UAW Strike News Roundup

Everybody? I'd say most of us don't care one way or another. Even if I do need a car at some point and they are on strike it simply means a vehicle I had likely already long crossed off my list won't be available. Hardly a loss.

Some states have already passed laws allowing child labor and being exempt from minimum hourly rate for child labor. Maybe the auto companies could move to those states and pay maybe $5 an hour. I don't believe that the UAW members will get a 40 percent raise but they will get a raise one that the UAW and the auto companies agree on. As Lou once brought up in another one of these strike articles that many complain about the loss of American jobs but go to Walmart and buy Chinese made goods driving there in a vehicle made in Mexico or a low cost country. But you are correct that many will not be effected by this strike because many vehicles are made in nonunion factories or made offshore. That is our choice to buy whatever vehicle we choose. I don't hate on the auto workers like many do but I don't think they should or will get all of what they are asking for. Again that is why the auto companies and UAW will negotiate a settlement and if the UAW leadership is unwilling to negotiate eventually its members will demand that they will negotiate because there is only so long UAW membership can live on strike benefits. Just trying to get real and not take a side like many on this site seem to do. Both the UAW and the auto companies have something to lose if the strike is prolonged. To some of those who are against the UAW workers getting anything how many of you would be willing to work at a manufacturing plant and if so how many of you would be physically able to work on an assembly line? Much different to work on a assembly line than in an air conditioned office staring at a computer screen.

I suppose I'd be willing to work on an assembly line. I did far more dangerous and physically demanding work for less in the past. I'm sure it is difficult, but it probably isn't 130 degrees with stuff exploding either so why not. And nice try on your child labor BS...Their are federal laws in place with respect to child labor. And drop the living wage BS too...they already make a living wage. Call it like it is man. They just want more money because somebody else got more money. Give them cost of living increases to include catch ups for any they didn't get in years past and tell them to get back to work.

While everyone else may be losing, UAW leadership, Ford, GM and possibly the White House are all winning.

Art--The following is some of that BS you called me out on. You obviously don't read the news. I call BS on your above remark especially when you have nothing to back it up with.

"In February 2023 the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued new findings on an ongoing investigation of Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) for illegally employing over 100 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in hazardous occupations at 13 meatpacking facilities owned by JBS, Cargill, Tyson, and others (DOL 2023). These children worked illegally on overnight shifts cleaning razor-sharp saws and other high-risk equipment on slaughterhouse kill floors. At least three of them suffered injuries, including burns from caustic cleaning chemicals. The Department of Homeland Security has announced a parallel investigation into whether these young workers, many of whom may be unaccompanied migrant children, were connected to illegal employment by traffickers who profited from their labor (Strickler and Ainsley 2023).

Multiple factories in Hyundai-Kia’s supply chain in Alabama are also under DOL investigation for employing children as young as 14 (DOL 2022a). Many of these children are from Guatemalan migrant families. Like meatpacking plants across the Midwest, “many of the Alabama [auto] plants relied on staffing firms to recruit low-wage assembly line workers” (Schneyer, Rosenberg, and Cooke 2023).

Violations uncovered in recent federal enforcement actions are not isolated mistakes of ill-informed individual employers. PSSI, one of the country’s largest food sanitation services companies, is owned by the Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm (PESP 2022). DOL investigators found PSSI’s use of child labor to be “systemic” across eight states, “clearly [indicating] a corporate-wide failure.” DOL (2023) reports that “the adults—who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children—tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices.”

"While federal agencies are ramping up enforcement of child labor protections in response to increasing violations (DOL 2022b), industry groups are working to roll back child labor protections via state legislation.

Already in 2023, seven bills to weaken child labor protections have been introduced in six Midwestern states (Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota) and in Arkansas, where a bill repealing restrictions on work for 14- and 15-year-olds has now been signed into law. One bill introduced in Minnesota would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites. 1 Ten states have introduced, considered, or passed legislation rolling back protections for young workers in just the past two years" https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/

All that word vomit proves is it's still illegal to exploit child labor in the US. (We do that overseas to get our stuff.) A state can pass whatever law it wants, but the federal law is still the law.

So they employed children and are in legal trouble. Doesn't that prove that as IH stated that we do have functioning protections against the behavior you describe?