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Old 10-17-2014, 01:40 PM   #22
airdale
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airdale will become famous soon enough
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Arizona
Posts: 555
5 yr Member
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Civicsman View Post
To borrow a phrase from the movie "Aliens", Maybe you haven't been paying attention. More than 20 years ago, Asian car companies decided it is good business to make cars in the USA, not just import them. All of the big foreign car companies now have a HUGE manufacturing presence in the USA. Honda and Toyota both have technical development centers here, and a large percentage of components for the vehicles are also made here.

While I believe trade unions have filled (and will fill) an important place in helping workers escape workplace abuse, I don't believe "profits" should go to the trade unions. If you're talking about workers, whether unionized or not, it's a different story, but that's not what was said.

According to Soichiro Honda himself, in 2010, Honda employed more than 25,000 associates in the U.S. with a payroll of $1.6 billion. Another 140,000 workers are employed at authorized dealerships in the U.S., and tens of thousands more work for the company's 530 U.S. original equipment (OEM) suppliers. For the most part, these are reasonably compensated jobs. That's not a bad record! Note that workers at Honda U.S. (and recently VW U.S.) have turned down union representation. They are reasonably happy with compensation, working conditions, and company-worker relations.

There are a LOT of big US companies who really screw their employees (and the country), by outsourcing manufacturing to low-cost countries when they do not need to do so (Apple, I'm looking at you), or reap incredibly huge corporate and personal fortunes on the backs of workers who are, quite literally, under the poverty line (Wal-Mart, for example). By comparison, the foreign car companies are role models for reasonable treatment of employees.
I could so easily tear each one of your point apart bit by bit...I wont...

In the 60's and 70's the American auto industry was the largest employer, now Walmart is... Think that has anything to due with pay stagnation ?

Yes they figured out it was easier to build a car here than literally a slow boat from China? Do you also notice every one of those companies are in the right to work states?

Did you know the American auto industry imploded?

Its classic about the whole VW anti Union vote... Can I ask why a republican Congress person lied outright to the people of the factory that if they went union VW was leaving? You think that would sway anyone?

Just food for thought...This county is being destroyed from in from just a handful of very wealthy people...and todays kids will never be able to make what we did...

Just food for thought... That was then this is now....Are you better today than you were 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30, years ago?... The answer is worse!
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