Goodness, its like they have a death wish – from Indystar:
Turned down by union workers Monday, Illinois businessman Justin Norman won’t come back with a sweeter bid to buy GM’s huge Indianapolis metal plant.
“We are withdrawing from pursuing the plant any further,” JD Norman Industries announced after autoworkers voted 457-96 against a concession contract that would have cleared the way for Norman to buy the plant and cut wages by nearly half.
Although the vote marks a victory for defiant leaders of United Auto Workers Local 23 trying to resist wage cuts, it brings a quick end to attempts to spare the old riverside landmark from a shutdown that will widen the hole in the city’s industrial tax base…
Rather than take a pay cut to keep everyone working, the union decided to commit economic suicide. And not just for themselves but for their families and their local community. We’re in a deep recession and things simply cannot be as they were – the overly-generous pay and benefits packages built up by unions and complacent management over the past few decades simply cannot stand while unemployment is officially nearly 10%, and more realistically is closer to 20%.
The offer they rejected was for a base pay of $15.50 per hour, plus a bonus over the next two years of up to $35,000.00. You bring that opportunity here to Las Vegas, and you’d have 10,000 people lining up to apply. But, not good enough for the unions – rather kill the entire goose, if it can only lay silver eggs rather than golden.
A lot of people say that the decline of unions has been the cause of the decline of the middle class – not so: more accurately it has been unions which have made it progressively impossible to have a large, industrial base…not just in the absurd union contracts, but in union support for liberal Democrats who enact policies which make inhuman dictatorships like China’s appear business friendly.
We do need unions, but not the unions we have today – I hope that eventually the union workers will wake and realize that they’re being sold down the river. New unions with leadership geared towards the needs of the workers would be a boon to the United States – the current crop is part of the problem, and they must go.
HAT TIP: Mish’s
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