Sunday, December 28, 2008

How The UAW Work Rules Have Killed The American Auto Industry.

If you want to get liberals all riled up, all you need to do is say anything against unions. Nevermind that liberals are elitist sh*tbags who sneer at Joe Six-Pack types for not being as grease-free as they are, with their soft hands and bodies toned by trainers, not actual hard work; they fancy themselves (and unions) as champions of the Little Guy. Bah.

I know people who are auto workers - a good friend is also involved in union activities - and have heard plenty of stories like the ones related in Detroit’s Downturn: It’s the Productivity, Stupid, so before the Anonymous Pussies who fill their diapers in the Backtalk section waste their time hammering spittle-flecked missives that will be either rejected or torn to pieces for my and sane readers' amusement: Stop!

A snip:

But almost all of the discussion, when it comes to UAW culpability, has been on wages. The even larger issue, though, is the elephant in the room that seemingly no one discusses, even when given a political opportunity...The issue isn’t wages — though those are a problem — so much as work rules. UAW work rules, which have evolved over the many decades since the passage of the Wagner Act, are the biggest reason that General Motors is uncompetitive with its non-union American counterparts.

What are work rules? They are agreements negotiated in the contract between management and the union covering how the employees are to be classified, how many breaks they get, how much time off they get, who can do which jobs, how discipline is to be enforced, etc. The goal of the rules is not to enhance productivity or production quality. It is to provide opportunities for featherbedding, increase numbers of (overpaid) jobs for union workers, and minimize how much they have to actually work. This is important because it’s at least in theory possible that the industry could be making money even at current wages, if they could be provided with the flexibility to increase worker productivity. When you blame management for the quality and cost problems in the auto industry, first consider stories like this:
As a former supervisor of UAW workers at a GM facility, I will say that poor management and union malpractice made the Detroit Three uncompetitive long before the government sent in their arsonists.

To put it bluntly, the UAW takes the hard-earned money of the best workers and spends it defending the very worst workers while tying up the industry with thousands of pages of work rules that make it impossible to be competitive. And the spineless management often makes short-sighted decisions to satisfy the union and maximize immediate benefits over long-term sustainability.

The strength of the union and the weakness of management made it impossible to conduct business properly at any level. …

I supervised a loading dock and 21 UAW workers who worked approximately five hours per day for eight hours’ pay. They could easily load one-third more rail cars and still maintain their union-negotiated break times, but when I tried to make them increase production ever so slightly they sabotaged my ability to make even the current production levels by hiding stock, calling in sick, feigning equipment problems, and even once, as a show of force, used a fork lift truck and pallets and racks to create a car part prison where they trapped me while I was conducting inventory. The reaction of upper management to my request to boost production was that I should “not be naive.”
Read it all and check out the comments that amplify the points. Also read Michael Barone's column which fills in more blanks and shows that instead of bailout cash, the Detroit 3 need to be forced into Chapter 11 and at that time, the UAW must be crushed and its leech-like corpse pried off the economy. Make it happen!!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey shit for brains:

Would you be shocked to know I agree with you? You're such a sick fuck that you don't read what I say, only what you wished I had said. Here is an entertaining book about all the crap that workers get away with on the assembly line.

http://www.amazon.com/Rivethead-Tales-Assembly-Ben-Hamper/dp/0446394009/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230519868&sr=8-1

These fuckheads don't care about doing a good job, just getting away with doing the least work possible. That is not the American way. Neither is the CEO to worker pay ratio which has shot up dramatically over the past 30 years while those fuckheads pay themselves millions of dollars for fucking up.

Of course you only focus on your fellow worker bees because you are a self-hating worker bee. You would like to go back to the time when workers got their hands chopped off because nobody gave a shit about worker safety. Autocratic rule from the top with no protections or fair pay. That's what you are about because you identify with the ruling elite even though you will never be one.

Me? I've been a worker bee and an elite and I like elite better. It's more comfy. But I remember what it's like to wait tables and work in a warehouse. I know what you think: fuck those losers, let them get screwed. Well fuck you, Dirk. Someone has to sweep the floors.

