Alternate Route

Oct 27, 2009 - Glory Daze

Daniel Howes' column in the Detroit News nails it in his opening paragraph.

Old Detroit lives!

Here, in the week before Ford Motor Co. hopes to maybe, sorta' report encouraging third-quarter earnings, a faction of its United Auto Workers membership is on course to torpedo a revised labor agreement -- proving, yet again, that bankruptcies and painful retrenchments aren't enough to shake some real-world sense into a deeply engrained sense of entitlement.

I'm not sure what thought process (if any) is going on in the heads of those union members leading this charge to derail the labor agreement, but they are sadly mistaken if they think the UAW is the power that it once was.

This all reminds me of an A&P  grocery store that we used to have here in town. The local union went on strike, demanding, among other things, ridiculously higher wages for grocery baggers. And they were not going to budge one inch off their position. The store informed them of the impossibility of their demands and that the store would close if some kind of deal couldn't be worked out. The union voted to not give in, the store closed and has been empty over 25 years. But hey, they stood their ground and faced down the company. Nice moral victory guys. I almost forgot... we're also getting along fine without the A&P, buying our groceries at the other stores that moved in to fill the void.

Even Ron Gettlefinger gets it. If the union drives the company into the ground, you can't stock the fridge with a moral victory.

Read the rest of Daniel Howes' at detnews.com

Meanwhile, in the real world... 

AR Index     601.28  -11.80  (-1.92%)

Stocks of individual interest
Toyota  78.25  -2.06
GM        0.61    -0.03
Ford      7.47   -0.10

Dow 9867.96  -224.23   (-2.22%)

3:02 am | Categories: ar index, ford, uaw Permalink | Alert Administrator

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