Unbelievable: Despite Employee Rejection, Germans Still Pushing Unions in Volkswagen Plant

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is a cultural difference that could end up backfiring, but Volkswagen officials at the Tennessee auto plant are still pledging that they will try to help unions invade the plant even though workers voted not to join a union.

Last week American workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee auto plant voted not to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) union–the one group most responsible for the utter destruction of Detroit.

But Volkswagen, a German company, simply can’t understand why its American workers wouldn’t want to join a union and are still pushing employees to give the UAW a chance.
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Unbelievable: Despite Employee Rejection, Germans Still Pushing Unions in Volkswagen Plant”


Allowing Unions to Organize Volkswagen is Like ‘Injecting Cancer’ Into US Auto Industry

-By Warner Todd Huston

It seems like a foolish move by Volkswagen for allowing the United Auto Workers (UAW) to organize its American plants. Not only did the UAW screw Volkswagen in the past, but even now the union admits that it is raising union dues solely to replenish its strike fund so unionistas can walk out. It’s like Volkswagen is buying its own rope for its execution.

Or, as Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal says, “it’s like inserting a cancer cell into a body.”

That is how Journal editorial board member Moore characterized the act of allowing the UAW to organize Volkswagen’s American auto plants. “That one cancer cell is going to multiply and kill the body. It’s a disruptive influence,” he continued.

Worse, the UAW wants to raise dues for members for the expressed reason of filling strike fund coffers, this according to UAW Boss Bob King.

So, if Volkswagen gives in to the UAW’s demands it will only be helping the union to walk out at the earliest opportunity.
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Allowing Unions to Organize Volkswagen is Like ‘Injecting Cancer’ Into US Auto Industry”


Chris Plante Show: Dems Shipping in Busloads of Fraudulent Voters into Wisconsin

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is the massive vote fraud I’ve been warning about and Gov. Walker better be prepared for it.

WMAL’s Chris Plante got a call today from a man claiming to be on one of four busses that are driving from Michigan to Wisconsin in order to have fraudulent voters flood the polls for Democrat Barrett who is vying to upset Wis. Governor Scott Walker.

The caller says that the busses were organized by an auto union to bring as many illegal votes to Wisconsin as they can.

Radio host Plante sums up the caller’s claim thus:

What you’re telling me is that the unions in Michigan have organized a bus convoy — and you’re riding in that bus convoy — and they’re bringing Michigan residents to Wisconsin in order to vote illegally for Tom Barrett.

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Chris Plante Show: Dems Shipping in Busloads of Fraudulent Voters into Wisconsin”


The UAW’s Waning Days?

-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.
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The UAW’s Waning Days?”


Contrary to Claim, White House Did Control GM’s Daily Business And Cut Workers Pay?

-By Warner Todd Huston

When Barack Obama threw millions of our tax dollars at General Motors to “save it,” the administration claimed that it would not involve itself in the “day-to-day management” of the venerable car company. New emails obtained by The Daily Caller, however, casts doubt on this claim.

In fact, as Matthew Boyle reports, the emails “reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions.”

It turns out that Treasurer Secretary Timothy Geithner pressured GM, widely derided as Government Motors, to cut the pensions for the salaried, non-union employees at Delphi, a company owned by GM.
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Contrary to Claim, White House Did Control GM’s Daily Business And Cut Workers Pay?”


Union Plan: ‘Forget About the Law, Brand Businesses as Human Right Violators’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Once again we see how lawless the Obama administration and its allies in unions are. By their own admission they don’t care about the law.

In the following video we see Obama’s appointee to his Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations and United Auto Workers President, Bob King, telling attendees at a recent union roundtable discussion that the unions intend to “forget about the law.”

We also see violence prone AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a close Obama confidante, saying the same thing.

So, their plan is to ignore any actual law and then further to “brand” businesses as “human rights violators” so that they can destroy them.

Unions are entirely un-American. At their core they are socialist, anti-capitalist, destroyers of jobs and success. And remember, folks. THESE are Obama’s people.
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Union Plan: ‘Forget About the Law, Brand Businesses as Human Right Violators’”


Union Boss: Yeah We’ll Talk, But Go Our Way or You’re a ‘Human Rights Violator’

-By Warner Todd Huston

As President Obama clucks his tongue at America for “pointing fingers” and “assigning blame” in our political debate, and as his friends on the far left ignore him and point their fingers and assign blame to the Republicans, Tea Partiers, and Sarah Palin, at least one union chief in Detroit is doing his part to add to the political vitriol by charging anyone that disagrees with him with being a “human rights violator.”

Oh, he’s all about sitting down at the table and talking, he claims. Yet, United Auto Workers President Bob King is ready to finger point and accuse people of a vile abuse of basic human rights if they don’t bend over and take it up the tailpipe courtesy of those greedy, profligate unions.

For Crain’s Detroit David Barkholz reports that the UAW chief is all prepared for negotiations with the Big Three auto makers this year, but his tone makes it pretty clear that his idea of negotiations is his way or the highway. His vitriol is already flowing before the first negotiation session begins.
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Union Boss: Yeah We’ll Talk, But Go Our Way or You’re a ‘Human Rights Violator’”


Unions: Who Needs ‘Em?

