The Kentucky Herald Leader reports that pro-union forces have formed "Toyota Owners for Fairness," a pressure group aimed at organizing Toyota's U.S. factories. It is, no doubt, a bizarre alliance. "It's a collaboration between the unions, the environmentalists and people of faith," revealed the Rev. John Rausch, group organizer and director of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia. (In case you were wondering about the tree-hugging portion of the program, "The campaign salutes the company for its environmental efforts but challenges it to hear workers' concerns.") Although the article makes no mention of any UAW financial contribution to the union supporters (or what kind of car Revered Rausch drives), the fact that Toyota Owners for Fairness launched their effort to unionize a Kentucky plant at a downtown Detroit church tells you pretty much all you need to know on that score. Meanwhile, workers at Toyota's Georgetown plant have set-up a rival group. "Truth Finders" recently bought a quarter-page ad in the Leader to refute claims of worker exploitation. Chief Truth Finder Marvin Robbins declined to name his financial backers, but insisted that Toyota had not contributed to the cause. Given that Georgetown has been union-free for some 20 years and the UAW's dwindling power within the industry, Rev. Rausch best pray for some divine intervention.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
The UAW is not content to ruin the 2.8 so they set their sights on Toyota. This is just great, I really want their cars to cost 1200 dollars more to cover the lavish benefits and wages required to build a car with.
Someone should remind the good reverend Toyota is not required to remain in this country.
I just don’t get where this sense of “entitlement” comes from. I like socialism. I like the idea that when one of us falls, there’s a system to help us. We may all need it, one day. But when people start abusing it or wanting more, that is wrong. Toyota have been treating their staff well (by all accounts) and the staff were happy with Toyota.
So, at what point did someone think “Hey, Toyota are screwing us! They’re treating us like idiots!”.
Maybe Toyota should let the staff know that they’re “looking at Mexico”. You know, just mention that their staff work for considerably less and there aren’t any import taxes into the United States……. ;O)
GS650G, the UAW did not ruin the domestic industry, it was their incomptant management. UAW workers already build the Corrola and the Tacoma for Toyota.
Katie, I’m sure the staff already knows that, after every vote taken the UAW has lost. Don’t confuse outside union organizers for disatisfied company employees.
Does this mean that the UAW will go for a VEBA and two-tier wages at the transplant factories? Uhh, right.
starlightmica I believe the VEBA is needed to cover the large existing retired workforce at GM etc that have a gold plated private health insurance type coverage. Toyota’s retired workers also have medical coverage but it is Medicare.
Unless we’ve worked in the Georgetown plant, or know someone who has, we don’t really know about the conditions there. I’ve read many comments from people who claim to work, or to have worked, in the plant, and who were critical of the conditions.
What we can depend on as factual is that some workers like to screw off, and would seek protection from a union in doing so. And we can also depend on there being supervisors who screw over workers and put them at risk, or fire them for invalid reasons.
I’m in favor of unions to protect workers as needed, and I’m confident that Toyota can avoid the fate of GM/Ford if the managers do their jobs. Lazy UAW workers might well have been a factor in the present state of the Big 2.x, but Roger Smith et al were not UAW members.
KatiePuckrik :
December 27th, 2007 at 10:30 am
“I just don’t get where this sense of “entitlement” comes from. I like socialism. I like the idea that when one of us falls, there’s a system to help us.”
the sense of entitlement comes from socialism. without the socialist system (which, like it or not, the US essentially has), today’s lame “students” wouldn’t turn into tomorrows screw-off line workers.
as for the idea that “when one of us falls, there’s a system to help,” think of how many charities and food banks, etc. exist in the US. think of how many more would exist if we weren’t taxed to death to pay for the inefficient socialist government welfare system. i know i’d have a lot less of a problem tithing at church if i hadn’t already tithed away 50% of my paycheck on taxes for welfare, schools when i don’t have kids, a war i don’t want, excise taxes on my booze just because they feel like it, medical care for other people while i have to pay for my own health insurance, social security for others when it won’t be there for me–all while i save my money privately for my own retirement. if you give me that half of my paycheck back, i’d gladly give up 10% of it to private charity. i’d be richer, and the charity would be richer.
now, back to the unions…i work in a union shop. the union contract *causes* bad management decisions. even if a strike never happens, the drama leading up to one wastes so many human resources that management always caves early…but that’s not the worst part. the union drives away the best employees and protects the worst. some of our best machinists have left us because they can make more money 5 miles away across the state border where the shops are union-free. we can’t pay them more to make them stay because that would be “unfair.” we can’t fire our mindless slugs because that would be “unfair.” we have to pass up excellent men for promotion because of seniority. the end result is that we have management growing more spineless by the day, we lose our best workers to someone who is allowed to pay them $2.00/hour more without going to jail, and we’re stuck paying $22/hour to idiots that cost far more than that when they start making bad product. even better–the slower they work, the more overtime is needed to get the job done. we have forklift drivers making $80,000/yr.
if people learned from the time they were in elementary school that they would not be coddled and they’d have to answer for their actions, we might actually have a chance of rewarding good behavior without encouraging the bad. private charities could afford to help you pick up the pieces, and people like me wouldn’t be scared to death to shell out tens of thousands of dollars on a union-made automobile.
One of the many problems with the union mentality is the core principle that seniority is the only factor which matters in setting pay, job preference and the like.
