Monday, November 17, 2008

It’s hard to be sympathetic………

It was 1983 when I went to Flint Michigan to visit one of my closest friends house. I met “Mom” and “Pops” at their modest house a few blocks from what passes as downtown for Flint.

Jim was in the navy when he and Ann got married. I met Ann at Texas Tech.  Ann was sort of the little sister of the dorm. She was a chemical engineering student down the hall from me. She was a good kid. One of those sweet but not to pretty engineering geek type girls that we all seem to know. When she introduced us to Jim, we were all thrilled. He is a hulluva great guy. They got married, had a kid and a pit-bull named Tiger Bear.

Pops was a UAW union worker at GM in Flint. He had been there for 28 years at that point. He had paid off his house and raised his kids while his wife didn’t have to work. He told me that he was making $32.00 an hour pushing his broom on the night shift at the plant. That’s thirty two dollars an hour for sweeping the floor around and under the assembly line. That’s over sixty six thousand dollars a year for pushing a broom. In 1983!

Some of the union auto workers in Michigan make between $45 and $75 dollars an hour these days. Any wonder why GM has to open factories in Mexico. Doesn’t this make it a little obvious why the foreign auto makers are kicking our asses?

And now the Detroit auto makers are looking to be bailed out because they can’t make ends meet? Are you kidding me? Those guys have been raping us for years and now we are being asked bail them out financially? 

Maybe we should let GM go bankrupt. Ford and Chrysler can go under too. Maybe the parasitic unions will die also and what re-emerges will be managed a little more intelligently.

Why would we want to that? Who am I kidding?

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