Rebuilding America With Labor and Educational Values

December 15, 2008

Organized Labor built manufacturing and many other industries in commerce. Now, states’ legislators, lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Organized Labor, the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers (UAW), United Steelworkers of America (USW), National Education Association (NEA), and others have all but destroyed many in Manufacturing, our educational social system, and many other vocations within America’s culture.

In the earlier days, Organized Labor began as an effort to provide descent wages in America. Unions grew as America grew, more jobs, and issues grew. With growth, came efforts to provide added agreement benefits for working Americans. Oh, how changes have evolved! In the last five decades, organized labor, with the help of many state legislators, and Capitol Hill Lawmakers, many new laws have been prescribed as economic treatments. Added legislation brings added costs into America’s products’ marketplace. These added costs have created goods becoming excessively expensive, while an imported item is more economical. American consumers have discovered they can find equal or better quality products manufactured elsewhere.

America’s Big Three automakers and other companies within our economy are in a crisis. The rejection of a bailout and/or loan to GM, Ford, and Chrysler is the result of UAW leaders and memberships refusal to trim employee cost and benefits cost of $141M annually and more. Dr. Mark J. Perry, Professor of Economics and Finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/07/uaw-pricing-themselves-out-of-market.html, best defines the Big 3s’ employee cost.

UAW employees must become more competitive with Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. Chapter 11, in our US Bankruptcy Court, can make adjustments and trim GM, Ford, and Chrysler CEOs’ bonuses and employee costs and benefits, saving our US automobile manufacturing. Minority GOP Senators were right in denying a bailout and/or loan with the Big 3, and especially the UAW, who refuses to negotiate, in an effort to become more competitive within a free marketplace. In 1960, GM alone, controlled 53% of the worldwide automobile manufacturing. What happened between 1960 and 2008? Did organized labor which help build GM, now destroyed the same GM?

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger claims Toyota’ pay and benefit cost is more than the UAW employees. Please explain why with GM producing equal vehicles in volume to Toyota, GM produces losses of $10Ms while Toyota produces profits of $10Ms. What is the difference? Is it the Big 3 CEOs’ bonuses? Is it the UAW Union’s employees’ pay and benefit cost? America needs a treatment, and now! Chapter 11 Courts can provide the forced necessary changes to rebuild the Big 3.

For a growing economy, America must rebuild manufacturing. Organized Labor must recognize in a free-market America, labor cost must be controlled. We must restructure our educational system, teaching our children the foundations of a Judeo-Christian values system, as the founders of our US Constitution constantly wrote so much about, legislated, and then practiced in real life. With these ideals, we are rebuilding America. Organized Labor, other lobbyists, state legislators, Capitol Hill lawmakers, and others, the choices and determinations are (y)ours.