“I got here first” is not the way to organize for the best productivity and morale. Smart, hard working newer workers will quickly figure out that they need to get the *(&^ out and find the freedom to work to their potential and be rewarded for it.
NICKNICK, people don’t seem scared to death to buy Corollas and Tacomas. Don’t confuse whatever ones’ political take on unions is with the sorry product coming from Detroit. Unions may be good or bad but they are not what ails GM and Ford.
Jthorner the flip side of the argument is this, where I work senority applies to general jobs but we have jobs identified by management that are “best qualified”. Guess what, where I work for years those jobs were always awarded to young attractive females with no college education. I work in the south when the job was advertised 34,000 people applied in two weeks. I was 1 of 18 hired. I scored a perfect 100 on the examination and I have a college education. Where I work we probably don’t fit the typical blue collar stereotype. I drive an import and I vote republican, yet I am a union member by choice.
Sherman Lin:
“I believe the VEBA is needed to cover the large existing retired workforce at GM etc that have a gold plated private health insurance type coverage.”
Still think the UAW didn’t bring down the domestics? Maybe if the UAW could do math a little better they would have determined the goose laying the golden eggs was not going to be able to produce enough, yet they don’t give a shit: just give us what we want.
Your Union by choice, good for you. I pity the ones who have no choice but to join a union because they have control over the only jobs left in some areas.
It’s all going to come out in the wash when one of the 2.8 declares bankruptcy. The other 2 will probably be asked to take the workers in from the cold, only that ain’t going to happen.
Sherman Lin : My shop does not offer the choice–if you work there, you’re in. If there were a choice, things would be a lot better here. The people that are fantastic at their job wouldn’t be held back by the seniority rules. Perfect scores on entry exams, college education, good enough to be 1 of 18 out of 34,000…I guarantee you wouldn’t last two years in my shop. Frustration at being held back would send you across the border for better pay and more flexibility.
When I said “people like me” in regard to being afraid to buy a union-built corolla, i meant people *just* like me (or maybe JUST me).
i know that the general public isn’t afraid–they eat corollas up like candy. i’m paranoid by nature, and libertarian by persuasion, so union-built autos aren’t for me.
Katie, when you wrote “I like socialism. I like the idea that when one of us falls, there’s a system to help us” you were expressing admiration for two different things. Socialism is an economic system based upon collective or government ownership of the means of production. A “system to help us” refers to the welfare state. Your country’s Labour Party combined the two, with nationalization and an array of social insurance/welfare programs.
But workers can be brutalized under socialism, as they were under capitalism in Dickens’ time. (Consider labor conditions in North Korea.) And a mostly-capitalistic market economy, such as the US, can have “safety nets” for all sorts of unfortunate people (though never enough “safety” to suit the Left, of course).
The Detroit 2.8 became unionized because they treated workers badly and there was lots of prosperity to share with labor. They stayed unionized because under the Wagner Act unions got the whip hand and oligopolistic pricing power permitted labor’s demands to be passed on to consumers. Now that the 2.8 have lost pricing power, high labor and retiree costs are among the factors that threaten their existence.
50merc
Well spoken, however you forgot to mention dreadfal management in what threatens the 2.8’s existence. The people running these companies over the years and the current mangagers are clueless.
I have worked at Toyota’s Georgetown plant for over 16 years. I can tell you that it is a great place to work. Yes, the work is hard and the hours are long but some team members make nearly $90,000 a year when you add in bonuses and overtime.
The UAW has been trying to organize our plant for 20 years. Last year they decided to launch a new organizing tatic by teaming up with the AFL-CIO’s Jobs With Justice organization. The JWJ organized a panel of pro-union activists to hear testimony from 4 pro-union current & former workers. Two of the workers who testified had been previously fired for violating Toyota’s policies. They accessed a confidential document that was left unsecured on Toyota’s computer system. The document ended up in the Detroit Free Press. The document stated that Toyota intended to cut the growth of its labor costs. In other words – smaller pay raises and fewer new hires. It did NOT mention pay cuts for Toyota’s team members. The third worker testified that Toyota did not have enough restrooms. When Toyota asked this lady what area of the plant was experiencing a restroom shortage she replied “no comment”. So how is Toyota supposed to address a “restroom shortage” if the accuser won’t reveal where the problem is? The fourth person to testify VOLUNTARILY quit her job at Toyota 2 years prior to the JWJ campaign. The JWJ campaign was intended to pressure Toyota into allowing the UAW to unionize its team members WITHOUT letting the team members vote. Obviously the JWJ campaign failed.
The anti-union group, http://www.nouaw.com, exposed the money trail between the UAW and the JWJ panelists. The anti-union folks revealed this info in an ad in the Lexington Herald Leader. The site http://www.nouaw.com has links to the ad, Toyota’s response to the JWJ and to the other despicable tactics that the UAW has used at Toyota. Check out the threats and insults that the union organizers have used.
Father John Rausch was one of the pro-union panelist for the JWJ campaign. He is now leading the Toyota Owners for Fairness campaign which is a broader campaign to pressure Toyota into handing over it’s team members to the UAW. Why is the UAW refusing to call for a SECRET BALLOT NLRB ELECTION? Shouldn’t they let the team members step into a voting booth and vote on the issue of unionizaton? The issue should be decided by the team members, not the general public.