Even if a deal for a $15-billion to $17-billion<\/a> preliminary bailout comes together this weekend to keep carmakers afloat into 2009, they will continue to be dogged by their most significant competitive disadvantage: a high-priced, unionized workforce.<\/p>\nAnd yet there is nothing inherently unsustainable about employing a high-priced, unionized workforce. The crisis of Detroit’s wage bill is entirely relative. Specifically, their labor costs far exceed the low-cost, nonunion American workforce at the U.S.-based, foreign-owned plants of competitors Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru.<\/p>\n
If the UAW really is to blame at all, then, it is because of the union’s utter failure to unionize any of the transplants. What has the UAW been doing all these years? Isn’t it the responsibility of any good union to protect union employers from competitive labor disadvantages by organizing wall to wall, throughout the industry? How could it have left these transplants unorganized? As is now clear, when the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The UAW is to blame for the Big Three Crisis. Not because they sucked the Big Three dry. Because they didn’t suck everyone <\/em>dry.<\/p>\nForeign automotive manufacturing transplants here in America produce some of the highest quality cars in the world, subject to the same safety and emissions regulations as the Big Three, and historically with some of the most satisfied workers in the industry. Honda has and Toyota will soon export product from here.<\/p>\n
They’ve proven it can be done profitably; in America with Americans, and without the UAW.<\/p>\n
What is being posited here is not a foreign concept (no pun intended). Force successful automakers to drag the dead weight of the failed strategies of the Big Three.<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama calls it “spreading the wealth.”<\/p>\n
I call it Socialism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Infect everyone else. The unions are largely to blame for a crisis that it appears will cost taxpayers between $15 and $25 Billion but not for the reason you think. Even if a deal for a $15-billion to $17-billion preliminary bailout comes together this weekend to keep carmakers afloat into 2009, they will continue to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-capitalism-v-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}