Interesting Look at the UAW

As Washington considers writing a blank check to the U.S. automobile industry and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, it’s worth learning a little more about the golden-plated UAW contract negotiated by the “Big Three.”

Paul Ingrassia knows the auto industry. He is the bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. His article “Detroit Auto Makers Need More than a Bailout” points out that:

. . . For decades, the United Auto Workers union stoutly defended gold-plated medical benefits that virtually no one else had. UAW workers and retirees had no deductibles, copays or other facts of life in these United States.

A few years ago the UAW even waged a spirited fight to protect the “right” of workers to smoke on the assembly line, something that simply isn’t allowed at, say, Honda’s U.S. factories. Aside from the obvious health risk, what about cigarette ashes falling onto those fine leather seats being bolted into the cars? Why was this even an issue?

The answer is that the Big Three caved to every demand of the Big Labor unions.

From paying 12,000 “workers” not to work, to the current outrageous contracts, the UAW monopoly bargaining power and its privilege of forcing every worker to pay dues and fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job are the “main” ingredient in this long-developing crisis.