When I first heard this demand my jaw dropped. I thought it was ridiculous. And my capitalist instinct tells me it is a nonstarter. However, I saw an interview on a business channel with a professor who has studied this in depth. There are a lot of countries who have experimented with this and productivity doesn't appear to suffer. So I looked it up with a quick search:
Also, it was over 100 years ago that Henry Ford (rabid antisemite) reduced the work week from 6 days to 5 days and doubled worker pay from $2.50 / day to $5 / day. This was considered radical at the time. Now it is a worldwide practice.
Thanks much joj!
I've not expressed my opinion on this because I can see both sides even though I think this would be a potential disaster to productivity to this country.
If we just do the math and use common sense. A worker can't accomplish the same amount of work/productivity in 32 hours as they can in 40 hours.
However, with automation, advancements in technology and progress with the passage of time ......you gave a wonderful example with Henry Ford- we should be striving to make our lives more enjoyable not more burdensome.
My dad was an industrial engineer for Ford for 35 years and I worked my way thru college at the Dearborn Rouge Assembly Plant-making Mustang-2s and the specialty foundry. Dad and I have had many hundreds of discussions on Henry Ford and the amazing history of Ford Motor. Earlier this month was the last time, in fact. Dad loves to watch educational videos on this topic all day.
I found it interesting that you brought up him being anti Semite. I do remember that about him, since you mentioned it but never think about it. Henry Fords position on Jews NEVER comes up with Dad and I just because it doesn't matter to a family that isn't Jewish.
This is relevant for you, being Jewish and I respect that and understand Henry Ford, though being a great man, also was extremely flawed with that position.
In our recent discussion on Jews, joj we both agreed that hard work and study define the mindset which contributes most to the wonderful success of many Jewish people.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/98420/
My first thought, applying that mindset to the UAW demands is that it doesn't fit into the mindset of being an extremely hard worker to achieve great things.
On the other hand, one can also interpret it to mean that potential PERSONAL achievements are limited, the more time you spend in a factory working for somebody else.
To be honest, many of the Jewish people that I've known have higher goals than toiling in a factory and frittering their lives away but that might be stereo typing even if it seems to match your own view about the CULTURE and TRADITION.
There's a section in there about his being an anti Semite too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, and his conversion of the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.
Ford was born on a farm in Michigan's Springwells Township, leaving home at age 16 to work in Detroit. It was a few years before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the later half of the 1880s, Ford began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He officially founded Ford Motor Company in 1903, after prior failures in business but success in constructing automobiles.
Previous thread:
UAW strike
7 responses |
Started by metmike - Sept. 15, 2023, 12:48 a.m.
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Most people in the Detroit area hate his guts and will always hate his guts. Almost his entire appeal is to rural America. Detroit people will NOT be listening to his messages or converted to his side, no matter if any of them ring truth about Biden's hard push for electric cars to replace the future of UAWs.
They will be seeing his visit as the devil trying to exploit the current UAW circumstances/weaknesses to trick people into joining his evil ways.
Going to Detroit to appeal to people that are NEVER Donald Trump shows how delusional Trump is.
Watch what happens when he goes there! Issues don't matter anymore with Biden and Trump. Whoever is hated the most will lose in 2024. When you hate somebody, your mind is completely closed to anything they say PERIOD.
Here's a sample of the current IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE mindset that he brought on himself:
Trump’s speeches are terrifying echoes of those heard in Europe in the 1930s. They are appeals to labor by a candidate supported by heavily armed, fascist political formations.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-rally-uaw-detroit/
Donald Trump is coming to Detroit on September 27 for a prime-time speech opposite the sideshow that is GOP primary debate in California. He will, as NPR put it, “join striking union autoworkers” and appeal for their support. His argument will be that labor’s enemy is not the plutocratic bosses of the automobile industry. It’s China. It’s Mexican workers. It’s Biden’s “woke” push for electric vehicles. Trump will deliver the kind of racist, divisive speech that Henry Ford would have adored. In this perilous political moment, Trump’s appearance could chip away at the multiracial, cross-border solidarity that the UAW needs to win this strike.
