-By Warner Todd Huston
Reuters has a very interesting article detailing the fall of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the modern era. It is a long article, but if you are interested in the way the UAW intends to keep itself relevant to the auto industry on into the future, it is worth the read.
It is also a good article if you want a glimpse of the possible end to the UAW. Its deep financial troubles, its steady loss of members and plants to represent, and its powerlessness to spread its cancer to other auto makers in the south is an ominous warning that the UAW might be headed for the dust bin of history.
Let’s not start popping champagne corks yet, though. We should not count the UAW out, of course, as it is still very powerful. But things are not looking good for the once supremely powerful union.
One thing that this means most is that the UAW will have far, far less cash to spread around for Democrats. The union is starting to realize that it must turn its finances inward in order to survive. As the next decade moves forward the UAW will find that it simply cannot afford to line the pockets of Democrats with the millions of past campaigns.
This is an important link to break. The sooner it happens the better.
In any case, this is a good article…
Crunch time at America’s richest union
(Reuters) – Bob King, the president of the United Auto Workers, has a problem: the labor union that credits itself with creating the American middle class has glimpsed the end of the line.
Two years after the wrenching restructuring of the U.S. auto industry and the bankruptcies that remade General Motors and Chrysler, the UAW is facing its own financial reckoning. America’s richest union has been living beyond its means and running down its savings, an analysis of its financial records shows.
Unless King and other officials succeed with a turnaround plan still taking shape, the next financial crisis in Detroit may not be at one of the automakers but at the UAW itself.
That picture of the growing financial pressure on the 76-year-old union emerges from a Reuters analysis of a decade of UAW financial filings and interviews with dozens of current and former union officials and people close to the union…
Read the rest HERE.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.