UAW Union

I’m a retired construction electrician and in the years I was working I was blessed to have been in a union that was led by someone I believe to have been the greatest labor leader in the history of the labor movement – Harry Van Arsdale Jr.   

Van Arsdale was great because he not only negotiated abundant wages and benefits for the workers but he also knew how to help the contractors flourish and keep people employed so they could enjoy those benefits.  He knew that when they prospered those who provided the labor could share in the wealth.  Every new effort in tooling and improved construction materials that could increase production was encouraged.  It led to making it possible to work shorter hours while still maintaining the level of production and to more often than not led to giving the workers a more profitable day.  Many a small contractor that decided to join the union grew beyond its imagination. I went to work for a small contractor in the second year of my five year apprenticeship called the Forest Electric Company.  I worked for others for one year to ten years through the ups and downs of the economy over the years and I spent the last eight years I worked with that same company.  By then it was one of the biggest contractors in the City of New York.  This is only one example of many that Van Arsdale can be thanked for.  As President of the Central Trades and Labor Council Harry also helped restore troubled businesses to health and he did what he did it without prevailing upon the government to hold up the taxpayers for bailout money to do it.  The current leadership of the United Auto Workers Union would have been blessed to have the wisdom that Van Arsdale had.

The UAW chose to use a no compromise philosophy and forced the troubled General Motors Corporation to sign a pact with the government.  They now have a CEO who has never run so much as a lemonade stand and a controlling partner they may never be able to get rid of who will tell them what kind of a product they can and cannot turn out.   One thing he does have though is an inexhaustible supply of money.  It’s called the American taxpayer and the creditor nation, China, that is willing to buy as much of the USA that we’re willing to sell.  Fox News reported on Thursday, 1/26, that every Chevy Volt that comes off the assembly line is being subsidized $24,000 in taxpayer money.  One of the co-hosts of “The Five” program on Fox said he had one for a one week trial run.  The price of the car was $46,500.  He fully charged it over a period of 12 hours twice that week and ran out of electrical power twice in the Lincoln Tunnel on his way to work, 25 miles from his home.   

Time will tell whether the United Auto Workers will be happy about the way their leaders handled the current crisis and whether they’ll be happy that the government is telling them what to do.