OK, so when teh shite hit teh fan (supposedly) and the auto companies were facing bankruptcy (supposedly) and the Obama Admin was putting a lot of pressure on the UAW to cut management some slack in order to save their members' jobs (supposedly), fear ran like a little rodent through the union and once again Labor sacrificed so executives could keep their McMansions and their Beamers.
OK, so now that the auto market is strengthening (supposedly) and profits are up again (quite definitely), the unions want management to remember the last their of umpteen sacrifices and give back some of the give-backs the car companies extorted under the guise of "financial difficulties" they had largely brought on themselves, assuming of course that such difficulties actually existed which isn't at all clear when you look at the offshore books.
As better times return, the United Automobile Workers is not the union it was before Detroit's carmakers hemorrhaged billions of dollars.
The union is now a part owner of General Motors and Chrysler through a union trust fund, and its members are barred from striking against the two companies over compensation for the next five years. All told, hourly workers gave up pay and benefits worth $7,000 to $30,000 each a year during the downturn, the union estimates.
But while those changes might blur the traditional battle lines between management and union, the incoming president of the U.A.W., Bob King, is making it clear some things are not about to change.
As one automaker, the Ford Motor Company, restores some perks for salaried workers, Mr. King is putting the companies on notice that he expects hourly workers to be given back some of the benefits they surrendered as the bottom lines of all three car companies improve - at least to the extent that management and other stakeholders are rewarded.
This has almost never happened. Once management cons a union into giving up perks, they simply vanish never to return, a phenomenon we saw over and over again during the 90's when the economy improved after the Reagan Recession and many corpo's were hoisting record profits while they held wages - including union wages - at record lows. There were a few exceptions and a couple of them were in the auto industry and one of those was Ford, but that was back when Jac Nasser was running it and he was a Brit who didn't really get the way management in the US is supposed to treat its empoyees like something they scraped off the bottoms of their shoes. He insisted on treating unions as serious representatives of an important part of his business, not like low-lifes who'd crashed the party uninvited and then stolen all the silver. And anyway, even Nasser's reversals didn't amount to anything like a return to what the workers had had before the concessions were made.
So has the climate for Labor changed with the new leadership? Are institutions and corpo's less anti-Labor than they were during the Bush era?
Are you kidding?
Can we assume that a university is a more liberal atmosphere than an auto plant? Because Tulane University just disciplined four students for taking part in a peaceful demonstration for higher wages and better working conditions by university workers. This is from the press release:
For their non-violent participation in solidarity with workers on Tulane University's campus the four students received letters from the office of student affairs charging them with intimidation or harassment, abusive or disorderly conduct, interference with the freedom of expression of others, interference with the educational process or other University sponsored activities, and failure to comply with University officials acting in the performance of their duties. The students sent a letter (available upon request) to the administration prior to the hearing documenting procedural violations of the Code based on the manner in which the University charged the students, rights of theirs protected by the Code that had not been preserved, the suspicious nature of the charges, and the directionality of the administration in the case. The Office of Student Affairs has let students know that there is no right to due process nor to the First Amendment on Tulane's private campus.
Despite this division in the administration and the lack of evidence, three of the four students charged were convicted of failing to comply with the directions of University officials. Vice President of Student Affairs, Mike Hogg, said that as a private institution, the University holds the right to tell anyone to leave campus should there be cause for concern. Two student organizers graduating on May 16 have also been given a written statement saying, "should you return to campus after this date and participate in any unauthorized protests and/or rallies; you may be issued a restricted presence letter from Tulane University Police Department or arrested for criminal trespass." The sanctions issued to the three student organizers set a questionable precedent for future organizing and speech on Tulane's campus, particularly in support of workers' rights.
(emphasis in the original)
"Questionable" doesn't even begin to cover it. They are threatening to have students arrested for criminal trespass if they dare to show up on campus without first kissing the appropriate authority's ring and promising faithfully never again to get involved with any of the lowly scumbags who have the misfortune to work for the university they attend.
So if the atmosphere toward Labor is this bad in a well-known, so-called "liberal" university setting, what chance do you suppose King has against the piranha who feed at the car companies?
I'm laying 8-to-5 odds the auto execs laugh King out of their offices, and 6-to-1 they call security to throw him out bodily.
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