With a September 14 expiration of the United Auto Workers contract with the "Big Three" Detroit auto companies, rumblings have sprung up that the UAW workers want a bigger share of the profits being made by those auto companies. Apparently no one in the UAW noticed that the companies started making a profit only after they stopped paying ridiculous wages to unskilled laborers who use their lunch breaks to get drunk or high before returning to work. They've forgotten the short history that even with the cuts to union labor benefits and, gasp!, forcing the pensions to be put in a trust, the three auto companies needed to be bailed out to stay alive. Chrysler is run by an Italian company now, and pulled commercials about having repaid its government bailout because it wasn't entirely true. You and I still own 6.6% of the company, which is a significant investment and the government acknowledged it doesn't expect to get about $2 billion of the bailout back, but hey, what's $2 billion between friends. Let's also not forget that, in order to save the unions in the first place, the President of the United States, whose constitutional duty is to enforce the law, violated federal bankruptcy law and simply preempted the rights of creditors to do as he saw fit with Chrysler and GM. Even Ford had to take out private loans to keep afloat.
But go right ahead, UAW, kill your employers again. At least the current UAW president, Bob King, appears to have some inkling that being anti-business is not smart for labor, what with needing business to employ them and all.
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