Labor Unions and the People Who Love, and Hate, Them

Labor Unions and the People Who Love, and Hate, Them

. . . Admittedly and initially, the creation of united workers’ organizations may have served a critical function during the era when industries repressively and unconscionably dictated piddling wages and atrocious working conditions. I would like to agree with claims that the union movement in the United States established the foundations for America’s vast middle class, the indomitable engine for our progress.

I would concur with all that providing major labor union leaders and workers, Big Labor, concede the worm has turned 180 degrees and that over the past 50 years they have developed into the oppressive, greedy equals of nineteenth century businessmen and banker ”robber barons,” and worse.

Union excesses today are legion–think Wisconsin last winter–and many public unions are leading the pack, demanding and getting pay raises far beyond the inflation rate while 26 million Americans are under-employed, foreclosures are skyrocketing, and poverty is spreading wildly.

Still, the United Auto Workers, UAW, at Ford Motor Corporation take the greed cake even if the bigwigs at FoMoCo provided the incentive.

In July, Ford–the only Big 3 automaker that had the integrity to reject the 2009 Obamian bailouts which GM and Chrysler gladly accepted and have yet to pay back in full–announced it was giving tens of millions in executive bonuses while advising workers they were lucky to have jobs. In retaliation, UAW Ford authorized a strike.

Perspective is desperately needed here.

As with most major industry executives, Ford’s President and CEO Alan Mulally is grossly over-compensated for his efforts; Mulally’s July stock bonus of $56.5 million only added to the grossness level.

However, at the risk of seeming an industry shill, Mulally runs a $165 billion business, his company employs 164,000 people worldwide, and Ford earned a taxable $6.6 billion profit on $128 billion total revenue for 2010.

On the other hand, the average Ford UAW worker with perhaps a high school education earns approximately $58. per hour, almost $2400. a week, $124,000. a year, just for showing up and maybe watching robots affix rear view mirrors to Fusions. Also, in January, Ford’s hourly employees were awarded $5,000. in profit-sharing, the highest payouts in 10 years, on top of extremely generous employee and layoff benefits.

In brief, Mulally and company are rapacious SOB’s but Joe Average Ford is doing pretty damned well for himself too, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5494.)