It is not only in the UAW’s interest to oppose Trump. Trump’s speeches are terrifying echoes of those heard in Europe in the 1930s and in Latin America in the 1970s and ’80s. They are all open appeals to labor by a candidate supported by proudly fascist, nationalist, and heavily armed political formations. Labor historically has been the force that repels fascism. A split labor movement in the face of an authoritarian candidate with presidential aspirations would be a disaster marked by state and street violence. We need to support this strike and support the UAW. We also need the UAW to support the broader efforts to deliver Trump into the dustbin of history. The future of the labor movement depends upon it—and the future for the rest of us may depend upon it as well.
Trump's Potential Nomination Reignites Democrats’ Enthusiasm for Biden
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/20230921_US_WPAi.pdf
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/politics/fain-trump-detroit/index.html
New York CNN —
The head of the United Auto Workers union is publicly denouncing former President Donald Trump ahead of his visit next week to Detroit as part of a plea to current and former union members.
“Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in an emailed statement. “We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class.”
In his Detroit speech, Trump may sense a political opportunity from the autoworkers strike, attempting to gain support from working-class Americans who are increasingly disappointed in the direction of the US economy. Trump’s rally would take place concurrently with the second Republican presidential primary debate in California, which Trump plans to skip. He also skipped the first debate.
Union members, once a reliable Democratic voting block, have gradually gravitated to Republican candidates, according to CNN pollsand the AFL-CIO.
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Rs will claim that this is Trump with his MAGA agenda that he's trying to communicate to the UAW hourly employees.
He completely sabotaged any future effort for that to matter after he spent 2 months, abusing his power as president using diabolical, treasonous schemes to overturn the results of the most secure and proven election in history that he lost by ever single authentic standard.
Trump's agenda doesn't matter any more! He's trying to sell something that people don't care about because of WHO HE IS, based on his actions.
His die hart supporters will support him no matter him violating the Constitution, our democracy and his most important oath to the American people. The far right snake oil has convinced them to believe in The Big Lie.
The other side feels just as strongly and personal about Donald Trump and there are more of "the other side" that hate Trump's guts than there are those that worship him.
Whatever he says in Detroit, it will go like this:
1. If you are for Trump now, you will embrace whatever messages he delivers
2. If you are against Trump now, you will vehemently reject everything that he says. The UAW president is one of them! The only reason that he isn't coming out even stronger against Trump is because he's NOT a Biden fan and is trying to balance the appearance dynamics which can possibly maximize the benefits to the UAW.
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I was a member of the UAW for several years while working my way thru college and working for Ford in the mid/late 1970s at the Dearborn Assembly Plant-making Mustang 2s and also the metal foundry in the Rouge complex.
Most people are shocked at the enormity of the Rouge complex!
https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-fords-river-rouge-complex/
Clip: Season 25 Episode 2 | 2m 41s
The River Rouge factory complex took 10 years to build and was compromised of 93 buildings which housed 120 miles of conveyors. There were 15 miles of roadways and 100 miles of railroad within the plant just to move things around. Water pumped from the Detroit River supplied the complex with 700 million gallons a day—as much water as consumed by Detroit, Cincinnati and New Orleans combined.
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The Rouge complex measures 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide by 1 mile (1.6 km) long, including 93 buildings with nearly 16 million square feet (1.5 km2) of factory floor space. With its own docks in the dredgedRouge River, 100 miles (160 km) of interior railroad track, its own electricity plant, and integrated steel mill, the titanic Rouge was able to turn raw materials into running vehicles within this single complex, a prime example of vertical-integration production.[6]
Some of the River Rouge buildings were designed by architect Albert Kahn. His Rouge glass plant was regarded at the time as an exemplary and humane factory building, with ample natural light provided through windows in the ceiling. Since the late 20th century, several buildings at the Rouge complex have been renovated and converted to "green" structures with a number of environmentally friendly features.