Dirk Belligerent said...

I'm posting your comment because it's a choice example of the unhinged rage you liberals are consumed by; frothing at the mouth and contradicting oneself like a lunatic - saying you agree that workers are lazy and then accusing me of being self-hating and whatnot; saying you prefer to be a comfy elite, but shrieking that CEOs are making too much. So are you, too, Bub, most likely.

If you read the linked Barone piece, you'd have seen that the conditions of workers getting their hands cut off are no longer operable. It's not the 19th Century and workers aren't suffering some Dickensian workplace Hell. There are these little monsters called "lawyers" who will make companies keep on the up and up if they're endangering their drones.

Union workers are lazy because they're protected from punishment for being lazy. (Rivethead was mentioned in the comments of the story I linked, so you weren't enlightening me in the least.) When bad workers are protected, why should good workers bother when it doesn't matter. By forcing everyone to be equally lousy, we're living in a world out of Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and failure is the only possible outcome.

We see this "why bother working?" mentality in the housing crisis as people walk away from their debts because paying your bills is for suckers, while rewards and bailouts are handed out to the spendthrifts. As Michelle Malkin observed, the any and the grasshopper story has been turned on its head.

If CEOs made only a buck a year more than the workers, what excuse for union sloth and greed would you foist? You are such a typical liberal parrot, repeating the shibboleths of your fellow travelers that CEOs are overpaid that you forget that even if you killed all the CEOs, the lazy will remain lazy.

Try the decaf, take your rage pills, go to your anger management class, and get the f*ck over yourself before you give yourself an aneurysm with your contradictory rages, Bub. How much are the unions paying you to be their bitch boy, bitch boy?

Dirk Belligerent said...

OK, Sane Readers, you are about to witness what happens when a liberal goes really crazy and makes an ass of himself because he is so married to the idea that if you aren't goosestepping exactly has he does, you MUST be the exact opposite, right?!? You know what they say about assumptions, don't ya?

(Note: Rather than post the Anonymous Pussy's diatribe and then quote it in my smackdown rebuttal, I'm just copying it and tearing it a new one in a single post. Nothing has been edited out or changed. This guy is this confused and inarticulate.)

"saying you agree that workers are lazy and then accusing me of being self-hating and whatnot"

I did not mean all workers are lazy. I was referring to lazy workers.


Uh-huh. A distinction only made after you were busted on your hatred for the working class that you've evolved beyond. Right.

"saying you prefer to be a comfy elite, but shrieking that CEOs are making too much."

Again, not a contradiction. If anyone is shrieking, it is you. Projection much?


I've always found it hysterical when you liberals use the word "projection" when you're being accurately nailed for your psychoses. (Yeah, plural, beyatch!) You flip out and accuse non-liberals of anything and everything because that's exactly what you are inside - racist, sexist, bigoted, you name it - and figure that everyone else is as sad and hateful inside as you are. Sorry, projection is a liberal tick. Moving on...

There is nothing wrong with making money. When you pay yourself 20 million dollars when your company is losing money - problem. Fuck - you shouldn't pay yourself 20 million when you are making money, unless you own the company, not a publicly traded company with an incestuous board. Now you are defending the CEO to worker pay ratio? Like I said, self-hating worker bee.

It's funny how if a CEO responsible for leading a company with ten of thousands of employees and countless stockholders makes $20 million per annum when the company is profitable, he is a BAD MAN; but when some steroid-freak who can hit a baseball or swish a basketball makes $20 mega-large, he is a HERO to the community, especially if he's playing for your municipality's sports franchise. (I've seen people seriously demand that doctors only make $100,000 per year because medicine is an important societal service turn around and babble like schoolgirls cuz "Shaq's coming to the Lakers!") While I agree that money-losers should get a bowl of gruel in compensation, the obscene manner in which executive compensation is determined is a straw man in this discussion; we're talking about the UAW, not the CEO.

