Posted on September 14, 2009 03:00 PM

When the owners of the Stella D'oro biscuit factory in the Bronx told the workers of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers that the plant could not continue to operate unless they took a pay cut from their $18-$23 per hour jobs and a reduction of the 9 weeks of paid leave, 134 workers went on a 10 month strike rather than save the plant.
Posted on July 13, 2009 02:53 PM

I often come across well-meaning bloggers who exhort their readers to buy only American-made products. However, it is a futile gesture for a number of reasons:
Posted on June 1, 2009 05:23 PM

Interestingly, Michael Moore is just as happy to see GM go bankrupt as I am, but for different reasons. Sadly, the poor fool doesn't even want to admit that the Unions finally killed the auto industry as they killed every other business they unionized.
Posted on April 16, 2009 05:05 PM

Yesterday a group of postal union employees and Soho residents protested the closing of the neighborhood’s only post office after it was announced that the location would shutter due to the economic crisis.
Posted on March 12, 2009 03:51 PM

I have written previously that Unions have killed our textile, railroad and automobile industry. They have also been killing the Newspaper industry for decades, fighting against typesetting equipment, offset printing, and anything that might automate the business. Sure, they eventually allowed news owners to get rid of manually inserted typesetting but only after years of costly struggles that saw thousands of newspapers close down. Then Unions begrudgingly allowed keyboard-activated typesetting such as Linotype but only after every non-union paper had it for years; more papers closed.
Posted on December 16, 2008 11:26 AM

We've heard it for years, the jokes of how Detroit hires lawyers to fight regulations and the Japanese hire engineers to comply with them, how Japanese engineers make more money than Japanese autoworkers but in Detroit it's the other way around, how Detroit CEOs are all MBAs without any technical expertise at all. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that eventually Detroit had to implode.
Posted on December 14, 2008 09:26 PM

The difference between the two is very simple: here is Ford's 22 Pound, 2,215 page, 2007 Contract with the UAW in 5 volumes. The Coke can is for scale although the scale of stupidity of the automakers' management in agreeing to anything of this size is incredible.
Now take a look at the one page contract with workers for Japanese manufacturers.
Posted on November 15, 2008 08:36 PM

After years of fleecing their employers and American consumers, United Auto Workers are now looking to Washington to help come up with money to continue their exorbitant and ridiculous pay structures.
One would think that the Union Leadership, faced with the imminent demise of the Detroit Auto industry, would finally be in a mood to make whatever concessions necessary to entice the government to help in a bailout; a bailout, by the way, to correct the very problems caused by the Unions in the first place. But one would be wrong.
Posted on November 12, 2008 09:38 PM

It is morally wrong to discriminate against anyone for their religious beliefs. However, refusing to hire someone precisely because their religious beliefs conflict with the purposes for which the business was organized is not discrimination any more than refusing to hire a black actor to play an albino is racist. It is not illegal to discriminate against midgets if the NBA does not hire them as players, nor should it be.
For example, no hospital should be required to hire a Jehovah's Witness to fill a surgical spot only to find out he refuses to operate on patients that require blood transfusions.
Posted on August 8, 2008 01:10 PM
Nothing would please me more than to see General Motors go under. And then Ford and then Chrysler. Hopefully this would decimate the United Auto Workers
Posted on July 17, 2008 12:35 PM
I live in Bayonne, a mostly Democratic town, in one of the most corrupt counties in one of the most corrupt states in the country. Living in a city filled with Democrats means that Unions get to dictate how things are built in the city.
Posted on February 25, 2008 02:19 PM
Unfortunately unions were too strong years ago and so immigrants were unable to save our steel, automobile or railroad industries.
Posted on September 7, 2007 01:27 PM

Why does it take so long to get rid of ancient technology? We should have adopted HD-TV years ago.
Posted on September 5, 2007 03:35 PM
Twenty years ago I was a close friend of a one-time lawyer for the Teamsters by the name of Harvey John-Paul who spent a number of years in federal prison for stock fraud.
Posted on June 15, 2006 09:02 PM
LAS VEGAS, June 15 (LAS VEGAS, June 15 (Reuters) - The United Auto Workers union said on Thursday that 25,000 General Motors Corp. and 8,500 Delphi Corp workers have accepted buyout offers. "I think it's going pretty well," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said at a press conference. "I think it's a little better than initially expected." Gettelfinger, reelected to a second four-year term this week, said resolving the Delphi issue is "critical to our union. We want to anything in...
Posted on February 13, 2006 02:13 PM
I am often asked what is the difference between an industry with Union workers and one without that infestation. Actually it is quite simple. In the photo we see what our transit system could look like if it wasn't burdened with early full-funded retirements (at 55 no less), zero employee contribution to their health program, annual raises untied to productivity, refusal to fairly fund their pension plan (now only 2%), resistance to reasonable disciplinary rules, contempt for the riding public...
Posted on January 22, 2006 09:17 PM
If Ford can wait until all its Union workers are dead, it might have a chance at surviving as a car manufacturer. It needs to build a completely new automated plant with no workers. That's what Unions have achieved - they have bled American Industry so badly that we practically have no industry left and if we do produce anything it has to be completely, entirely, 100% without workers at all.