-By Thierry Godard

Detroit in 2010 is unlike any other American city. Once a bastion of American industrial might, Detroit was not only home to the Big Three, but a thriving community of small business owners who supported the automotive industry. In a sad twist of fate, Detroit has come to symbolize the crippled state of the American economy.

Foreclosure has rendered the city nearly vacant. Detroit is a modern-day ghost town. The infamous bailout of GM and Chrysler came about largely because of the massive obligations these automotive companies had to pay to their labor unions. The Democratic Congress, left with the option of propping up failing companies or risking a complete breakdown of mid-western society, chose the bailout instead of confronting the true problem—unions—head on.

It’s no secret to industry insiders that the United Auto Workers’ unreasonable demands played a large role in the collapse of the auto industry in 2008. The irony, of course, is that the UAW’s rampant waste prompted the downfall of the very industry it not only claims to serve, but wholly relies on for the employment of its members.
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Unions: Who Needs ‘Em?”


More Union Resistance in Auto Industry

– By Warner Todd Huston

Here’s the scenario: The economy is in the worst shape it has been in for a generation. Your industry is in serious financial distress and people in your business are losing jobs all over the country. You happen to be working, but your union is negotiating a new contract that will affect a buyer of your plant, a buyer that might be able to keep everyone working. What do you do? Make serious efforts to negotiate or reject all offers?

If you are the UAW you cut your nose off to spite your face, apparently. At least that seems to be the case in Indianapolis, Indiana where the UAW has rejected concessions in a labor dispute at the GM plant there.

Even worse, the union recalcitrance is causing a buyer of the plant to back out putting everyone’s jobs in jeopardy.
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More Union Resistance in Auto Industry”


Pot Smoking Gov’t Motors Car Builders Actually Fired

-By Warner Todd Huston

Monday Government Motors (GM) took a hard line against the drunken, pot smoking union members that became the unwitting star of a news expose in Detroit last week firing the partiers.

All 13 employees were fired after being shown on WJBK, Fox 2 News Detroit drinking and smoking pot in a local park on their lunch break.

This answers the question of just how much protection the union would be able to afford the employees at least initially. Many assumed that they’d get the typical union slap on the wrist, maybe a suspension, but be back to work like normal soon enough.

No word if the employees will appeal this decision.

In a statement released today, Chrysler said:

“It is unfortunate that the actions of a few people have called into question the reputation of more than 51,000 very proud, hard-working Chrysler Group employees, grateful that the American and Canadian taxpayers gave us a second chance,” they said. “We take that responsibility very seriously and will work to restore the public’s faith.”

The union has yet to address this newest development.

If Chysler thinks the actions of these 13 have been unfortunate enough to call into question the reputation of the whole kit and kaboodle, I wonder what they think of what Obama has done to them?
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Pot Smoking Gov’t Motors Car Builders Actually Fired”


Michigan Home Healthcare Workers Sue State Over Forced Unionization

-By Warner Todd Huston

So imagine that you are working out of your home or the home of a friend. Say you are helping care for your own developmentally disabled relative or that of another. You are working for a family, not a company, and you are not employed by the state. Then one day you get a letter in the mail that says you have been forced by the state to join a union and henceforth you will be paying dues by having some of your salary removed by the state and given to the union. Does this sound like you are living and working in America? It is if you are a home healthcare worker in the State of Michigan.

Because of a special deal made behind the scenes between Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm and two unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Michigan’s 40,000 in-home healthcare workers were unionized by a shady “vote” of less than 20% of these workers in 2006 via a mail-in ballot that most workers had no idea even existed.

The forced unionization has been in and out of courts since 2006 and now it is about to go back in again as a group of in-home healthcare workers is suing the state for driving them into a union against their will.
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Michigan Home Healthcare Workers Sue State Over Forced Unionization”


UAW Joins Push For ‘Green Jobs’

-By Warner Todd Huston

The United Auto Workers has announced that it will join a coalition of unions called the BlueGreen Alliance in an effort to push “green jobs.”

I was amused by what BlueGreen Alliance founder Leo Gerard said of this addition to the group.

“The American auto industry is poised to lead the world in the production of cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars and advanced vehicle technologies,” said Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, a founder of the BlueGreen Alliance. “The members of UAW, working people who make America’s vehicles, are a welcome addition to our effort to create millions of good jobs while protecting the environment for future generations.”

Notice how he lumps his union pals in with those creating those new “advanced vehicle technologies.” The unions don’t have as much to do with creating that new technology as it does in merely building them after they’ve been designed. He takes a bit more credit than he deserves.

Still, the main problem with this alliance isn’t that they are taking too much credit for other people’s work, it’s that the idea of “green jobs” is a farce in the first place.
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UAW Joins Push For ‘Green Jobs’”


Just a Quick Example on How Bad Writing is in the Old Media These Days

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here’s how bad writing is in the media. In a Reuters story about unions making concessions is this amusing line:

“Under Gettelfinger, the UAW agreed to allow new workers to be hired at about $14 per hour — about half of the $28 base rate for existing autoworkers.”

Uh, per my math, 14 IS half of 28. It isn’t “about half.” Nice writing there al Reuters!

Now, a better way to say it would have been:

“Under Gettelfinger, the UAW agreed to allow new workers to be hired at about half the $28 base rate for existing autoworkers.”

More precise, less wordy and makes sense. It was pretty poor work by Reuters. I know I make my share of mistakes, but then again, I’m just blogging here. I don’t have editors!