Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Event: Why GM should hope for a UAW victory.
The New York Times' Caucus Blog (which I normally enjoy) has posted a blatantly misleading post on the Candidates and the U.A.W. Specifically, it fails to mention Obama's high-profile support for the union, and even worse, it mischaracterizes the reasons for the strike in general. I managed to post a couple comments, and the better of the two sums up my reasons to support this particular strike (besides a general support for the U.A.W.). Unlike the 1998 strike, this strike is unique in that it is looking toward the horizon. That is, a reasonable U.A.W. victory basically mandates that GM take a reasonable approach toward attaining its own solvency. This is a step that GM's leadership has not taken, itself.
I've corrected my own typos below.
So many of these comments are rehashing the same points. If this post is about the political capital cost/gain of endorsing a strike, then the UAW ought to emphasize the following:
- For a decade the UAW has been making concessions, and not in a combative, strike-eager environment.
- In this round, the UAW has also granted GM their chief demand: a HUGE concession in the form of a trust to manage health expenses.
- Given the percentage of GM workers currently employed in the US (as UAW workers), the benefits everyone here is complaining about are no long a decisive issue for GM.
- The demands that have brought about this strike in the first place concern job security, not wages. GM is reluctant to grant these demands, frankly, because the UAW is the only union left with any power to direct the corporation's policy at all. In short, GM wants to downsize the UAW to irrelevancy.
- Company restructuring in the last several decades (ever since Roger Smith) has driven lines to design similar vehicles with a high margin of profitability. *This* is why a Chevy looks like a Pontiac looks like a Buick (looks like a Saturn). This is also why GM sales have foundered.
All of these observations lead to one interesting result: GM will be much better off if the UAW carries this strike. Why? Because most UAW members in GM have a greater stake in the company's long-term viability than your average GM shareholder. The workers' whole futures are at stake. Shareholder loyalty is only measured one quarter at a time.
In the end, GM has to start selling their cars again. They cannot continue to view their workforce as "excess fat," an excuse to avoid improving their product.
I am glad that Edwards and Obama are supporting the strikers... and I’d been leaning toward Hillary until now. Really, though, I see this as an issue of UAW self-promotion. They have to go public with their real priorities in a big way, and not let unlikely adversaries (like the New York Times) erroniously spin the story that this strike is about wages.
It isn’t.
— Posted by Connor
- For a decade the UAW has been making concessions, and not in a combative, strike-eager environment.
- In this round, the UAW has also granted GM their chief demand: a HUGE concession in the form of a trust to manage health expenses.
- Given the percentage of GM workers currently employed in the US (as UAW workers), the benefits everyone here is complaining about are no long a decisive issue for GM.
- The demands that have brought about this strike in the first place concern job security, not wages. GM is reluctant to grant these demands, frankly, because the UAW is the only union left with any power to direct the corporation's policy at all. In short, GM wants to downsize the UAW to irrelevancy.
- Company restructuring in the last several decades (ever since Roger Smith) has driven lines to design similar vehicles with a high margin of profitability. *This* is why a Chevy looks like a Pontiac looks like a Buick (looks like a Saturn). This is also why GM sales have foundered.
All of these observations lead to one interesting result: GM will be much better off if the UAW carries this strike. Why? Because most UAW members in GM have a greater stake in the company's long-term viability than your average GM shareholder. The workers' whole futures are at stake. Shareholder loyalty is only measured one quarter at a time.
In the end, GM has to start selling their cars again. They cannot continue to view their workforce as "excess fat," an excuse to avoid improving their product.
I am glad that Edwards and Obama are supporting the strikers... and I’d been leaning toward Hillary until now. Really, though, I see this as an issue of UAW self-promotion. They have to go public with their real priorities in a big way, and not let unlikely adversaries (like the New York Times) erroniously spin the story that this strike is about wages.
It isn’t.
— Posted by Connor
Labels: economics, EVENT, labor
0 comments.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Event: No Dwarves, No Cars, No What, Whatever (what ever).
