Harley Shaiken
Harley Shaiken
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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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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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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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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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The union was caught in a global hurricane, and they managed to come out of it with minimal structural damage. They preserved key principles; they gave up some money.
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These are very important findings that come at a critical moment in the immigration debate. What the study indicates is that if we view the contribution of immigrants to the total economy there may be important gains to all workers that have previously been ignored.
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The rhetoric is much different this time - this time they're really out to get each other.
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There's a cushion but it doesn't prevent the fall. It eases the pain but it's not the same as having the stability of a successful company.
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There's no other way to diplomatically frame it - there's an empty chair there.
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Fox and Chavez are both serving important domestic political purposes for each other.
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Caterpillar is a powerful symbol of this process. It dominates its field. It is one of America's largest exporters, and it is very profitable. If there ever was a company that could bring back the social contract of the mid-20th century, it is Caterpillar. But it chooses not to.
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Losing 30,000 jobs, closing 14 plants, has enormous consequences not just for the union, but for the future of their members. It is a major blow.