In the summer of 1932, through Edsel Ford's support, Mexican artist Diego Rivera was invited to study the facilities at the Rouge. These studies informed his set of murals known as Detroit Industry.[6]
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Growing up and working there made it seem less impressive from having a mindset that didn't see the rest of the world in comparison yet.
But it's one of a kind for the United States. All those factories/industry were putting out MASSIVE amounts of pollution before the Clear Water and Clean Air Acts were passed in the 1970's.
The Rouge River was the most polluted waterway in MI and the almost the worst in the country. Dugh! Massive amounts of untreated industrial waste (and raw sewage) was dumped into the Rouge.
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That has all been cleaned up and the Rouge River has been a wonderful environmental success story!
Speaking of unions, how about the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa?
Jimmy Hoffa
Started by mcfarm - July 29, 2020, 6:35 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/56975/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa
James Riddle Hoffa (born February 14, 1913 – disappeared July 30, 1975; declared presumed dead July 30, 1982) was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971.
From an early age, Hoffa was a union activist, and he became an important regional figure with the IBT by his mid-twenties. By 1952, he was the national vice-president of the IBT and between 1957 and 1971 he was its general president. He secured the first national agreement for teamsters' rates in 1964 with the National Master Freight Agreement. He played a major role in the growth and the development of the union, which eventually became the largest by membership in the United States, with over 2.3 million members at its peak, during his terms as its leader.
Hoffa became involved with organized crime from the early years of his Teamsters work, a connection that continued until his disappearance in 1975. He was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud in 1964 in two separate trials. He was imprisoned in 1967 and sentenced to 13 years. In mid-1971, he resigned as president of the union as part of a commutation agreement with U.S. president Richard Nixon and was released later that year, but Hoffa was barred from union activities until 1980. Hoping to regain support and to return to IBT leadership, he unsuccessfully tried to overturn the order.
Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975. It is generally accepted that he was murdered by the Mafia, and in 1982 he was declared legally dead. Hoffa's legacy and the circumstances of his disappearance continue to stir debate.[1]
One of the greatest men in American history that many people know very little about.
Greatest UAW leader ever!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reuther
Walter Philip Reuther (/ˈruːθər/; September 1, 1907 – May 9, 1970) was an American leader of organized labor and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history.[1] He saw labor movements not as narrow special interest groups but as instruments to advance social justice and human rights in democratic societies.[1] He leveraged the UAW's resources and influence to advocate for workers' rights, civil rights, women's rights, universal health care, public education, affordable housing, environmental stewardship and nuclear nonproliferation around the world.[1] He believed in Swedish-style social democracy and societal change through nonviolentcivil disobedience.[2][3] He cofounded the AFL-CIO in 1955 with George Meany.[4] He survived two attempted assassinations, including one at home where he was struck by a 12-gauge shotgun blast fired through his kitchen window.[5] He was the fourth and longest serving president of the UAW, serving from 1946 until his death in 1970.[6]
As the leader of five million autoworkers including retirees and their families,[7] Reuther was influential inside the Democratic Party.[8] Following the Bay of Pigs in 1961, PresidentJohn F. Kennedy sent Reuther to Cuba to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Fidel Castro.[9] He was instrumental in spearheading the creation of the Peace Corps[10][11][12] and in marshaling support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[13][14] the Voting Rights Act of 1965,[15]Medicare and Medicaid,[16] and the Fair Housing Act.[14] He met weekly in 1964 and 1965 with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House to discuss policies and legislation for the Great Society and War on Poverty.[17] The Republican Party was wary of Reuther, leading presidential candidate Richard Nixon to say about John F. Kennedy during the 1960 election, "I can think of nothing so detrimental to this nation than for any President to owe his election to, and therefore be a captive of, a political boss like Walter Reuther."[18] Conservative politician Barry Goldwater declared that Reuther "was more dangerous to our country than Sputnik or anything Soviet Russia might do."[19]
