I believe the unions have to be broken in order for America to be competitive in the global market especially during the current crisis. The bailout deal begins this process in my opinion. I support it.
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For UAW sacrifice or surrender?
Members' wages and benefits will be slashed under federal loan deal
By Peter Whoriskey
The Washington Post
Sat., Dec. 20, 2008
URL:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28323341/
For decades after its founding in 1935, the United Auto Workers stood as a powerful model for the American labor movement, an influential organization that historians credit with uplifting living standards for all working Americans.
But with the announcement of the federal loan deal yesterday, the union found itself being forced into concessions that some described as tantamount to surrender.
The $17.4 billion federal loan agreement does keep the domestic auto industry alive. But the terms of that loan also insist that the wages and benefits for union workers be lowered to "equal" the average of nonunion workers, specifically, those at the U.S. plants of Nissan, Toyota and Honda.
Those and other concessions would essentially erase the significant distinctions between union and nonunion auto workers, and the lack of such union worker advantages would render moot the union's fundamental purpose, some industry analysts and labor experts said.
It was the financial crisis, as well as the domestic industry's slippage against foreign automakers in the United States, that forced the union to acquiesce, albeit reluctantly, union leaders said yesterday.
