On 4 Sep 2006 10:24:51 -0700, wrote in
. com:


It's ridiculous that an employer thinks they can arbitrarily change the
terms of employment without consulting the employees.


Absurd! You should work for an auto company. Over the past 20 or so
years white colar workers have lost COLA, vacation time, etc.

Personally, I believe auto workers were paid far in excess of the
skill they possessed. (How long did an auto worker have to attend
training before being considered skilled enough to demand top pay?)

Automobile companies had seen to it that they had the market to
themselves without significant competition until the Japanese, with
their low wages and copy-cat mentality entered the scene.

While founders of the virtual monopoly sat back on their fat sacks of
cash, it was easy for them to acquiesce to unreasonable union demands
while remaining profitable, but foreign car manufacturers produced a
less expensive product, and eventually dominated the automobile
marketplace. It is only now that Flint Michigan is a ghost town, that
the US auto makers are finally realizing that they have been priced
out of the market by foreign competition.

If US auto makers are to remain in business, they must cut costs, and
those fat labor contracts are a prime source of cost. So, the reason
UAW employees agreed to the loss of COLAs, vacation time, etc. is
because it is preferable to losing their jobs entirely as a result of
bankruptcy.

Management never asked permission.

They didn't have to ask permission; management just included it in
their contract proposals, and the UAW recommended ratification.