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Our newspapers here in Detroit
are filled with news and speculation about the UAW and their contract talks
with the BIG 3; that is what we do in Detroit
and have done it for decades.
This year is different as I have explained
numerous times but Bob King, president of the UAW, seems to be harping on the
same thing and that is in his own words “…and I think there is a common desire
to make sure that everybody working for the industry is at a middle-class
standard of living.”
He is referring about the $14-$16/hour wage
for new hires; he wants them up to the old hires wage of $28-$30 / hour which
would place them in that middle-class type of living.
I think King is saying that because he has
to appear to the rank and file, that he is trying to do what they want him to
do even if he knows that is not the way to go and cannot be the way to go. The
upper wage earners need to be bought out and all workers will be at the entry
level rate, why?
Well, as King and anybody else that knows
the minimum about how businesses run, knows that a company that makes a product
has to price the product to be competitive in the market filled with similar
products.
The price of the product is the fixed
factor otherwise the product does not sell. The UAW is asking the company to make
wages the fixed factor saying in effect, we want our wages to be $30 / hour and
you manipulate your selling price to accommodate those wages…which is patently
absurd.
So let’s get back to the concept of the
middle class which I have addressed before but it keeps coming up. I said that
UAW workers (un-educated, un-skilled) have been in pseudo-middle class for
decades because the unions were able to provide that to their workers; they no
longer can do that and now the workers will have to find their natural economic
class based on their education and skills.
I have watched debates on CNN where the
“experts” have said the erosion of the middle class, as we have known it, has
been going on for some time. More and more, the ticket to the middle-class is
an education and/ or specialized skill usually obtained through alternative
educational means like on-the-job training, apprenticeship, etc. In other
words, the days of the unskilled and uneducated, enjoying a middle class
standard of living appears to be coming to an end…
BUT in our current depression, even an
education and a skill set does not appear to be an automatic ticket to
middle-class living; they can’t find jobs that will place them in the
middle-class standard of living.
So we are back to the lack of jobs in our
economy and what can be done to create some and many people are talking about
just that and the president will address the nation about that tonight BUT I am
skeptical he has a plan that will work but I will listen.
Getting back to the UAW and their attempts
to keep the status quo they have enjoyed for decades, alive…you need to face
economic reality…if the autos you build are uncompetitive in the market because
of high production costs brought on by excessive labor costs; the autos will
not sell and you will be out of a job period!
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