Last week President Obama and his cabal decided that GM needed a new CEO.  They also used their vast experience in running a large heavy industry company to decide that Chrysler could only survive if they merged with FIAT (hmm I wonder if some back room deal was struck there).

This event started to make me wonder about all of the bad leadership decisions that have contributed to GM's decline and how the brilliant Obama is going to fix them.  So most people would agree that poor decision making in GM's leadership help to create the problems they are in but I think there is more to the story than just the GM executives.  I have noticed through the years that it seems like the UAW has taken up a tacit of going on strike just when an automaker is experiencing a difficult financial situation.  It was true in the 80's and it appears to be true today.  So I started to do some googling to find out just how many times the UAW has gone on strike in the recent past.

Fortunately I stumbled upon a site put together by university students that already did the work for me.  So in the interest of time I would like to list some of the dates they found:

July 16, 2008 Strike at Johnsons Control plant that supplies GM with consoles and seats.

May 5, 2008 work stoppage at Kansas City GM plant that builds the Malibu

April 17, 2008 Work stoppage GM Lansing Delta plant

Feb 26, 2008 Strike at American Axle affecting GM products

Sep 24, 2007 Strike with GM

Mar 6, 1996 Strike two GM plants in Ohio

Link to article on IUSB Vision WEblog

The last date was mine from when I started to look into this.  What struck me was that not only could the UAW hurt GM through direct strikes but also by stopping the flow of parts to the company.  I also found it interesting that the UAW shutdown the line of GM's best selling car in 2008.   The article estimated that the strikes since 2004 cost GM 70 billion dollars.

So does it make since for the head of a union to plan strikes that are crippling the very industry that their jobs depend on?  I would think that this illustrates poor leadership, and since Obama is determined to create a better more competitive auto industry, I think he should force the head of the UAW to resign.

But then again, labor unions are one of the biggest sources of campaign funding for Democrats, so I don't expect to hear that decision coming anytime soon.

 - Thomas Paine 2

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