Ford, GM, and the End of American Labor Unions
Restructuring. The word means many things in the corporate world. All bad. Whether it's a reverse split in stockholder equity, elimination of jobs, or Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it's all bad.
At Ford and GM it means massive job losses among both blue collar and white collar workers. The blue collar union is going the way of the steam engine. How we will maintain our middle class in the long run is a mystery to me.
The future employability of a person will be based on education and degrees. Those without will be the future working poor of Wal-Mart and McDonald's, without regard to age or experience.
There will be no well-paying middle class jobs. Society is evolving further into a "have not" class serving "haves", with no class of society in the middle between them. A situation rife with class warfare and societal conflict down the line.
The labor union was the only thing that kept industrial jobs paying middle class wages. Without them we will return to a situation where a worker, even with a white collar, will be fungible goods, easily discharged and replaced.
China has trillions of U.S. dollars in reserves from taking our labor jobs. It will use it to spread its influence throughout Asia and beyond. Bush and his fellow reactionaries had better get all their wars going now, because America won't be able to afford them in the future. Not only won't they be able to afford them, they won't have the natural resources, like oil, or the manufacturing base, like steel mills, to fight them.
Unlimited free trade overseas and terrible domestic management geared toward quarterly profits are proving the undoing of society. The management of the automobile companies never learned the lessons of the 1970's gas shortages. They never did make a decent small car to compete with the Japanese throughout that whole era.
They went to the gas guzzlers every time prices came down, as though gas prices would never go back up. When prices inevitably went up they were caught with their pants down each time.
What to do? Restructure. In today's American auto business that means acknowledging that you've managed to lose more market share and must get smaller to reflect it. Eventually, though, your market share is all gone. You can't get any smaller. You, and your middle class, are out of business.
At Ford and GM it means massive job losses among both blue collar and white collar workers. The blue collar union is going the way of the steam engine. How we will maintain our middle class in the long run is a mystery to me.
The future employability of a person will be based on education and degrees. Those without will be the future working poor of Wal-Mart and McDonald's, without regard to age or experience.
There will be no well-paying middle class jobs. Society is evolving further into a "have not" class serving "haves", with no class of society in the middle between them. A situation rife with class warfare and societal conflict down the line.
The labor union was the only thing that kept industrial jobs paying middle class wages. Without them we will return to a situation where a worker, even with a white collar, will be fungible goods, easily discharged and replaced.
China has trillions of U.S. dollars in reserves from taking our labor jobs. It will use it to spread its influence throughout Asia and beyond. Bush and his fellow reactionaries had better get all their wars going now, because America won't be able to afford them in the future. Not only won't they be able to afford them, they won't have the natural resources, like oil, or the manufacturing base, like steel mills, to fight them.
Unlimited free trade overseas and terrible domestic management geared toward quarterly profits are proving the undoing of society. The management of the automobile companies never learned the lessons of the 1970's gas shortages. They never did make a decent small car to compete with the Japanese throughout that whole era.
They went to the gas guzzlers every time prices came down, as though gas prices would never go back up. When prices inevitably went up they were caught with their pants down each time.
What to do? Restructure. In today's American auto business that means acknowledging that you've managed to lose more market share and must get smaller to reflect it. Eventually, though, your market share is all gone. You can't get any smaller. You, and your middle class, are out of business.
posted by Marshall Darts at
9:16 PM
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