UAW strikes

The union and if they are help­ing or hurt­ing?

In many ways the his­to­ry of the unions is one of help­ing the work­ing pub­lic because in this his­to­ry many ter­ri­ble things did hap­pen and peo­ple were often con­sid­ered an expend­able force.

Most peo­ple under­stand that in the past peo­ple who had to work in fac­to­ries were abused and that unions were nec­es­sary in order for many of these bad faith prac­tices that caused injury and death to the labor force to be addressed.

Unions were need­ful things.

Look­ing at what is going on right now though it seems that the unions may be harm­ing its mem­bers rather than doing the right and appro­pri­ate thing.

When decid­ing to go on strike there are of course numer­ous things to con­sid­er.

One of the most strik­ing things in this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion is the idea that the big three auto man­u­fac­tur­ers have prof­it­ed from increased prices dur­ing the covid years, 2019 to 2023…

So from 2019 to 2023 the big auto man­u­fac­tur­ers they made a lot of mon­ey.

They did make a lot of mon­ey from a sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple were pro­hib­it­ed from shop­ping, so they did it online and that cre­at­ed high­er prices because if you want­ed a new car you had to pay more for that car.

The thing here that seems strange is the idea that the unions want more mon­ey from the past three years because they do not think it is fair that the busi­ness made more mon­ey but they made the same mon­ey?

That seems strange to many peo­ple!

Can you go back in the past and say hey you made more mon­ey but we did not get our share of that extra mon­ey?

No that is not how it works but it would seem that this is exact­ly what the UAW want to do and that is nev­er going to hap­pen.

So the price is high and high­er and the UAW con­tin­ue to up the bet with strikes.

Increased prices for cars, trucks, auto­mo­biles.

Infla­tion has been a real­ly big issue and it is some­thing that has reached a point where the aver­age house­hold can­not afford to buy a new auto­mo­bile.

The aver­age price for a new truck is over $70,000.00

The price for a new diesel truck is over $85,000.00 this hurts farm­ers, con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, even land­scape com­pa­nies who need heavy duty trucks that can pull heavy loads and diesel engines are the most eco­nom­i­cal way to do that work.

Fam­i­lies are hav­ing a hard time keep­ing up with the cost of gro­ceries.

Infla­tion has caused a great deal of harm for every­one in this econ­o­my.

How can the aver­age fam­i­ly afford to pay $65,000.00 for a small four door car!

The answer is they can­not afford the pay­ments and that is reflect­ed in the num­ber of repos­ses­sions that are tak­ing place.

Repos are going up every month to the point that there is actu­al­ly a huge sur­plus in cars and the big auc­tions are flood­ed with used low mileage cars that peo­ple have turned in because they can­not afford the high pay­ments.

So what are fam­i­lies doing about this prob­lem.

They are buy­ing used cars which are also sell­ing at a high­er than nor­mal price.

When you begin to look at what is going on in the econ­o­my plus the writ­ers and actors strike which is also going on right now then you have to begin to won­der if this UAW strike is real­ly pru­dent.

The per­fect bad eco­nom­ic storm?

There are dark clouds on the hori­zon with respect to a third event that could real­is­ti­cal­ly hap­pen soon and that event is the debt and the pos­si­ble shut­down of the gov­ern­ment.

The true risk in this UAW strike is that if the econ­o­my gets real­ly bad not only will peo­ple stop buy­ing new cars, (which they real­ly already have) then the demand for new cars may actu­al­ly go so low that the big auto man­u­fac­tur­ers may choose to stop mak­ing cars for a while.

If that hap­pens then many of these peo­ple that are strik­ing for a 46 per­cent increase in pay and some oth­er things that in this econ­o­my the man­u­fac­tur­ers can­not afford to pay unions for a 40 hour work week while the union work­ers only work 32 hours?

Wait what? That does not make any sense at all.

It is strange most­ly because it is not a rea­son­able thing to ask for but also because it makes it so that the fac­to­ries can­not hire part time employ­ees.

So they want to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where the auto man­u­fac­tur­ers have no con­trol over their own busi­ness.

That is a big issue and it is like­ly that many of these jobs that are cur­rent­ly in con­tention by this strike may go away or worse may end up in anoth­er coun­try because they will not be able to hire peo­ple here.

That is the real risk here.

It is a big prob­lem and you can see how with infla­tion these strik­ing work­ers have the same prob­lems with infla­tion as every­one else has.

Every­one is hurt­ing right now.

Dur­ing a media inter­view one strik­ing auto work­er made the state­ment that they could not afford to buy the cars and trucks they were mak­ing.

That is true but also most car buy­ers can­not afford to buy these same cars and if no one can afford to buy a car?

What does this mean for the strik­ing union labor work­er?

When the cost of a car is so high that few peo­ple can afford to buy them?

The truth here is that what goes up must come down!

That is the truth because prices can­not just con­tin­ue to go up and up and up.

That is what is going on the prices keep get­ting high­er and high­er.

It real­ly looks like all of these strik­ing unions may be well inten­tioned but they may have cho­sen the wrong moment in his­to­ry to begin a long strike.