[TJay74]

I will chime in, as someone who has worked for the UAW in a GM plant and had a father who retired from GM as salary management.

The union is an archaic animal that needs to go away. It serves no real purpose anymore and as said is nothing more than a money grub system that rewards the higher up that are the union stewards for the UAW at each district.


Case in point, I watched the UAW President in OKC kill that plant off. At the time GM was making the Trailblazer and Envoy here in OKC. GM wanted to refurbish the plant to a universal platform that would allow it to be able to make multiple vehicles lines and or be able to be retooled quickly and change from one vehicle to another vehicle. In the course of doing this it would require more automation at the assembly line level which would eventually reduce the amount of workers needed.

GM presented that they would not eliminate any positions up front, but that as attrition from terminations and retirements and transfers happened the positions would not be back filled.

The local UAW President said no and the local UAW refused to budge at all and demanded no loss of positions and also tried to ask for more concessions at the OKC local UAW level.

Want to know what happened next, GM closed the plant and 3000 workers lost their positions and had to either retire, transfer or separate from GM.

With that there is no reason someone needs to be paid $30 per hour for assembly line work, double time for OT, a pension, a 401k, fully paid for healthcare during employment and dang near fully paid after retirement all while not having a degree.

I went to school and got a degree in one of the deadliest professions there is, high voltage utility line work and work for a local utility company making $40 per hr.

Not saying assembly line work isnt hard, I did it for GM for 3 years at the plant in OKC and back then we made $18 per hour in 1998-2001.

The crap I watched the UAW do to people and the people they protected just because you knew someone was crazy. I watched a punk ass kid who was purposely blinding other workers with a laser pointer punch another assembly line worker for asking him to stop. They sent the punk kid home and the plant manager went to fire him, because his dad knew some high up's with the local UAW people the kid not only kept his job, he was back paid for the entire time he was off work and got nothing more than a slap on the hand.

I was asked by GM to come back and work for them after they closed the plant, took all of the test and scored higher than the vat majority of the other candidates. In the end they hired a girl, someone I knew personally over me even though she was dumb as a box of rocks because she knew some high up people in the UAW and partied with them along with banging several of them. She got the job and eventually stayed long enough to retire out from GM several years ago.

The UAW is an animal of the past that needs to go, but none of the domestic automakers will take the chance and the loss of profits in order to do what needs to be done in order to get rid of the UAW and kill them off once and for all.