Marchionne: "To Be Perfectly Honest, We've All Fucked With the UAW, Right?

by Mark Stevenson

Published: August 29th, 2015

marchionne to be perfectly honest we ve all fucked with the uaw right

Sergio Marchionne seems to be taking a different tactic in this year’s UAW negotiations. Instead of threatening to take product out of North America and send it to China, the head of FCA is playing to the hearts and minds of the union membership, even going so far as to admit all automakers have screwed workers in the past.

“To be perfectly honest, we’ve all fucked with the UAW, right? We were threatened by them, so we took all the pickup trucks that we sell — and 90 percent of those pickup trucks are sold in this country, right — we took it away, and then we delocalized them” Marchionne told Automotive News’ Larry P. Vellequette.

Marchionne believes he and UAW President Dennis Williams “share a view about the fact that, in some fashion, to the extent that we are successful in creating wealth out of these car companies, real wealth, then we should be able to distribute that,” he said.

Bringing Mexican pickup production back to the United States would be a massive win for the UAW. Since March 2014, Ram has sold fewer than 30,000 pickups only once (January 2015).

Ram pickups are built at FCA’s Warren Assembly Plant in Michigan and Saltillo Truck Assembly.

“What a wonderful idea, distributing cash when you have it,” Marchionne said.

#Fca #Ram #SergioMarchionne #Trucks #Uaw #UnionTalks

Mark Stevenson

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Highdesertcat on Aug 29, 2015

I think it would be better for everyone involved in America if the UAW works WITH their employers instead of AGAINST them. The record of the UAW and unions is clear. Decades worth of documented damage inflicted by the UAW and unions on their employers. The key to quality and productivity is collaboration and cooperation, something that is foreign to the UAW and unions in America. Until it is too late, and the employer goes under. Hostess is now a Mexican-owned bakery. Chrysler a subsidiary of Fiat. etc etc etc. Fortunately, we don't have to do without. The stuff we want can be imported from foreign sources. All hail NAFTA!

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- Voyager on Aug 30, 2015
  
  That's called the Rhineland model, named after the way German employers, employee representatives, unions and often relevant governments sit down together to decide what's best on the long run.
  
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- TW5 on Aug 30, 2015
  
  It doesn't matter whether unions work with the company or they antagonize the company. The Rhineland model has as many confrontational labor miscreants as it has moderate collaborators. The difference-maker is whether the collective institution is actually pursuing a collective outcome. In Germany, the unions focus on stable full employment, particularly for young workers. Labor bosses are often technocrats or they are heavily influenced by labor technocrats in government. In the US, unions reject full employment and focus on installing wage floors. The wage floor creates a surplus of semi-skilled laborers, which undermines everything the union achieved during the collective bargaining phase. Unions also vote to widen the scale of labor surplus, which undermines unions and laborers in all sectors. Unions try to blame the situation on corporate/political conspiracy.
  
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- Highdesertcat on Aug 30, 2015
  
  voyager, I think that they each have a vested interest in how well their industry is doing because retirement plans and national interests are so closely intertwined with the industry there. That's a by-product of the Marshall Plan after WWII, the self-sufficiency model advocated by the 50-year reconstruction-loan programs. Look at Germany, Holland and Japan now! Good Golly, Miss Molly, they put the US living standard for Americans Joe Sixpack and Sally Homemaker in the toilet. Totally different ballgame in the US, though. The adversarial employee-to-employer relationship is what the UAW and unions in America advocate: get paid more to do less!!! Job Bank, anyone? My mom and dad were both union until they were able to successfully shed that snake-skin and move on to bigger and better things in employment. I grew up in a union household. My folks were better off after having left their respective unions, got to keep more of their own money AND got paid more money, got better benefits, working for non-union employers.
  
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- Highdesertcat on Aug 30, 2015
  
  @TW5 "Unions try to blame the situation on corporate/political conspiracy." Thank you for saying more concisely what I wanted to convey in my original comment.
  
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Xeranar on Aug 30, 2015

I started reading the rest of the comments but the time and energy to explain the actual reality would be wasted as these yokels are too proud to repeat conservative talking points as facts without actually being able to source a reliable data point for a single point. Instead, I'm going to just say 'Good for Marchionne.' It's clear he's looking at a future where America is a different beast and after the next presidential election the supreme court is likely to start taking up union cases to start breaking down large sections of Taft-Hartley beginning with public unions then private ones. A liberal Supreme Court is going to be an interesting place for America's largest corporations. God help them if Sanders is elected. :)

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- Highdesertcat on Aug 30, 2015
  
  "A liberal Supreme Court is going to be an interesting place for America’s largest corporations. God help them if Sanders is elected. :)" I think we would see an even greater outflow of industry and American talent to foreign locations, were that to happen. American Corporations and their managements are not stupid, contrary to what Dr Jonathan Gruber has expressed about the American voters vis-a-vis Ob*m*Care. And then there are the tax-inversions, the first knee-jerk reaction of US corporations that punished the current far-left liberal democrat administration so badly and rewarded Ireland (et al) with the greatest influx of American dollars since the end of WWII. I have heard that over $3Trillion USD are held outside the US, with Apple, Pharma, and other major corporate players being unwilling to bring that money back to the US and pay taxes on it. Their first responsibility is to their owners/shareholders, not the US government. And well they have effectively demonstrated that. Hey, even Burger King is among the dearly-departed for Canada. How about Hostess and Mexico?
  
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- Xeranar on Aug 31, 2015
  
  @highdesertcat I'm seriously trying not to laugh at your argument. It's a joke to think what you do but hey, lets what Corporate America likes in their drones. Sycophants who sell the same M.O. to each other while refusing to acknowledge that their entire model relies on continued unswerving support for free market capitalism. Even the slightest bend to that model would make the entire system unworkable. But hey, HDC, go wild. Maybe you can move to Canada with BK to avoid all the evil socialism we're making hay about down here. PS: Ireland is more socialized than we are. They also removed a huge chunk of their underclass through emigration. The argument is so poor conceived that I really don't feel like bothering going down this road. When a student thinks this way I tend to just move on, it's not worth my precious time to bother with their stupidity once you've explained your position.
  
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Panzerfaust on Sep 02, 2015

To be perfectly honest, the UAW has had it coming--more than once.

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Lichtronamo on Sep 05, 2015

This is no different that the posturing by GM and Ford. Give us a good contract and we'll bring the RAM trucks back from Mexico; give us a good contract and we won't import Buicks from China and Germany; give us a good contract and we'll build the Ranger, and maybe even Bronco,in Michigan. Demand too much and, f*** you, you get none of this.

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