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I heard a small bit of the UAW representatives testimony today and I must say he did change my mind a bit about the auto unions role in this. I used to think that the union was responsible for limiting the profitability of the auto company's. After listening to the hearings today I changed my mind and I am now more centrist in my feelings towards the union and here is why: When a corporation is having monetary difficulties one of the easiest solutions is to cut employee benefits. It's so easy to cut out the pension, decrease the employers contribution to health care, and eliminate jobs. It is much harder to think outside the box and come up with innovative restructuring and oust the the entrenched group think. After listening to todays hearing I found myself glad that these employees and retirees had an advocate which is in essence forcing the big 3 to get a little more innovative in their thinking. I think that all employees enter into a type of unwritten fiduciary contract with the employer when they are hired. The employee agrees to do a good job in exchange for an agreed upon set of benefits and a well managed business. If the workers fail to do a good job they are fired. When a company is systematically mismanaged, guess what? The line workers and retiree's start to loose their benefits and or jobs. I look to a company like Apple for an example on how to run a company well. Apple integrated the entire process of producing a product so that all departments were involved or have knowledge of what is going on. Designers, engineers, accountants or whatever do not work independently in different departments moving a product from the research dept. to the design dept. to the development dept. My understanding is that at the time this was an innovative approach to management that resulted in ground breaking product designs. This is what I would like to see from the auto execs...don't tell me you need to cut benefits etc. Tell me how different you are going to be from what you are now, how is management going to be radically different? How many layers of management can you eliminate? How many departments can you consolidate? Can your engineers work hand in hand with artists? If you can do this, and you still need more financial cuts, as a last resort pursue benefits.
*stepping off the soapbox now*
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