Coatings World - January 2009

ward onto the cost of each vehicle they produced as a premium over non-U.S. based manufacturers.

Yet another story involved the tire industry, an obvious extension to the auto industry. As a rookie to organized labor, I was working at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company at the time while attending the University of Akron. For one assignment, I was given a four-inch wide putty knife and a two-gallon bucket and assigned to clean down to bare metal, an old Ban bury (like a gigantic horizontal Warring blender). The equipment was two stories high with a 30’ x 30’ footprint and was laden with a quar-ter-inch of grease and grime. Not told how much time I had to complete the work I went about the task assuming I had to finish during my eight-hour shift.

At the fifth hour, my URW (United Rubber Workers) supervisor stopped by to inspect my work which was only half finished. Thinking I would be reprimanded for not completing the cleaning I was surprised when my supervisor went absolutely berserk, screaming that

this was a six-week make-work job and that I had single-handedly screwed up the system.

INTERESTING STORIES,
BUT SO WHAT’S THE POINT?

Well the point of my anecdotes is simply that the UAW and various associated unions have evolved into a control machine oft times controlling the efficiencies of the organizations to the point of purposely placing their employer in a significant disadvantage in the competitive marketplace. This evolution, over many years, has created a union labor culture that gives little and gains a great deal from management using the club of implied threats of even more purposeful inefficiencies if management doesn’t give them what they demand during negotiations.

Unions were created in the time of management abuse of labor and to counter this abuse unions were needed. Over the past 75 years, the union evolution has not kept pace

with changing management styles and market demands, but also aided by management’s inability or unwillingness to manage as the U.S. economy’s booming success muted and lulled both sides to sleep in the belief that the good times would never end.

The word sacrifice has not been a part of our collective vocabulary. Well, today it has to be for all of us at all levels and in most industries, especially the U.S. auto industry.

The U.S. government must take steps to cause all portions of the auto industry to be burdened with the responsibility of sacrifice in order to save the industry and all that it influences. There must be well-conceived plans with performance milestones with resources assigned to achieve these goals.

Above all, this plan has to be transparent to all of us tax payers who are footing the bill and thereby sacrificing to give the auto makers another chance to thrive in the future.

CW

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