Thank God the Flint Journal has continued it's 24-7 coverage of the Dwarf Decapitation Crisis. This is their third article on the subject in the last week.
Meanwhile, while the Journal gives the ongoing GM/UAW contracts the requisite nod, at least the New York Times is able to do the Journal's job for them.
Seriously, what does it say about a community's daily when local issues of crushing economic importance are better covered by a newspaper 600 miles away?
Labels: economics, EVENT, Flint, labor
0 comments.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Event: Socialist Convention.
The Democratic Socialists of America are throwing a convention this November 9-11, in Atlanta of all places.
I wish I had more money, so that I could go.
I also wish they had better web design, so that I could read about the convention without feeling like I'm reading about a preschool Easter Egg hunt. That has to be the least flattering picture of Bernie Sanders ever.
Labels: civil liberties, diplomacy, economics, environment, EVENT, health care, politics, poverty, U.S.A., war
0 comments.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Event: It will be Dayne Walling against Don Williamson.
Some big news here. The Flint Journal writes of yesterday's primary: Williamson vs. Walling: Newcomer shows mayor is vulnerable.
With 12% of the population voting, incumbent Don Williamson took the plurality. However two thirds of the votes were divided among his six challengers. As some predicted, Dayne Walling handily walked off with the challenger's spot, taking 23% of the vote.
In fact, after the decisive tally was completed, mayoral candidate Norm Bryant drove to Walling's HQ at Luigi's Restaurant to formally endorse him. Even if Bryant's votes went to Walling, and all of the other challengers' votes went to Williamson (an unlikely situation, since it was pretty much a pile-on upon the sitting mayor), the challenger would win in a general election of the same distribution.
The wild cards, of course, are in whether the greater turnout of a general election would affect this distribution, and whether Williamson's better funding will make a critical difference.
I'm planning to use this blog to support the Walling campaign, though strictly in an independent capacity. Williamson hasn't been completely ineffective as a mayor, but he's cost the city millions of dollars in expired federal grants. He has been able to paint over graffiti and pave the roads. Still, given the lack of more substantial progress due to his perpetual stalemate with the city council as well as state and federal agencies, he has not earned a second term. On top of this, his autocratic style and high-flown pronouncements are particularly damaging to a city struggling towards innovative solutions and expediencies. These are remedies that can only come about in the context of a vigorous, open dialogue and with the cooperation and oversight of many levels of government.
Dayne Walling may not have the grit between his teeth we expect from a "typical Flint mayor". Maybe we somehow associate GM layoffs with his equally young and well-coiffed predecessor, Matthew Collier. Maybe he seems too new to the scene. Maybe there is something to the suspicion that navigating Americorps is not the same as surviving a political scene so bloodied and angry that it makes Chicago seem tame.
And yet, Walling's background is not of incidental importance. If there is one strand we can draw between his Americorps work and the photos with President Clinton, his association with D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and his writing for The Uncommon Sense, it is an impulse toward public service and an understanding of political realities. As I've been saying for years, this is, in fact, precisely the combination Flint needs in any effective mayor. It is a combination from which Flint has not recently benefitted, with the possible exception of the sadly trunchated term of Interim Mayor Darnell Earley in 2002.
So I'm officially putting my support behind the Dayne Walling candidacy.
I support it emphatically.
It's worth mentioning from time to time, but I don't live in Flint anymore. I love my hometown, and follow the news there weekly. If I think I have something worthwhile to say about local politics, it's my right and privilege to say it. I won't apologize about posting, even if I end up posting from Pitcairn Island. However, I've gotten comments from Flint residents from time to time, and I always hope to receive more. I ask and encourage Flint locals to either comment on these posts, of if you'd like to approach me about posting something you wrote yourself, I can be contacted here.
Labels: economics, EVENT, Flint, Michigan, poverty
0 comments.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Event: :(
New York Times: Detroit is Outsold by Imports in U.S..
Labels: Detroit, economics, EVENT, Flint, Michigan
0 comments.
