Harley Shaiken
Harley Shaiken
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Bankruptcy is allowing airlines to emerge with a clean slate, but it's bad news for workers. Pensions will be affected, and it will mean lower wages and probably fewer jobs.
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Delphi has essentially said: 'We need competitive wages.' Those wages currently are being set in China, not Flint, (Michigan).
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Miller has clearly chosen bankruptcy over collective bargaining to restructure the company. Delphi is using a bankruptcy judge to begin moving in the direction of Chinese wages and benefits.
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If you cut wages by two-thirds, that creates a class of people that can't afford to go to Wal-Marts. If other industries do this, America will have a far smaller middle class, and the whole economy in the 21st Century begins to unravel.
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I think this case is, in fact, a watershed. I think what it does is -- in the most dramatic way we've seen to date -- it introduces the wages of the global economy into Main Street in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere,
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The pain and surprise may come when Delphi wages are cut and it sets a pattern of pressing down on wages to succeed competitively, ... It reverses the success story of the American economy, which has always been that U.S. firms paid the most.
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Economic growth in the United States in the 20th century was based on building entrances to the middle class, from Henry Ford in 1913 to strong unions in the '50s and '60s.
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Everyone on the picket line who thought they could be out of a job for good will be out of a job for good.
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They've got tough issues, but nobody wants to put the moneymaking on hold to sort it out.
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The corporation knows the sensitivity of these kinds of issues, they have a lot of experience with what will provoke a local strike. What I suspect they (the GM management) didn't anticipate is that it would reach this intensity.
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The CAW, given the context, has done very well. The boat is afloat and upright after going through the rapids. They wanted to protect their members.
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It's certainly representative of the discontent that's out there. The retirees are frustrated, but I don't think it represents a major threat yet.
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This was difficult for the union to do, but the union is being pragmatic. Its goal is to preserve jobs. It realizes the severity of the situation that GM is in.
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What GM gets in changes in the jobs bank is likely going to be based on compromises they are willing to make elsewhere. The fact that they are talking about this so early is unusual and shows how important it is.