A powerful ally of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement,[20] Reuther marched with King in Detroit, Selma,[21]Birmingham,[22]Montgomery,[23] and Jackson.[24][25] When King and others including children were jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, and King authored his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, Reuther arranged $160,000 for the protestors' release.[26] He also helped organize and finance the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, delivering remarks from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial shortly before King gave his historic "I Have a Dream" speech on the National Mall.[22][27] An early supporter of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, he asked Robert F. Kennedy to visit and support Chavez.[28] He served on the board of directors for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)[29] and was one of the founders of Americans for Democratic Action.[30] A lifetime environmentalist, Reuther played a critical role in funding and organizing the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970.[31] According to Denis Hayes, the principal national organizer of the first Earth Day, "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!"[31]
Reuther was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.[32] He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, who remarked at the ceremony, "Walter Reuther was an American visionary so far ahead of his times that although he died a quarter of a century ago, our Nation has yet to catch up to his dreams."[33]
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My Dad puts him up there at the absolute top for greatest Americans(Dad is 98 now. He‘s lived his life in Detroit, working for Ford in management as an industrial engineer but was always for the workers)
This is my Dad's favorite video!
Walter Reuther on the UAW & Collective Bargaining (1958)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVtXB0P5P9Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV6BSEmAm-U
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Marches Down Woodward; Walter Reuther is on the left and Reverend C.L. Franklin on the right in the hat next to King (Reuther Library, WSU)
On June 23, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, along with numerous Detroit church leaders, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and UAW President Walter Reuther, led a march down Woodward Avenue to protest unequal treatment of Black people both around the country and in Detroit. Police estimates placed the crowd that marched between 125,000 and 200,000, making it the largest civil rights demonstration in the United States at that time
The march culminated with a program of speakers and musical performances at Cobo Arena, where over 20,000 people, along with many others gathered outside listening to loud speakers, heard King present remarks that foreshadowed his famous “I Have a Dream” speech delivered in Washington D.C. two months later.
Martin Luther King’s ‘dream’ speech
Started by metmike - Aug. 26, 2023, 1:08 p.m.
The average farmer will have his 32 hours in by Wednesday noon!
Biden's team was obviously scheming to use his visit as part of a new political ad.
Biden campaign hits Trump directly in new Michigan ad
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4225182-biden-campaign-hits-trump-directly-in-new-ad/
President Biden’s reelection campaign hit directly at former President Trump in a new ad focused on Michigan voters on Wednesday.
The 30-second spot, which marks the first direct attack against Trump in an ad, was released ahead of the former president’s visit to Detroit — and a day after Biden joined a picket line with auto workers in Michigan. It will run on national cable channels and on TV and digital boards in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Lansing as part of Team Biden-Harris’ 16-week, $25 million ad campaign aimed at battleground states.
"He says he stands with autoworkers but as president, Donald Trumppassed tax breaks for his rich friends while automakers shuttered their plants and Michigan lost manufacturing jobs,” the ad says. “Manufacturing is coming back to Michigan because Joe Bidendoesn’t just talk, he delivers.”
Biden on Tuesday joined the ongoing United Auto Workers strike, sporting a ball cap and a bullhorn, marking a first-of-its kind moment for a sitting president. Trump is set to give a speech while in Michigan on Wednesday at Drake Enterprises, a nonunion manufacturer in Clinton Township.
I don't believe a thing Biden or Trump say here. Not a word. They don't give a darn about any of these people. They are only trying to use them for their own self serving objectives.
Thanks much, cutworm!
I totally get people wanting a 32 hour work week and wanting a 40% pay increase. Who wouldn’t WANT that?
I totally get that inflation has made everything less affordable on current wages.
I totally get a union trying to get the most it can for the people they represent/work for.
