I don't think so, because big business is too fixated on Oil but if they can get over it and develop the new technologies and improve the automoblie to offer safe, reliable, and cheap transportation that everyman can afford then they will pull themselves out of the #bucket they are in now.

The American industries are basically saying that unions caused Japan to not have a military to finance.

What does that have to do with an edge on competition??

Thanks for the UAW history. I had no Idea that history was rewritten

I was trying to make a point that most industries after WWII were really short on workers, and needed to compete by offering fringe benefits. Which is still what I believe happened.

No one has answered my question- so maybe I'll spell it out more.... Does Japan have a competitive edge because they can invest more money into their 'fringe' benefits for employees because they don't have a military to finance? Does having to be a superpower decrease our economic power because we have to invest so much into the military? What does our military might buy us?

accountability, you make a pretty good case, although it is very indirect.
Like trying to fit a can of soup on a full shelf, where the can on the other side falls off.
With the billions spent on the US military, somethings got to give; education, social programs, low taxes, infrastucture etc.

I see evidence of that now. Everything starts to hurt.

Destroying America, trying to protect it from enemies of it's own creation.

The current model of the corporation as an reflected in our laws and international laws is skewed against the individual.

The original idea of corporations put them under much greater restraint.

Those corporations were all partner-types. In otherwords, the owners would divide profits at the end of each year and pay taxes. The owners were individually responsible for the debts and actions of their corporation.

Corporations of today are people like you and me. Only they have much more clout than you or me.

They should not be allowed to donate to canidates for office. The owners should be financially responsible for the actions of the board of directors.


And alot more of this....

www.amazon.com...=ed_oe_p/103-0498491-3003033?st=*&v=glance&n=283155


Corporations are not like you and me. They can continue to do business by having their CEO arrested as the scapegoat, and continue to break laws. If you and I break laws, we go to jail.

And it seems that the US is inspiring Japan to halt it's pacifism- Washington Gives the Green Light
Japan's Neo-Militarists
By CHRISTOPHER REED

Japan is marching back to military power, or more precisely, "is being marched" by the United States toward a new militarism, as its neo-nationalist prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, who like many hawks has never served in the military, acts as eager drill sergeant. Meanwhile the putative army, the Japanese people, remains unenthusiastic.

The nation and its population are unique in the world, having honored 60 years of official pacifism since their disastrous imperialist wars from 1931-45. These ended in defeat with three million Japanese dead, and a US occupation force writing a new constitution that renounced war "forever." That was then. Now, despite opinion polls still showing a pacifist public in the high 60s percentage, Japan's warmongers exert their influence. The new militarism is not trumpeted, even the Pentagon's drums are muffled, but almost every week an event occurs to push six decades of peace further into history.

In January, for instance, the Ground Self-Defense Force, the name Japan must give its well-equipped and powerful army, was for the first time ever exercising jointly with US military for three weeks at the giant Pendleton Marine base in southern California, north of San Diego, staging amphibian operations against an "armed guerrilla occupation" of Japanese islands. Why?

It so happens that a nasty dispute exists between Japan, China, and Taiwan, over five desolate little outcrops in the East China Sea the Japanese call Senkaku, from the original British-named Pinnacle Rocks, and the Chinese, Diaoyu islands. Controlled by Japan since its 1895 annexation of Taiwan (an earlier Japanese imperialist adventure), both the People's Republic and Taiwan now claim the isles for a predictable reason. Oil deposits lie around a "median line" drawn by Japan, which has already protested drilling on the Chinese side. Fishing rights are disputed too, and Taiwan dispatched a frigate last June as Japanese patrol boats harassed Chinese vessels.

Yet it's hardly guerrilla territory. Occasional Chinese protesters have landed, to be promptly ousted by Japanese coastguards. Amphibious commando ops -- as well as Tokyo's development of new shallow-water torpedoes -- pose a graver threat, from Japan. Presumably that is the combative point to be taken. It certainly fits Japan's chauvinistic foreign minister Taro Aso's explosive Christmas week assertion that China's military defense budget (less than Japan, the world's third highest) was a "considerable threat." Beijing denounced this remark as "highly irresponsible," ending the year's Sino-Japanese relations at the lowest point in decades.

In Tokyo other militarist steps have been taken. In the last two years Japan has passed over 10 new laws and introduced fundamental bureaucratic "reforms" that promote the means to war or make it easier. One is the forthcoming promotion of the SDF agency to a full Ministry of Defense; another is closer technical collaboration with US missile defense projects, contrary to Japan's ban on such ventures. More momentous events are due shortly. The main one will modify the anti-war constitution. A draft has already been published and enactment could begin this year.

Meanwhile, the GSDF is also for the first time serving in a war zone, the Iraqi town of Samawa, where its mission of "reconstruction and humanitarian assistance" was recently extended for another year. (Its 500 troops, protected by Australian soldiers, are almost as unpopular as Americans, and reportedly have failed their requirement to provide reliable electricity and water.)

But the main move that threatens a new and potentially dangerous alliance between Japan's neo-militarists and Washington jingoists, was the joint declaration in October titled "US-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future." It extended Japan's previous defense-only stance to "develop options and adapt the alliance to the changing regional and global security environment."

The inclusion of the key word "global" can be taken to mean what the title implied: a militant new Japan-US pact to transform and structurally alter their joint military position in the world. An interesting analogy with Britain exists here: like its role in the Atlantic, Japan is to become America's new unsinkable aircraft carrier in the north-east Pacific, something the Pentagon has longed for. As if to seal this promise at last, the US further announced that despite a previous Japanese port ban on nuclear warships, America's replacement in Japan for the ageing USS Kitty Hawk conventional carrier will be the atomic-powered USS George Washington, but not the originally drafted USS Harry Truman, because of that president's A-bomb attack on Hiroshima.
www.counterpunch.org...


[edit on 23-2-2006 by accountability]