Readers Write

Here are some more comments from loyal readers

1) Good Morning Ed:
Saw your recent entries and viewer comments.

One I have made in other venues is this: Canada's auto trade is absolutely linked with the US trade. During the period of the low dollar, negotiations in auto were directed to raising the hourly rates as expressed in Loonies per hour. The rising Loonie means a raise for all of the auto workers which affects competitiveness. Exchange rates are always going to be an issue as long as the US Dollar and the Loonie are separate currencies.

If the CAW is as forward thinking as they pretend, why did they not years ago tie their hourly rates to the exchange rate. They could have chosen to negotiate in the US Dollar and had the pay cheques issued in Canadian, or they could have a rate adjustment clause that would work something like COLA where over a 3 month or other period a rate adjustment would be applied to the hourly pay to avoid dislocations in the industry.

Do you think that simply greed was a motive to offer no relief to the manufacturers for the exchange rate changes?

2) Good morning Ed.

Just getting back from vacation.
I was away during the labor rally. I really did not have to be here because it was heard in New York too.
This stuff is fodder for the competition. I met a few people who constantly look for opportunities and I can tell you Windsor is going to be blacklisted.
Thanks for the help Buzz.
Yes Windsor was voted a good area for investment, but when? Timing is everything.
I think Buzz and company fail to realize, investors want to make money, not give it away.
Investors are willing to to work with people and local governments, not be threatened.
Personnally, I think the era of the baseball bat and threats are over.
When it all comes down to the end it's negotiating skills, not gorilla mentality that produce results.
But that's just me.

3) This individual writes a weekly blog. From the Chairman of GM on down, everyone in Detroit reads his column. Today's is very interesting....and does not help Windsor one bit. www.autoextremist.com

[NOTE: Excerpts from "RANTS by Peter M. DeLorenzo}

Clueless in Canada and mired in a state of denial in Detroit, organized labor is pathologically out of touch - and out of time.

Detroit. Canadian Auto Workers union leader Buzz Hargrove is an interesting character. He's quick with media-friendly quips that garner a lot of attention, he's a fierce defender of his union membership, and he fancies himself as the only bright light of rational thinking in the whole union vs. management dance. But he's also a loose-cannon firebrand who is firmly entrenched in organized labor's "entitlement" past and a looming impediment to any substantive progress in the upcoming contract bargaining talks with the Detroit-based automakers.

And he proved that convincingly with his idiotic statements over the weekend at a union rally in Windsor.

The purpose of the Sunday meeting, according to the Windsor Star, was to rally the 1200 members of Local 1973, who were upset with the fact that GM had decided to build a new six-speed transmission at their St. Catharines (Ontario) plant instead of in their Windsor (Ontario) transmission facility. Hargrove, in classic management-bashing rhetoric, told the assembled workers that "They made the decision to put the transmission in St. Catharines, and they say publicly if they don't get the right deal in St. Catharines it will not come to Canada, therefore eliminating Windsor. I say to them, you better find a goddamn product for Windsor or we'll take all of the General Motors corporation down in September 2008. General Motors workers have earned the commitment, especially in Windsor." Hargrove went on to say that a strike action would be used as a weapon to destroy GM when his union's contract negotiations begin in 2008 (the UAW contract negotiations begin this summer).

In effect, Hargrove is saying, let's take an entire industry that's literally and figuratively hanging by a thread and destroy it with a strike - and destroy our own jobs in the process. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? To the highly corrosive mindset at the helm of the CAW, apparently it does, unfortunately...

Whether these guys live in a weird Twilight Zone of Denial or they're just pathologically out of touch - or both - it's clear to everyone within a hammer throw of their senses that there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that the Detroit-based automakers can survive in the newly-limned global automotive market if the existing union contracts are left essentially untouched in the upcoming negotiations - as these union leaders are making noises suggesting that they should be...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If the Detroit-based car companies had the cojones to do it, they could "lock-out" the current membership of the UAW and CAW. And do you know what would happen then? There would be short-term pain to be sure, but then there would be fifteen people lining up for each and every job all across this country and in Canada - all eager to work for reduced wages and benefits...

Hargrove and Gettelfinger have yet to come to terms with the fact that they face a clearcut choice in these upcoming contract negotiations. And that choice comes down to this: They either accept a reduced number of jobs at a reduced pay scale and with reduced benefits, or they will be left with no jobs at all...

Right now, Buzz Hargrove and Ron Gettelfinger have given every indication through their inflammatory statements and juvenile grandstanding that they are shockingly ill-qualified for the task.