On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:13:42 -0800, "Hawke"
wrote:


"JohnB" wrote in message
...

"SteveB" toquervilla@zionvistas wrote in message
...
Sorry to give you this dose of reality,

but unions are already busted.

And they got busted from the inside out.

And it looks like they are going to take the automotive manufacturers down
with them.....

That's typical. Even when everyone knows that the reason the "Big 3" are
losing money is because of the horrible way the management has run the
companies and the lousy decisions they made over the years some people still
think it's the fault of the people who work for them. Blame the victims.
Even today I heard right winger Bill Krystol say on Fox News that the
workers only account for ten percent of auto costs. So, the fact is it's not
the workers who brought down the auto companies it's their management. But
the knee jerk reaction to blame unions by right wingers never goes away
despite the facts that say otherwise.

==I think they would still blame unions
for things going wrong if they didn't exist.== {emphasis added}

Hawke
============
You are 101% right on this point.

It is correctly said that a company generally gets the union they
deserve, and if they don't deserve one, they won't get one.

FWIW -- it is well worthwhile reviewing the managerial
actions/policies that existed at the car companies prior to the
establishment of the unions to put things in context.

Many companies would be lost without their union as a reliable
excuse for failure and rationale for managerial inaction, and
would have to fall back on blaming the environmentalists, the tax
code or the schools for turning out unqualified workers.

While bad management relations with their unions are indeed a
significant symptom of organizational problems, they are exactly
that, symptoms and not causes. The huge majority of hourly
employees want to punch in, do their jobs in reasonable safety
and comfort, punch out and go home, periodically getting an
honest paycheck and have no interest in playing "grab-ass" with
management over work rules, seniority, or anything else.

Many years ago, a division of a Fortune 500 company that I worked
for bought a rust-belt company that produced OEM air brakes and
compressors, which had fallen on hard times, and we had some of
their executives/managers "parachute" in to tell us how to run
things. [Actually more like migrating seagulls -- they flew in
-- squawked a lot -- s**t on everything and made a big mess --
and flew out leaving someone else to clean up their mess].

They were against anything and everything that was not the way it
was done before, regardless of the fact that this did not work
well [was slow], that considerable progress had been made in
manufacturing techniques since the 1940s-50s when much of their
product line had been designed, and this was one of the major
reasons the company was sold out from under them.

Several times the excuse was given when a required processing
change was suggested "but the union won't let us," the problem
being we were a non-union shop.

As much as anything else this explained to me why their company
was sold. This got to be a standing joke at management meetings
where every proposal/suggestion was greeted with a chorus of "but
the union won't let us."

The group VP issued a memo forbidding its use, as it was
"antagonizing" the people that were there from the acquired
division to "help us."

I found out later that the executives/managers/supervisors from
the acquired rust-belt company had also received a stiff
memo/directive from the group VP instructing them to minimize
their contacts with the hourly employees at our location, and to
limit their "suggestions" to technical/production issues and
avoid advice on labor/management relations issues.


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).