What a disappointment it is to see that Republican has come to mean Union-Hater. I still scratch my head wondering why it has gotten to such an extreme. One clue to the spite and vindictive tones comes from carefully reading the content of the posts. I see one ignorant and ourtrageous claim after another. By ignorant, I mean grossly uninformed, and classically close minded. There’s hardly any content toward proof or reasoning. Just hate. It reminds me so much of the expression, “All is yellow to the jaundiced eye.” That is, once you’ve decided which camp you want to be associated with, you’re not about to become swayed by information, facts, or truth. It might temper your fun.

If it escaped your attention, salaried, mega-buck, Republican CEOs asked for Stimulus money. I suppose it doesn’t matter that more than 90% of the employees who benefit from American auto sales, aren’t Union. Duh!

How many of you who won’t buy Blood Diamonds, will buy cars made by people paid $8000 to $14000 a year. When anti-American takes hold on the auto industry, the final irony will be when it spreads to your product.

You just have to love people who have been living in a cave the past 10 years. Numerous American autos are now judged to have better quality than Japanese counterparts. How has American quality caught the vaunted Japanese? Because the Japanese are losing all the advantages of smaller scale. Rolls Royce holds the quality only because of the limited volume. Those in the industry know the Toyota quality is sliding steadily downward as the volumes go up. And the sinister American movement to ruin Toyota’s image. Right. Send me a picture of you in your tinfoil hat, eh?

I don’t blame anyone for being angry at the government, or stimulus. But then to bring down one of our largest industries, for spite? Wow, doesn’t get much uglier than that.

I just love the pious rationale that we should boycott American cars, hurt millions of people who depend on the sales, about 10% of which, are even associated with a union.

But you have your principles and a need to punish someone for something their CEO bosses did by asking for Stimulus money. Oky, you can boycott and hurt anyone your spite moves you. We see where your priorities are. That doesn’t crack me up. What cracks me up is the cars you do buy.

Love those German cars? They do build good cars. Yep, they sure do. The also built Auschwitz. What, no fervor to punish that?

Love those Japanese cars? They do build good cars. Yep, they sure do. They also strafed civilian housing while they attacked Pearl Harbor.

Yeah, America. Where Americans turn on each other at the first sign of bad times.

Sorry I put some bait out as I knew how eager the fish would be. What a hoot that you focused on my reference to World War II and didn’t say a word about some lame reference to some obscure tribe from the Congo, centuries ago, because he was so proud of coming up with mau-mau. Wow, I just can’t type that and keep a straight face.

Can I ask you, did any of you read this and see any hypocricy? Here’s Achance:

Then they turned to me to do something about it and I unleashed Hell on them. When we took over in early ‘03 I initiated what we styled the “Empty Chairs Program,” our employment version of Operation Phoenix or Nacht und Nebel. It is amazing how much morale and productivity improve when a couple of suits show up at a worksite, take somebody away, and that person never comes back to work; just a remarable morale builder.

Achance, in your thread about employees mau-mauing supervisors, you actually inserted a paragraph about how you mau-maued the employees. You are a piece of work.

I don’t see how you can expect to win such an argument when there are reams of accounts, police reports, books, and newscasts showing there was a whole lot of mau-mauing going on from both sides. It is totally absurd to even imply that it was anything but a two-way street. For such a historian, you have left out several hundred deaths and injuries at strike sites by the well documented Strikebreakers. And I’m pretty sure they were hired by employers and not employees.

You’ve left off any reference to several best-sellers, such as, “A Savage Factory” which faithfully documents Ford salaried managers treating union workers like dogs. And not to burst your bubble, but it was written by Robert Dewar, a Manager with Ford for many years. Sorry.

Child labor laws didn’t come about because managers were concerned about the darling 8 year olds. Employers left people no choice. Tens of thousands have died building railroads, dams, and bridges because employers were so cavalier about the health and safety. How many thousands of women couldn’t get an even break, even pay, or work without a supervisors vulgar comments, or his hands. Arrogance my butt. I will, at least, admit that there was a lo of give and take. You are trying to re-write history. Good luck with that.

Don’t forget the alliance of automobile writers. Recently, a sizeable panel of experts in the industry were asked why Toyota ran a better company than the Big Three. As an abstract, they said, “It isn’t tariffs, or working conditions, or other advantages that made Toyota run better. There big advantage was that they had all the right people, in all the right places, because they placed people purely on performance. American automakers, on the otherhand have crippled their respective companies with generations of rampant, favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism. Perhaps you would grant us the benefit of your experience and tell us all how many union workers you know who were in a position to hire, fire, promote, and assign employees. That was 100% managers who, when not chasing some female around the plant half the day, were hiring their brothers, buddies, and fellow cronies. That sense of entitlement allowed a lot of managers to feel they were above the law. So don’t blow all your credibility by acting like your mau-mau.

Could any of you guys throw out some content instead of making the innocuous analagies, lame abbreviations one step below the Ovaltine decoder ring? I’m here to discuss both sides of the argument. I hold no delusions that unions have always acted like gentlemen, but when you’re going to sell me a snow job about it being one-sided, no intelligent person on this forum will believe that.