Quote:
Originally Posted by $5 submissions
Funny how the unions don't see their contacts/deals as part of the problems plaguing the auto industry.
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Years ago, I in was management at a company that had, over time, made so many concessions that our union contract was so onorous that it was driving us out of business. All of our competitors had much more livable union contracts, and I kept telling the union (whose stewards and members I had all known personally for years) that this was no joke, if they didn't give us the concessions we needed, the company was going to turn out the lights on all of them. And that they really had only one choice: to say "We really had it good all these years, but times are changing and we have to change with them to keep our jobs."
But their position was "your owners have plenty of money - we're not giving an inch" --- no matter how often I tried to explain that the owners' personal money was not the COMPANY'S money, and that the company was losing tens of millions a year.
Guess what happened.
And because of industry-wide consolidation, many of the people who lost their jobs were never able to get a job in the same industry again.
PS I say this as someone who many years before, was a shop steward at that same company - so it's not an anti-union diatribe. It's a "reality matters" story.