The answer is not simple as Union is good or bad, or if the fault is with managers. It is a lot more complex than that. But JUST LOOKING AT BIG THREE, it is clear that excess demands created by Unions in the past, and the managers granting them, is at fault. Back in the good days, the big three though as long as they make the cars, people will buy them. So whenever Unions made a demand, managers said okay since they are making money either way. The last thing managers wanted was the strike since it will disrupt the manufacturing process. So the Unions got use to getting what they wanted, and Managers didn't care about few percent decrease in gross margin since they are making a lot of money.

Fast forward to today,

Now with heavy international competition, the big three simply can not compete with others due to high cost compared to the companies with no Unions. It is decades of bad decisions by the both side that led to the conditions that the big 3 is on now. Only way to fix this is by taking away some of the benefits of Unions but I will tell you this. Once people get use to getting a certain amount, it is very hard for them to give it up.


I think Union served its purpose in the past. But in today's work force, Union is not necessary. Most of the time it just lowers Union workers pay and add little to no advantage while making Union Organizations rich.

 

I am agreeing with this. See above again. The absolute of either end of the spectrum introduces untenable situations, neither of which benefits a majority of people.

I already addressed this point and why it's flawed. The point is that businesses have and do still try plenty of their own anti-competitive practices in order to scrape an extra buck up. Businesses are not some completely innocent party when it comes to artificial market pressures. Many (not all) businesses are for them when it benefits their bottom line, and against them when such pressures don't. It's the never-ending battle of honesty.

But where market pressures regarding the cost of labor are concerned, employers can play just as much of a role in that as employees. There are plenty of examples of people in one place getting less than the market value of their work in another place. Who's to say who's right on the real cost? What if 19 companies pay their people $30k/yr, but in a poorer area a 20th company only pays their people $25k/year for the same job? And the same thing applies to women. Want to cry about artificial labor costs? How about the negative pressures placed on women's salaries for entirely vaccuous reasons not even union-related?

I don't need the UAW example thrown in my face. I get it. I know. Even union people I know don't care for the UAW because of how the UAW's image is projected onto other unions. I understand the differences between the workforces of Japanese companies here and American ones. You guys are still stuck arguing for one extreme over the other, when in reality the argument isn't there.

And this is on top of the fact, that everyone is again conveniently forgetting, that GM didn't have to tighten its purse strings in the 70s when Japanese companies first started really coming in. They didn't HAVE to make crappy cars. They didn't HAVE to make the cars they made. They didn't HAVE to do all the things and make all the moves that lost them their dominance. Leadership is not the fault of the UAW. In fact, the union pay issue can even be seen as (partly) a result of GM's poor business decisions and insistence on not meeting the evolving marketplace. IF GM had chosen to be wiser rather than bull-headedly pushing down its typical road, maybe the UAW's negative profitability influence wouldn't be so great as it has been. Many people here dog GM (compared to Honda, Toyota, etc.) until someone utters "UAW"; then all of a sudden we have budding lawyers waiting to defend GM in court against the unions.