The Big Winner
…in the Obama transition appears to be Doris Kearns Goodwin. I swear sometimes I feel like one more mention of “team of rivals” in any news article will send me over the edge.
While I’m talking about things I’m sick of in the media, there’s also an aspect to the potential GM bailout that really bugs me. No one seems to challenge the assertions made by pundits from the Wall Street Journal, Heritage Foundation, etc who claim that the UAW has some responsibility for this mess. Union auto workers have seen their numbers and their standard of living decline for forty years. I’ve seen some of these guys tell some damn misleading stories about the role of the UAW in GM’s fortunes. Autoworkers build the cars. They don’t design the cars. They don’t source the parts. They don’t decide how the cars go together. When the company shuts your plant down or lays you off, you don’t get paid. I watched my UAW uncles not get paid by Ford for years in the late 70s and early 80s. I watched them lose their homes and their cars and one of their marriages. I watched one of my uncles work for years at less than half of his UAW wage laying coaxial cable until Ford had recovered enough to hire him back.
The difference between UAW workers and other manufacturing workers in this country is really just that the UAW has had some say in how much they’ve lost over the last forty years.
