Name:
Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Friday, January 09, 2009

There is a lot of debate at present about the role of unions in the decline of the US auto industry. There is a lot of discussion about pay and benefits. It turns out that the foreign owned plants in the US pay slightly more than the Detroit manufacturers, but that the benefits are much less. The major way in which unions have harmed the Detroit manufacturers are with work rules. Here is an article that discusses the demise of the British auto industry, which, like Detroit, had a lot of non-productive work rules that doomed the industry.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/01/08/the-case-for-rattner.aspx

Unless the Detroit manufactures manage to get more reasonable work rules, the industry cannot be saved. I have seen estimates from people who worked in Detroit that the car manufacturers only get about 5 hours of work from an employee each day. There are a lot of anecdotes about union leaders having a "chat" with workers who work too fast, advising them to slow down.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home