Canadian Auto Workers President Ken Lewenza wants Ontario to guarantee the pensions of retired workers should GM and/or Chrysler fail.
The audacity of such a demand is blinding.
The North American automakers are in such trouble because of two main factors: one, the unbridled and short-sighted greed of the Unions and two, the colossal mismanagement of the automakers. Other factors like product quality were secondary as the automakers were forced to cut corners. This slippery slope has contributed to the fact that ‘Big Three’ no longer holds the same meaning.
In the 1990’s, when GM was considered ‘too big to fail’, the Union lobbied the Government to allow GM to not properly fund its worker’s pension fund. Why? Because the cookie jar was already empty and those now-loosened funds could buy more cookies for the Union’s members. And as the first deal made come negotiation time is used as a template, all of the ‘Big Three’ were set on the same hook.
These retirees made wages and enjoyed benefits well beyond that of other union and non-union workers (most of whom with superior skills and qualifications) and in their collective stupidity and arrogance believed everything their union told them about the party never ending; that they always had their employer dominated. Most, it seems, planned for their individual financial futures accordingly, depending on their gold pensions to be there.
Now the Union is telling the government that they should make you and I pay their way. I don’t have a pension. I have to save for my own retirement. And I might be made to fund the retirements of workers who had remuneration packages entirely incongruent with their skill-set and the market value for their work.
I think not. Let these retirees go back to work. I wouldn’t anticipate retiring without planning ahead. Why should they?
No comments:
Post a Comment