GM Workers on Strike

[bad1racing]

Hopefully it's over so I can get back to filling peoples needs at our dealership.4 cross-dock parts yesterday,none today.Buying parts out of Indiana,and South Carolina trying to keep them happy.Strikes suck,but I guess thats what they have to do.Never worked for one and hopefully never will.
Kendall

[DarrenX33]

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Union Electricians "Sit Down" when the Pee........

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Oh crap! I in the wrong profession.

[Keith Tedford]

I didn't see any mention of keeping production in North America. The unions controlling our money/benefits. Someone had better keep a close eye on the money. It always amazes me to see people get ugly when someone makes a decent wage. A little bit of jealousy? I made decent wages for a lot of years. I, like many others, spent it locally and helped everyone around here. I'd hate to see the locally economy without the GM input. The numbers seem to show that the very rich are rapidly getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer. Thanks to the WTO (Super rich) we are being played off agains the Chinese and others with their 25-50 cents an hour wages. The Canadian Auto Workers Union has been pushing for Fair Trade as opposed to Free Trade. When these countries want to freely sell their products here, but block our products in their market, something is wrong. The next few years are going to be interesting.

[Salvatore]

Keith, You and Schonye say it best. NAFTA, CAFTA ??? Maybe they don't work for us

[Chevy454]

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When these countries want to freely sell their products here, but block our products in their market, something is wrong.

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No doubt...I know I'm just a hillbilly, but that never made sense to me? Seems to me that they depend on *us* more than we depend on *them*, so shouldn't *we* have the leverage? Yet we're letting these podunk countries bend us over??

Funny story I thought of this morning about one of my best friends...this isn't to stereotype or cast the same shadow on *any* union/strike folks, but I chuckled when I thought of it. Anyway, my buddy worked over in West Plains at a factory that machined parts for military vehicles...well, every so often they'd renegotiate their contracts, and each time they'd put it to a vote among the union members to see if they wanted to strike or not. Well, each and every time my buddy and his buddies would vote to strike, because they would still get paid while they were striking, but instead of picketing they'd go cut wood, or go fishing, or just lounge around the house...the funny part of the story is, I think he said they were required to picket like a shift of 1/2 hour each, and of course the day my buddy takes his turn is the day a TV crew shows up, and out of all the hillbillies walking circles the reporter decides to talk to my buddy, who promptly tells 'em he's "enjoying his paid vacation"! Well, his union reps didn't see the humor, and he got a pretty good brow beating, but they were all back to work in a day or 2! I still give him static about him having to be the ugliest or dumbest hillbilly there, because that's who the reporter *always* chooses to interview!

[Belair62]

Union workers usually only receive "strike pay" which is not full salary. The downtown Union officials are the ones who keep their pay. At least thats how it worked up here

[JChlupsa]

Better watch out they might have an agreement with GM that if a car gets resold a 4% fee will have to be paid to GM for any car still having their Logos on them at the time of resale. Just kidding by the way as I really dont think any company could really think they could get away with charging a users fees for something that was already on the car and paid for.

[Schonyenko2]

Belair is right. You'd get strike pay which ain't all that much if you put in 4 hours of picket duty per week. My rule of thumb was ,don't buy anything you can't afford on strike pay, or unemployment, cause back in the old days, you were gonna spend some time on both.

[Tommy]

Well, it looks like it's over...It was actually very beneficial for the GM dealer I push parts for since he stocks several million dollars in parts, smaller dealers for hundereds of miles around needed parts and got thier stock orders from us for the last few days.. They had a great month this week..... By next week it'll be business as usuall I guess. Maybe I'll keep some of that new business .



Tommy

[Salvatore]

There you go Tommy. There is some good in everything! While I am a Union guy I still believe that all this can work for us. It is a give and take situation and most of all NO ONE should get paid for not doing their jobs! I am not a member of an in shop union. I am a member of a trade union. We get no holiday pay,sick days, time off with pay etc. If it rains or snows we go home with no pay. 8 for 8 is what the trades are all about. IBEW Local 380 has never been on strike in its history and we wouldn't get strike pay if we were. Don't know why anybody who is in the trades would not want to be a Union tradesman. We have a very good 5 year apprenticeship program that allows us to take some college courses afterwards if we want to. A very good pension and great health care which incidently comes directly out of our pay checks. The contractors guarantee nothing other than sending the money we pay back to the local union funds. Very important to work 2000 hours a year to keep our bennies paid in full!