Workplace Rant....What to do?? Kinda Long...Sorry
Unfortunately for union workers, their work ethic is stifled by the "Union mentality", and usually the lack of individual compensation for a job well done. Remember, as a union member you are part of a collective. Individual effort might be recognized, but, outside of the realm of a bonus, or an award, the individual can not be individually compensated, with a wage increase.
I haven't seen the unions deliberately stifle the work ethic in the union shops I've worked in, Verizon, Bell Helicopter, and my current employer. Maybe that's a stereotype, or maybe it does go in those states where the workforces are more heavily organized such as in the midwest. I'm not going to proclaim that it does or doesn't because I've never worked in a union shop in the midwest. I can only speak from my own experience.
My original question was in response to the unions-protect-deadbeats statement. Like I said, I've seen and worked with those same deadbeats at non-unionized companies and was wondering who was protecting them at those places because those companies weren't any more inclined to get rid of them than the union shops. Your answer is true in the technical sense in that we SHOULD be held responsible for poor work performance, but it just doesn't happen. My position and my point was, based on my experience, is that being union or non-union is irrelevant when it comes to the willingness of some companies to address the problems with their deadbeats.
We've all seen the deterioration of that ethic with the advent of the UAW, and the issues that affected GM. Poor management, poor policy, and poor labor work ethic all served to do what most people thought was impossible. The undoing of GM. Argue it back and forth, the simple truth of the matter was GM was not getting the work and quality per hour that was needed to operate efficiently and present a product that was what the customer wanted, and had a reliability coefficient that would sustain sales. We know the result. It wasn't the fault of the union employees, and it wasn't the fault of management, it was the fault of both entities. There were no innocents in that fiasco.
Ed Wallace wrote a very good assessment of GM and Chrysler's problems back during the worst of the recession. GM took a major financial hit when it had to bail out its mortgage lending arm of GMAC to the tune of some $12 billion dollars (double that number by some analysts' estimates) when they took huge losses in the sub prime lending market. A separate company some argue, but still under the umbrella of the parent company GM. And GM took the hit
Most of us are more familiar with Chrysler. Daimler Benz stripped them of about $9 billion dollars before dumping them with next to nothing.
It's tempting to say "Those are large corporations, so that kind of money is a drop in the bucket to them." Ummmm....no it's not. Those types of hits will drive nearly any corporation into bankruptcy court. In our heyday in the late 90s, Delta had a $2 billion cash reserve. So when a company has to fork out 12 times that number, a chapter 11 filing won't be long in coming.
Another issue at GM was the excessively large number of what's known as non-value added employees, that is, employees who are not directly involved in the assembly and the sale of the final product (like those involved in the GMAC debacle). Even corporate labor consultants will admit that's true when cornered. I can attest to the fact that in my visits to the Detroit area, I've yet to meet one assembly line worker, though I met plenty of GM employees with very prestigious sounding administrative titles who don't design, build, or sale the cars. I'd be hard pressed to tell you what it is they do (or did). In short terms, GM was top heavy with those kinds of employees.
The fact is, I've met more assembly line workers here in the DFW area who work at the local GM Arlington assembly plant. The reason Arlington has remained open all these years as an assembly plant outside of the Detroit area (and continues to thrive) is because it is efficient. The local workers will tell you they love their jobs. The pace of the operation and their work environment simply does not allow for people who can't or won't keep up. The Arlington workers tend to bristle at words like slacker, deadbeat, etc..... Now, I'm not naive. They've got their less-than-motivated workers they have to deal with, I'm sure. But that's what I've been driving at. Work ethic issues are more of a widespread problem than many are willing to admit to, and it's not exclusive to union shops.
But you called it, what happened at GM was a fiasco and everyone had to take a bite out of that sandwich.
