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Unions Are Good
It’s easier to fire workers in Europe than in UNIONISED US plants.
This is the experience of the boss of Valeo, a French car-parts manufacturer that has gone through some tough downsizing in recent years:
Valeo attacks US union system
It is easier to close factories in worker-friendly Europe than in the supposedly free-market US because of the “archaic” practices of American unions, according to the head of one of France’s largest industrial groups.
Thierry Morin, chairman and chief executive of Valeo, the largest listed European car parts maker, has shut or sold 60 factories in the past four years and cut the workforce at many others as he fought to turn round deep losses. The comments come as the United Auto Workers union, which dominates worker relations at the US-owned carmakers, is being pressed to provide financial relief to General Motors, the world’s biggest carmaker by number of vehicles built.
“There is a good management at GM and Ford,” Mr Morin, who counts both companies as customers, told the Financial Times. “But unfortunately they suffer from such an archaic system.”
He said non-unionised factories, such as the car plants built across the anti-union southern states by Japanese, Korean and European manufacturers, did not suffer from the same problems.
One of the first acts of Mr Morin when he took over Valeo in 2001 was to put its loss-making US subsidiary into chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to resolve a stand-off with the IUE electrical union over jobs and pay in Rochester, New York. The group has closed or sold 60 factories around the world since then, and shifted half its workforce to low-cost countries in eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.
“It is more complicated to close down a plant in North America than in Europe,” Mr Morin said. “Maybe it comes from the fact that there is less of a safety net afterwards for the workers in the US.”
I have little to add to that except that without unions, all workers get fucked
Don’t let’s forget the unions. They can seem to be out of touch and fighting for outdated “privileges”, but they are really fighting so that everybody gets decent working wages and working conditions. Don’t let them down.
Well, it seems like it is left to me to play devil’s advocate here. Which is a strange turn of events, as I am probably more radical left-wing than anyone here.
I have little to add to that except that without unions, all workers get fucked
Unions are as guilty of fucking workers as anyone else. Have any of you ever actually worked for a living? Have you seen unions in action?
Unions officials, by and large, are undemocratic pig-swill. The idea of a democratic workplace vote is as about remote as real democracy in America.
Unions are just another power-structure. Usually controlled by not-too-bright chancers who are easy to control and manipulate. Without exception, every union in Australia, America, and the UK, have sold out anyway. They have been an anachronism for a long time. If an IUE electrical union worker in Rochester, New York wanted better pay and conditions, he would have been well aware that he could simply have gotten up off his arse and moved somewhere else. Or hung out his own shingle and gouged as a self-employed electrician or whatever.
Unions were always just another way or controlling workers pay and conditions at an absolute minimum. Even the tactics of unions have always been suspect. Are you aware that most union strikes in large manufacturing always occured at a time when stock levels were too high. When they did force ‘concessions’ or higher wages, it usually turned out to mean that it would take about three years to recoup lost wages from the strike action.
Unions, without exception, have traded away all social gains. France may have a 35 hour working week, but in Australia, you either have the choice of extended unpaid overtime over and above a 40 hour week, or the new paradigm of a lifetime of “permanent part time” where you have to survive of an hourly rate and struggle to get more than 19 hours a week.
In Australia, the exception is the “public service” (the army of lower middle class civil servants), but otherwise, there is no job security for anyone.
I find the comment “but they are really fighting so that everybody gets decent working wages and working conditions. Don’t let them down.” almost laughable. Unions have always worked for vested interests. First, and foremost, any union official has worked first for his own benefit and aggrandisment. In Australia, a good stepping-stone for politics, as the “useless as tits on a bull” Australian Labor Party (ALP) is affiliated with the union movement.
Maybe Australia is ahead of the pack in some areas. But here is a brief summary of how things work in this brave new world.
First, there has been a massive shift in how “capitalism” works. Other than digging crap out of the ground in Western Australia (WA being one giant mining organization) – there is no industry to speak of.
The rest of the country works as a “service economy”, on the back of mining industry. A service economy means that we all get paid by doing each others laundry.
At the top of the pile, you have the medical profession, legal and others, who make their easy money by recycling the exorbitant taxation.
Taxation always hits the “middle income” hardest. This serves two purposes. First, it prevents any middle class people from getting ahead too far and becoming to uppity, and secondly, the income from the middle income classes can be redistributed to the army of unemployed and unemployable, preventing any social unrest while enabling the maintenance of a “structural unemployment rate” that is essential in controlling those who are employed.
The really important shift, is that Capital and Finance are no longer and engine for growth and prosperity. There is too much risk in this, no guarantee of endless and increasing profits.
So now we have “privitisation” (no ‘z’ as the one lasting legacy of Whitlam was to officially change the spelling over every word that has a ‘z’ to an ‘s’). Privitisation is just another code word for “socialise the costs, privitise the profits”.
So far, anything that has any sort of a monopoly has been privitised. All the great and profitable Mutual insurance funds and the like have long gone (now, all profits go to Allianz or whatever they are called.)
Collusion between ‘government’ and ‘industry’ means that driving through Sydney or Melbourne these days is impossible without an electronic eTag. Contracts to build road infrastructure is given in closed-door bids to private companies. This ‘private road’ links between publicly funded roads are a licence to print money.
All the utilities, electricity and so forth, we all build with public money. Now, all this is privatised. Profits from these previously public entities contributed to the public purse. When you consider that public utilities are a no-risk monopoly, and that privitisation of these entities achieves nothing other than diverting public funds to private corporations, then you really have to start thinking about what’s going on.
Our garbage is emptied by a French company. Our fucking garbage!.
The gym (can’t afford it anymore) – is a UK company.
No more can you apply for a job anywhere you like. Before, there was a government job agency, and job ads in the paper. Now, most everyone is forced to go through private employment agencies.
A very large number of people now, work as ‘contractors’ via employment agencies. They, of course, skim up to 25% off the top. As a contractor, there are no benefits. No annual pay, no sick pay, no nothin’ – you are “self employed”.
What the fuck have the unions done. Zip. Zilch.
Absolutely, fucking, bloody nothing.
Fuck the unions!
Posted by: DM | May 28 2005 2:15 utc | 10
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