Even though Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne’s disparaging comments about its over-reliance on Italian manufacturing have opened the door for more US manufacturing opportunities, United Auto Workers boss Bob King wants to make it clear that he won’t be taking advantage of Fiat’s rift with its Italian unions. Fiat tells Automotive News [sub] that failure to secure Italian union agreement with its new manufacturing plan could send increased production to Serbia, Poland and even the United States. King’s response [via Michigan Public Radio]:
They (automakers) won’t be pitting one worker in one country against another. We’re going to be part of working with our global partners in other unions and building a global middle class – and rebuild the American middle class, really.
Yes, in the brutally competitive international labor market, there is a way for everyone to win… really.
Actually, King’s call for unity rings a bit hollow, considering he was just trying to woo Italian suppliers to the Michigan area a little over a month ago. And why wouldn’t he prioritize the interests of his workers over the feelings of feisty Italian unions? Possibly because Fiat is coming under fire from Italian politicians like Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of Italy’s Lower House, who points out that
If Fiat is a giant, this is because for a very long time Italian taxpayers have prevented Fiat’s collapse.
This will not end well.
How do you explain to an unemployed Tool&Die UAW member that it’s better that he remain unemployed so that Foreigners keep their jobs?
They are actually going to remain unemployed so King can fund retired UAW members’ undeserved and absurd pension plans. So business as usual, really.
King is right: pitting the working classes of any one nation against another is a really good way to instigate a race to the bottom in terms of pay and working conditions. It doesn’t benefit the majority of humanity in the long term. Heck, it probably doesn’t help the short-term much, either.
Personally, I’d like to see them try. There’s real dissatisfaction with the status quo, and it wouldn’t take much to have the middle and lower class across several nations start asking why they’re being asked to suffer austerity measures while the rich are, by all appearances, getting much richer.
In reality, the very prospect of trans-national organized labour so terrifies the wealthy that they’ll do anything and everything to stop it, and when you consider that the media is owned by the wealthy this is probably easy to achieve. In the US the idea is functionally dead on arrival and the middle/lower class turned against itself and it’ll take things getting much worse before the right-leaning half of the middle class wakes up and realizes the patsy they’re being played for.
"In reality, the very prospect of trans-national organized labour so terrifies the wealthy that they’ll do anything and everything to stop it"
Actually, p, it’s a transnational government that we are really worried about. A transnational union is so far-fetched that it is no worry at all. And geez, generalize much?
Well, so far the UAW has a piss-poor record of protecting the middle class (try to find it in Michigan), due to the last 50 years of inflated wages and unrealistic demands. I doubt Bob King is going to change that, no matter how many Toyota dealers he pickets for giving good jobs to American workers.
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/06/20/new-uaw-president-urges-picketing-of-toyota-dealers/
Japanese Unions aren’t doing much better either protecting their middle class.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/10/will-toyota-leave-japan/
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/09/lastest-japanese-export-car-factories/
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/07/japanese-carmakers-are-leaving-the-country/
Interesting attitude. We won’t poach on another country’s labor force, but it’s OK for a country like China to steal ours. Hasn’t King learned anything? Or was Rahm Emanuel right?
Toyota and Honda has the cure for the UAW disease which ruined the Domestics.
I once caught a fish t-h-i-s big.
The UAW has been losing members at quite a clip. They’ve even attempted to organize workers at hospitals. They should follow the market and go global. If it’s about “workers rights,” rather than “American workers’ rights,” then they really have to step up.
King is just a stupid little runt parasite…He even looks like one.
Why doesn’t the infantile freak just start his own car company instead of getting their political terrorists in DC to steal for them?
He is doing it wrong. Trying to sing L’Internazionale with an American accent and without a fisted hand? OMG!
Well throw away your UAW stereotypes cause not only them is going global, they is coming for the smart ones.
Extra, Extra – Read all about it…….
“UAW Local 5810, was organized through majority signup procedure in 2008” representing “6,500 postdocs perform vital research on topics that include cancer, stem cells, climate change, alternative fuels, and many other cutting-edge fields in science and engineering” at the University of California.
The UAW – Coming to a University near you! Brought to you by – Postdoctoral neuroscience researchers!!
http://www.uaw.org/story/first-ever-contract-university-california
Now what would prompt some of the smartest people in the USA to join the UAW?
Now what would prompt some of the smartest people in the USA to join the UAW?
Generally speaking, post-docs and TAs are treated like crap and paid like it, too. I know a few who have gone on strike with the assistance of a “sponsor” union because their wages were generally well below the poverty line and their hours kept down to avoid their ever qualifying for benefits.
You’ll see more and more of this as a) the unions get more desperate and b) the middle and lower classes start wondering how, if there’s all this money, why it seems to be flowing one way only.
This exposes the inherent contradiction of the UAW. The rank and file think they are an American brotherhood while the UAW leadership has a global collectivist labor vision.
Car buyers can, with clear conscious, purchase any car built with foreign unionized labor .
And the UAW better not say anything untoward about our Mexican built cars or we’ll invoke the ‘you better not speak ill of brown skinned folk’ race card.
I understand King has to say these things to fire up the members, but c’mon. He’s talking about the union and worker rights as though he really believes that bs. The union hasn’t been about worker rights in 50 yrs… unless you count wages entirely out of whack with market demand ‘worker rights’.