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Douglas Fraser of the United Auto Workers was so stupid that, when he was president of the union in the early eighties, he accepted a seat on the Chrysler board of directors so he could be a "watchdog on the board." While Fraser was watchdogging on behalf of his union, Chrysler closed twenty factories and three parts depots, eventually firing more than 50,000 people! Remind me never to ask this guy to watch my house while I'm away.
The next president of the UAW, Owen Bieber, was so stupid that, in 1987, he signed an "attrition agreement" with General Motors. For every two people who retired, died, or quit, GM would only have to replace one of them. Bieber decided it was better to decrease the membership of his union and then have the remaining members working faster, harder, and longer than ever before. The year he agreed to this, GM was already making a profit of $3.6 billion.
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Other union leaders have also stupidly fallen for this trend of "cooperation" with management called "Quality of Work Life." It is nothing more than an effort to find new ways to eliminate jobs and bust unions.
In another blast of official union stupidity, Lane Kirkland, the recently dethroned head of the AFL-CIO, decided that the best way to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement was to do so by quietly lobbying Congress. So along came Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan to fill his void and spearhead a very public movement against NAFTA. By stupidly surrendering the issue to these two nutcases, Kirkland allowed Clinton to appear rational, and the President was able to get NAFTA passed.
Union leaders are so stupid that, since the late seventies, they have continually agreed to cut their members' wages and benefits simply because the company asked them to! The companies have taken the newfound savings, and instead of creating more jobs in the United States, they've built new plants overseas, resulting in the firing of the very American workers who gave them that money!
In my hometown of Flint, Michigan, the UAW leadership was so stupid that they actively lobbied the city council to grant General Motors tax abatements that, over the last twenty years, have given them tax breaks on $1.8 billion worth of property. They did so because they believed GM would create new jobs if given the tax breaks. Instead, GM eliminated more than 40,000 jobs in that period in Flint-and hasn't given a dime of its tax savings back to the city.
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This progress all came to an end on August 5, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired 11,400 striking air traffic control workers and permanently replaced them, an event unheard of in U.S. history. From that day on, the union movement has been on a downward slide to oblivion. Labor union leaders, in the stupidest moment in their history, refused to call for a general, nationwide strike that would have shut the country down until Reagan rehired the controllers. Union members crossed picket lines and continued to fly. I remember refusing to get on a plane for the next eight months-and having a hard time persuading others to do likewise. Boy, walking from Michigan to L.A. was a bitch! So I gave up and started to fly.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Michael_Moore/Downsize_This.htmlI don't know if the IUE has endorsed yet, they represent the 17000 or so Delphi workers in Warren and Dayton.
edit:1997!
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