Re: [Pen-l] CounterPunch, the most widely read radical website in the English...

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/11/2008 2:13:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, charles1848@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

>>> "GM, Ford and Chrysler still carry significant cost disadvantages
against Toyota plants located in the United States, thanks to clumsy
management and unrealistic wages, excessive fringe benefits and arcane
work rules imposed by United Autoworker contracts."
--"The Big Drag," Peter Morici, CounterPunch, December 11, 2008

Actually, this item is an example of the strength and weakness of
CounterPoint. In addition to denouncing a decent standard of living as
unrealistic, Morici relates a startling and rarely seen comparison: "In
2008 the Chinese government is on track to purchase about $685 billion
in foreign currencies. This comes to about 18 percent of China's GDP and
about 46 percent of its exports of goods and services."

CounterPunch does not have comments and does not encourage debate among
its contributors, although their viewpoints are all over the map. <<<<

Charles Andrews

 

Actually, all of the quoted above is simply a lie.  What on earth is clumsy management? UAW workers wages are not unrealistic!!! The cause of the current crisis unfolding in the auto industry is not the result of wages but an obvious across the board market contraction. Rather than producing and selling 17 1/2 million new vehicles, as was the case for most of the past decade, only 10 1/2 million new vehicles will be sold in 2008. The world industry is off - depressed, by roughly 30% everywhere. This includes Toyota, Nissan and Daimler America.

 

Union production workers are paid an average of $28 an hour and the non-union production workers are paid an average of $25 an hour. What in fact is so-called unrealistic wages in the context of auto?

 

What "arcane work rules (are) imposed by United Autoworker contracts."? Apparently the ranting against arcane work rules is meant to imply that the UAW plants are somehow less productive than their Japanese or German counterparts in America.  To begin with the union does not impose work rules as such. The work rules grew out of the evolving division of labor of the craft organization  of auto, going back a few decades before the industrial unions appeared.

What the union did was to codify the existing rules as an index. The work process and work rules change with changes in the material factors of production.

 

Waistline

 

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