Break the Union save the Company

The case of the GM strike brought some issues up for me that I have been working through for the past few days. Now the GM has put its strike to bed lets look at the issue. Health Care has now been shifted from GM to the Union. This will allow GM to do what it does best making cars not being the largest health care provider in America. They also got this without having to lock in where their plants are located in the future.

Before everyone jumps in bashing me for supporting job exporatation that is not what I am saying. Take the case of Caterpillar. In the 1980s they were losing around a billion dollars a month. They has battles with the UAW in the 1980s and early 90s when facing these losses they laid off employees. In the 1990s Caterpillar finally took a stand and locked out workers and hired replacement workers. They then lessed the impact of unions on their company and opened factories in right to work states. This has returned the company to profitablility and have increased their workforce on average 4% a year. These workers are well paid and are happy to do the job in these southern right to work states.

The car companies should learn from Caterpillar and focus new plants not abroad but in southern states where they can gain non-union profitablilty and the ability to make sucess. Many of these states are trying to land such plants with favorable tax benefits. The other lesson that should be taken away jobs that make people money and have sucess are not always union jobs.

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