>> A word on the UAW itself: this is not a poor union.
As of 2006, it had assets of almost $1.3 billion, and annual receipts of $304
million. (I wish I could provide a link to the UAWâs own financial statements,
but if theyâre on their website, I canât find them. I had to go to the
anti-union site, UnionFacts.com, to find this basic financial info. And I learned that there that the AFL-CIO had successfully
lobbied the Obama administration to loosen financial disclosure
requirements for unions.) It could have easily financed serious research into
a better strategic direction for the auto industry than the idiot management
has been able toâcleaner cars, better modes of work organization.
Its PAC spent $13 million on campaign contributions during the 2008
election cycle; it could have spent a few mil of that on campaigning for
national health insurance.
But they didnât. And now theyâre pretty well screwed.
<<
Comment
Yea, today is worse than 1979 when Chrysler went belly up.
The UAW is better understood if looked at from the
standpoint of a "business model." The UAW is all of its members, that to one
degree or another elect its leaders. The uppermost leaders of the union are
elected on the basis of something akin to an electoral college. That is to
say, President Gettlefinger and heads of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors
divisions are not directly elected by the membership. The UAW President is
elected at the Constitutional Convention. Gettlefinger is akin to a CEO.
The reason the union has not made national health
care a national social cause of the working class, which includes UAW members
is its business model and lack of foresight. Bill Gates success in the market
was bound up with IBM's lack of foresight. Cisco systems success in the market
is its foresight and anticipation of new markets. The UAW's uppermost leaders
lack foresight and without an abrupt change in its business model have
roughly 48 - 96 months of life left in it as a significant
union in the life of America.
The unions lack of foresight is not reducible to a personal
problem. Gettlefinger is the person that manifest the social problem of change
within the union. To the degree that General Motors could not and did not
change its business model to keep pace with a changing market is the same
degree to which the UAW is stuck in the old business model of industrial
unionism. On the other hand the UAW could not exceed the boundary that is the
understanding and striving of the working class as a whole. The working class
as a whole is being swung around to the need for a single - government, payer
health system. Huge sections of the working class are in the process of
rejecting anti-communism and anti-socialism.
The slow and growing rejection of anti-communism in America
is very important. The fact of the matter is that no one . . . and I mean no
one . . . other than the communists and socialists of all stripes and
character, have the passion, imagination and fire in their belly to
inspire and push our working class. This has been the case since 1890. The era
of an anti-communist democratic left in America is over.
The union has to be pushed from within and especially from
without to change and such change will involved splitting and restructuring of
the union. The odds are such that the UAW will be destroyed - as it exists, in
the marketplace along the same lines that General Motors is being destroyed in
the domestic market.
The United Automobile Workers - UAW, needs to become "Unite
All Workers" regardless of industry or economic status. And the union
needs to fund a party of labor that can champion issues like national health
care.
Today is a great time for such a party with the Republican
Party in absolute decay.
WL.
.