Much to the dismay of the Soldiers of Solidarity and World Socialist Web Site, the United Auto Workers (UAW) rank and file were railroaded into narrowly approved the new four-year contract with Chrysler. The Detroit Free Press cited the results from a UAW statement: 56 percent of production workers, 51 percent of skilled-trade workers, 94 percent of office and clerical workers, and 79 percent of engineering workers voted in favor of the new labor pact. (Again with the percentages, rather than raw numbers. Hmmm.) Although the UAW leadership is crowing about their victory, eight locals that represent over 16K workers rejected the deal. They won't be too happy working under its provisions– especially if Ford workers win the job guarantees missing from the Chrysler agreement. Speaking of which, Chrysler is now free to announce its long-awaited product cull and close the plants making the duff products. Or did the UAW get them to agree to wait until Ford's sorted, before the full betrayal can be revealed?
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Hmmm. Is it in Chrysler’s advantage to spoil the Ford deal, or let Ford get suckered into a a deal less advantageous than their own?
Considering how the UAW realizes the consequences to the manufacturers, they will likely be easiest on Ford because Ford has the least monetary wiggle room of the three. GM and Chrysler had far deeper pockets and they made out fairly well. I imagine that Ford will get the best deal of the three. That, or Ford will be disadvantaged to the point of US-manufacturing death.
If they make the betrayal obvious and force the UAW and Ford into a hard confrontation, they might be able to bury Ford.
With the plummetting $$ at some point foreign built cars will be much more expensive.
Under those conditions they might be able to sell sh*t cars to a rapidly growing class of sub prime people for a while.