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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Are Unions made in Heaven?
Message-ID: <601@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Feb-85 16:51:31 EST
Article-I.D.: tty3b.601
Posted: Thu Feb 14 16:51:31 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Feb-85 05:43:17 EST
References: <509@decwrl.UUCP> <602@mhuxt.UUCP>
Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
Lines: 25


 >From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
 >      Yeah, UAW workers have compromised with management.  Instead of the
 >unlimited amount they really want, they've settled for only $20/hr and enough
 >benefits to cost management $50/hr.  Of course, many UAW workers are now out
 >of work since American automobiles cannot compete with imports at these rates.
 >And they wonder why it's economical to replace them with expensive robots.
 >      It's just that I think that unions currently have too much
 >power.  I guess that comes from having watched them 'work' while I was working
 >for Chevy's Tonawanda forge.

This last comment is simply inane.  There are several million unionized workers
in the U.S.  Do you mean to imply that none of them work?  These kind of
comments add nothing to the dialog.

Regarding the vaunted international competition argument, why don't you just
look at the wage havens U.S. corporations flee to when they shut down U.S.
plants.  Surprise, surprise, they often turn out to be U.S.-backed dictatorships
like South Korea or the Phillipines, where the power of the state is used to
do exactly what you would apparently like the U.S. government to do at
home -- prevent workers from forming unions.  That's called "cultivating a
good foreign investment climate", by the way.

Mike Kelly