Well it doesn't take a whole lot of thought to understand that the union has only made the problem worse. Sure, they're fighting to keep your wages high; but if there's no Ford/GM/Chrysler to PAY those wages, it's a bit of a moot point, no?
The government loan that the big 3 asked for relied on cooperation from the union, and with the union taking a steady "Go fuck your hat" approach to it, the next step will be Chapter 11, and a non-unionized workforce.
Personally, I don't like unions; I like the fact that my hard work warrants better remuneration for my time, rather than a board of people that I could compare to elected officials in government who are supposed to look out for our best interests, yet seem all too often to have their heads comfortably lodged in their own rectums. I'm a supporter of free enterprise, and I feel that unionizing tends to have a lot of negative effects on the industry. To boil it down, workers are really a commodity, just like anything else. Supply and demand dictates worth of a commodity; a union tries to increase price without a reasonable increase in demand or a reasonable decrease in supply. This throws a wrench in the works. Keep in mind that the UAW just singlehandedly destroyed the federal bailout loan; these people are supposed to be keeping your jobs safe, even at risk of maybe taking a pay-cut, or a slightly smaller Christmas bonus. Nice job they did.
However, I do sometimes believe unions are a necessary evil, and here's why: I've lived in places in which the workforce is largely unionized. A worker doesn't even have to be worth the paper his contract is written on, and yet he'll get paid a handsome salary to stand around and drool out the corner of his mouth. I now live in a place where the workforce is largely non-union, but does have some union competition. What this does is it keeps both sides honest; the non-unionized corporations can't undercut salaries too ridiculously because of the union competition, but the union can't make unreasonable demands because of the non-unionized corporations. It provides a sense of balance, of middle ground. Unfortunately, up until foreign automakers started building plants in North America, the automotive sector has been completely unionized. The push from non-unionized corporations came too little, too late to provide the balance needed.
