Featured The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars

At the unionized plant I worked at I was a mechanic and also I had an degree in applied science (electronics) and kept electronic instruments calibrated as part of my duties. There were times an instrument could be calibrated only on weekends. Depending on where I was at on the overtime seniority list the union would force the company to bring in up to 8 individuals before they could get to me on the list to actually have me come in to calibrate the equipment. Eventually it became cheaper just to have an outside contractor come in to do the work than have their own trained employee do it.

I could go on and on with stories such as the company going to get the Union Steward to witness a behavior that needed correcting only to find the Union Steward drunk on the job.

For good employees who want to cooperate with a good company and help the company be successful the union has very little to offer in my opinion.

Eventually the company I worked for got tired of the union and moved its operations to a new state of the art factory in rural Indiana which is a right to work state. It hired non union employees from rural Indiana and has been very successful. This happened over 30 years ago and the company is still in operation there.

I was in the Teamsters Union AFL-CIO when I worked at this company - The Transport Truck Drivers held a vote and voted to de-certify or throw out their Union. The Production end of the operation where I worked kept the union but the United States Government was actually administering the Union at that time. This was at the time the Union was so corrupt (during the era when Jimmy Hoffa disappeared) that the government actually stepped in to temporarily run the Union.

I come form a strong Union town where at one time most every job and plant was unionized. Over time the Unions have worn out their welcome and are certainly on the decline in our area.
I think this is typical - Here would be a current article and facts to support this

50 Years Of Shrinking Union Membership, In One Map : Planet Money : NPR

Union membership in the U.S. hit record low in 2018 - CBS News

 

Hey!!!!! Way
mess with success or
Do you know how much it will cost to meet those lofty goals?
The retooling alone would be astronomical, not to mention the loss of all that Truck and SUV revenue!
And who cares what the rest of the world is doing? Anyone in the US? politicians don't count, unless you believe them.

 

?

 

Just playing Devils advocate, Hill. on this Halloed Eve. Got GM in the Black? Banks? Anyone?

 

i'm holding some gm and ford stock

 

The corruption just never stops and goes on and on at the UAW

Ex-UAW president sentenced to 21 months in prison in union corruption scheme

"On the one hand, at public events, he excoriated the things that were 'wrong in the United States of America' because union members 'cannot buy the things they build,'" assistant U.S. attorneys wrote last week in a sentencing memo. "But in private, he exploited the hundreds of thousands of UAW members that he led."

 

In the 19 months since this thread has been lofted, it's pretty clear that EVs figure fairly prominently in the futures of the "Big 3" as well as all of the other OEMS.

Ford got the first good broadside in yesterday for a truck that promises to look like a truck, drive like a truck, might be priced like a truck...and have something approaching a real truck's usefulness.
I'm pretty sure that GM and Dodge is taking up the slack on THEIR lanyards TOO right about now, and I'm looking forward to seeing what THEY come up with!

Unlike undersea warfare, the first shooter doesn't always have an overwhelming advantage in the fight.
This is going to be a looooong, noisy, bloody, confusing, yardarm-to-yardarm fight, and if the folks in DC stay out of it....the winners will be......

....US!


@ unions.
With the exception of an unfortunate dalliance with that most hated of job titles "Junior Staff Analyst" I've been an Electronics Technician since just after Carter left in disgrace.

Some of it was military.
Some more of it was with a middleweight Beltway Bandit.
MOST of it now has been in a union shop, albeit on free soil. Since that means that cannot avail myself of paying the Beck rate, I DID pay union dues for probably 20 of the last 22 years.
(Edit: make that about 18. I forgot about the deployments during which I paid no dues.)

The automobile industry is really not the best example of what unions are in the year 2021, since like the telecommunications industry, it can almost be argued that labor unions could theoretically serve a nearly useful function.
IF NOTHING ELSE....the company and its employees are all bound (an apt term!) by differing interpetations of the same 400-page, 5 year labor contract.
It DOES tend to reduce knob-slobbery and leg humping among workers at nearly the same rate that it reduces efficiency, work ethic, and innovation.

...tis an ill wind that blows no good.

HOWEVER (comma!) I have family behind the tinsel curtain who are dreaming of perhaps sending their kids to a for-real school, inside of which will be a real-world classroom with perhaps a live, nearly qualified human teacher.

The UAW?
All THEY can do is wreck our ability to make quality domestic automobiles!

 

2023 Chevrolet Silverado EV: What We Know So Far (caranddriver.com)

 

Next gen Tundra should be coming out soon, and it should have a hybrid option. People here won't be impressed by it though. It will most likely have the RWD system out of the LC and LS. Mated to a V6, which could be a turbo.