Here's what you can't comprehend: I'm not ruled by seething envy against those who have more than me. I don't roil in inner turmoil at the injustice of the world. I may not like that such greed and avarice exists, but it's probably not taking food out of my mouth. Making them poorer won't make me richer, so I don't hate them like you do.

"It's not the 19th Century and workers aren't suffering some Dickensian workplace Hell."

And how did that happen? The workers organized.


I didn't say that unions didn't serve a useful purpose at one time; I said that they have become a fatal parasite that doesn't even care if it dies as long as it gets to suck out the last crop of the host's blood. Viruses are smarter than unions because they know that if they kill everything, there's no way to reproduce itself and thus it will become extinct. Unions don't understand what single-celled organisms do. Ergo, the common cold is smarter than a liberal! XD

"There are these little monsters called "lawyers" who will make companies keep on the up and up if they're endangering their drones."

Bitch about the lawyers until you need one. Then you'll be crying to your lawyer and kissing his feet when he saves your ass. You lawyer haters are all the same. There's a well known saying: I hate lawyers, except for mine.


Where did I bitch about lawyers, you douche nozzle? We would need far fewer regulations if we had an efficient legal system populated by noble public servants, not ambulance-chasing greedhounds like John Edwards. If you're a company who is facing legal sanction from allowing the workers to be harmed in your facilities, then it's common business sense to protect the bottom line by protecting your workers. Lawyers could be the good guys, but in your world, Big Uncle Sam is your Sun God and lawyers are just a way to cash in, too.

"How much are the unions paying you to be their bitch boy, bitch boy?"

Um, ZERO. I've never even been a union member, much less been paid by a union, not that I am averse to being paid by a union.


Gee, if I criticize thuggish, outdated unions, I'm the tool of The Man who hates himself, but if I point out your repeated bunghole lickings of the unions, you get huffy at my presumption? HAR!!! Good one. Loser.

As I pointed out already, your unhinged anger and delusional thinking makes you see what you want to see. I "smacked down" (what a tired worn out phrase) the unions and the CEO's and yet you insist on painting me as a "liberal". Hilarious!

I am amused by where you choose to project your unhinged manic anger. A 700 billion giveaway with no oversight? Not a peep from Dirky. Obama and his dot gov game - Dirk goes wild - Hitler references included. Too funny. Or is it sad and pathetic?


I don't have time to comment on every little item that's gone by, but I've posted plenty of items quoting others who are disgusted at the free-spending of Dubya in general and Paulson with regards to the giveaways to their pals on Wall Street. In the Moose-Slayer vs. Lying Joe debate post, I posted, "Palin just regurgitated the "$700 billion to countries who don't like this" talking point about oil. Missed an opportunity to tie that number with the pork-slathered bailout bill"; in my "Bailout Fails - Any Question Who'll Get Blamed?" post, I wrote, "The Dems hold the majority in the House. They could've passed this massive sop to those they wrecked the economy with on a party line vote and couldn't do it"; and in "Why $700 Billion For the Bailout? Because It Sounded Scary.", my opening salvo was, "This bailout deal is bullsh*t. The Dems are the cause of it, but the Stupid Party is being assigned the blame and the taxpayers are getting stuck with the bill while the Dems who created this mess glide away scot free. No one sane think the tab will be *only* $700 billion..."

Not a peep, huh? More like, STRIKE THREE, YER OUTTAHERE!!!

Perhaps if you read what I actually write instead of PROJECTING your delusions upon the screen and going batsh*t about what you've imagined I've said, you wouldn't embarrass yourself like this over and over. Jeez, show some pride.

I'm sorry if your don't like how I call your Messiah "Fuhrer", but if it goosesteps, talks, and sieg heils like a fascist dictator with an enthusiasm for Reich imagery, then that's what I'm going to call him. I notice that you are cool with his misappropriation of a .gov domain, so you are clearly awaiting Jan. 20th to put on your pretty brown shirt. Those meanies in the Treason Media are just hanging around and bothering the poor guy while he's on vacation. Maybe you can rough up the reporters for bothering your Messiah?