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How the United Auto Workers damn near killed Caterpillar and fucked their members too.
The link is very clinical and does its level best to use a neutral tone; but the fact of the matter was Caterpillar was losing market share to Japanese heavy equipment and there flat wasn't money to meet the demands of the UAW.
The thing I remember clearly was Caterpillar didn't come to the table saying, "no raises," or "we need to reduce the workforce."
They were offering a raise, about half what the union wanted, but refused to increase the pension benefits.
They were clear about why, there wasn't enough money to do so.
The long period of time they weren't making anything left orders unfilled and companies bought Japanese for the first time and never came back.
Slow clap.
Yep. CAT was the world's workhorse until that happened. Then, well, now even Indian (dot) equipment is being sold.
ReplyDeleteUnions are now only good for killing jobs. How many jobs did the union lose by not accepting a very acceptable deal?
But, no, union heads wanted to flex and show they had the power. CAT was the example for all the other businesses being controlled by unions.
Yellow Freight was a repeat. It got killed off because of the same type of arrogant jackasses.
We've seen airlines get killed off by pilot and other strikes. So where did all those union jobs go?
We've seen the decimation of American ship building by unions. Pretty much the only places where union shipbuilders still work are in facilities that make nuclear subs and aircraft carriers.
We've seen the death of the textile and garment makers because of union thugs.
We've seen the death of American education because of union thugs.
Every thing the modern unions touch is dying.
But unions are saving workers, right? Tell that to all those Yellow Freight workers who lost their pensions, lost their jobs. Tell that to all the workers affected by the death of Yellow Freight, like... UAW workers or AFL/CIO workers or CWA workers.
Parasites. Union leaders are parasites. They suck the host dry and kill it.
I saw this in my local government workers' union. The local heads would set up a sweet-heart deal with the city and it would only positively affect those local heads, who would be retired by the time the deal ended. And no matter how many times workers showed the union heads that the deals were going to hurt the workers, it was all about lining the pockets of the leadership (local and national.)
I swear, in a just and righteous world, every union leader would be stripped of all their accumulated monies and distributed to the workers they hurt. Want socialism, want to vote socialism, want the workers of the world to rise? Here you go.
So glad that Florida is mostly a non-union state.
My dad was working there... Pretty sure this was the reason he regretted moving from being an engineer to management...
ReplyDeleteEven the Union guys were having a hard time with some of this, certainly the younger guys. Making $38/hour with time and a half and double time for OT/weekend shifts? Hard to turn down and walk out on... But what would I know, I'm just the IT guy/in management :-)
Unions did a lot to hurt railroad transportation here, back in the late 50s and around the time I was born.
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