Malkiel

American Axle Strike: Unions Continue to Kill U.S. Manufacturing

Another unenlightened anti-union diatribe from somebody who only sees the labor movement through the lense of the midwest-centric automobile industry. It was management in all industries that forced the adversarial model on the unions; Henry Ford and the other industrial giants hated unions back in the day and used armed thuggery to try to destroy them.

The idea that unions were somehow a passing fad and aren't needed any more is just rubbish. Employers will always be more powerful than any individual employee and being able to bargain collectively is a fundamental right employees need to have in order to level the playing field. The decline in the quality of life for working people during the "Reagan revolution" years would not have happened had workers been able to bargain collectively. We should be at the point in the evolution of our advanced industrial economy where health care and fair labor costs are already factored in and investors know in advance those things will come off the bottom line.

As for your specific complaints about this company, the decline in the value of the dollar has made internal costs meaningless to foreign buyers and pricing, but the workers have fixed or increasing costs. If you're threatening to close a plant down whether they give back wages or not, what's the incentive to take pay cuts? May as well get the full value while they can...