However, it seems like an extreme disconnect away from the American work ethic (unless we are now…..just a bunch of spoiled, UN appreciating, lazy arses that don’t want to work, to ask for a whopping +40% MORE pay for -20% LESS work.
You want to provide big incentives for our manufacturing industries to move to China or Mexico or Brazil Because labor and other costs are cheaper?
Increase wages by 40% and reduce production by 20%.
You want greater incentive to push harder and sooner for manufacturing industries to shift towards more automation to replace expensive labor?
Same answer.
An interesting element to this is that it WILL make gasoline powered cars more expensive.
One of the problems facing electric cars sales is that gasoline powered cars are too cheap.
No way the sticker price of every car made with UAW labor won’t go up substantially, which WILL hurt sales with certainty.
These are wonderful benefits for UAW workers but it will come at a price.
The law of unintended consequences!
I get that they are concerned with their pay checks NOW and not what might happen in the future based on speculation.
WASN'T IT FORD THAT 1ST USED SOYBEANS FOR THE DASH?
I 100% DISAGREE WITH A 32 HOUR WEEK WITH A 40 HR. PAYCHECK!
And the worst 2 candidates for president in history continue to USE this for their political agenda, while the media USES it to give us biased interpretations, depending on what their readers/viewers want to read/hear or what their reporters want people to think:
Even people coming to rally's fake their positions, pretending to be UAW members:
Big Three Automakers’ Reputations Plummet as UAW Strike Rages Two weeks into the largest auto strike in U.S. history, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis face a falling approval rating from consumers, a new survey shows.
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/26/uaw-strike-big-three-reputation/
Inflation - The bipartisan 1.7 trillion dollar infrastructure legislation is not the cause of the current inflation. That spending is in the pipeline or yet to be in the pipeline. The inflation we are experiencing is the "Helicopter money" policy enacted in the previous administration as well as the Fed in response to the pandemic is the obvious cause.
But that doesn't matter. In politics, the responsibility of the economic landscape, good and bad, falls to those in office when the problems flare. So it's all on Biden. I tuned into Fox News to see the coverage of the first-ever vacating of the speaker of the house in our nation's history. It was inflation, crime, and borders. Beat that drum.
So politically, Biden is in trouble. Although with Trump as his opponent he always has a fighting chance.
Thanks, I know what you mean on the Fox coverage, joj.
Amazingly quiet most of the time, so I watched CNN most of the evening.
However, Hannity did cover it:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/99397/#99409
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I still think Biden will not run.
Estimated additional labor cost with wages and bennies is $3500 per vehicle
Thanks much, tjc!
Hopefully we don't get into a situation of demand dropping and ending up in layoffs )-:
Regardless, this seems reasonable compared to the earlier demands/position that was extreme.
THEY'RE TRYIN' TO MAKE IT TO WHERE "CASH FOR CLUNKERS" WILL RETURN & IF YA DRIVE A VEHICLE OLDER THA 5 YEARS OLD ~ THEY'LL TAKE IT FROM YOU & GIVE YOU WHAT THEY THINK IT'S WORTH = SQUAT
GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEED, IS A REAL KILLER.
JUST MY OPINION, IS ALL
I am all in favour of a working person getting paid a fair wage, but I believe this new contract will not end well for workers. The auto manufacturers are already producing cars the public does not want, nor can afford. Who ever thought a pickup truck would be $75k? With the confusion as to what type of vehicle to produce and escalating prices, full employment would appear doubtful for the duration of these new contracts.
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A BELIEVER IN: "IF YA DON'T THINK YOUR JOB PAYS YOU WHAT THINK YOU'RE WORTH... GO FIND ANOTHER JOB, THAT WILL!"
Auto stocks went down after the deal was reached. Perhaps the market's way of saying the workers got too much and the auto companies won't be profitable.
joj,
You sound like somebody that understands how to read market reactions compared to market expectations............which would be true!