If you’re a mega corporation, one of the most annoying things about employees is that they expect to be paid for their work and as if that’s not enough, they also tend to draw a parallel between the performance of the company and what their labor is worth.
Fortunately, the combination of ZIRP-assisted, EPS-inflating buybacks and the relative powerlessness of the American worker has served to preserve the divide between corporate management and everyday employees, but every once in awhile, beleaguered laborers start to get the idea that they’re entitled to a greater share of what they effectively create and that translates directly into calls for higher wages.
This situation is exacerbated when the peasantry gets together in the form of organized labor which unfairly seeks to deprive management of its capitalistic right to keep almost all of the profits from the widgets their employees produce.
Given the above, it comes as no surprise that the subprime loan-assisted boom in auto sales has auto workers asking for a larger piece of the pie. Here’s WSJ [8]:
Automobiles flew off dealer lots last month at the fastest pace in 10 years, but the good times are stirring tension between U.S. auto makers and their unionized workers that threatens to undercut the industry’s rebound.
United Auto Workers union members at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV this week rejected for the first time in three decades a tentative agreement as inadequate, and Ford Motor Co. faces a walkout at a big truck factory as soon as Sunday.
As buyers flood dealer lots, snapping up pricey pickups and sport-utility vehicles that deliver fat profits to General Motors Co., Ford and Fiat Chrysler, factory workers are demanding an end to the concessions that put the U.S. industry back on its feet after near collapse seven years ago.
“We got a catered meal of hot dogs and hamburgers as our thanks while others, I’m sure, got big bonuses,” said Phil Reiter, a 44-year-old union member referring to a recent production milestone at Fiat Chrysler’s Toledo, Ohio, Jeep factory. That plant on Tuesday rejected a UAW supported contract by a more than 4-to-1 ratio.
And while “a catered meal of hot dogs and hamburgers” should clearly be enough, these greedy assembly line workers still want more, which of course means that the auto industry needs to simply stop hiring them:
On Thursday, the UAW confirmed that 65% of its Fiat Chrysler members spurned Fiat Chrysler’s offer, the first time in more than 30 years a proposed bargaining deal was voted down. The decision is a blow to the UAW, which has tried to reverse a persistent decline in union auto jobs by accepting concessions.
Obviously, we've employed a bit of sarcasm in our presentation here, but the simple fact is that no matter what side of the organized labor debate you fall on, the situation depicted in the following graphic simply isn't sustainable...
[9]
...but we imagine that in today's jobs market, workers' complaints may fall on largely deaf ears because after all, manufacturing jobs clearly aren't important when it comes to sustaining America's feudal [10] "robust" economic recovery:
