THE AUTOEXTREMIST

June 16, 2010

Still clueless after all these years.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 6/15, 7:00PM) Detroit. Even though we’ve had a spate of spectacular warm weather of late, just be glad you’re not around here this week. Why? Because we’ve had to endure something called the “Constitutional Convention” of the United Auto Workers taking place down at the Cobo Center. And that means we’ve been subjected to all of the hot air generated by the attendees and their so-called “leadership,” with our local media dutifully reporting every nonsensical utterance.

Not that our local media had much of a choice. After all, this is the one state in the country that has been subjected to – no, make that held hostage by – the union movement to the detriment of everything else, so if our local media mavens decided to let the UAW twist in the wind - as befitting the most ineffectual and out-of-touch entity of its kind in the world – then the long knives would come out and the emboldened hordes of the UAW would unleash their considerable bombastic fury on the local journalistic establishment for all to witness.

And Detroit, of course, is unfortunately the perfect environment for something called the UAW “Constitutional Convention,” because after all this is the epicenter of the union movement in America, the one place in the country where the unions have been allowed to flourish unfettered and virtually unimpeded for decades.

Ever since long-ago Mayor Coleman A. Young planted his jaundiced flag in the heart of the city’s government and slowly and systematically removed the last shred of common sense when it came to rational governance and replaced it with a virulently insidious strain of entitlement compounded by a level of self-righteous “what’s in it for me?” that still knows no bounds within the city limits – no matter how hard the current Mayor Dave Bing tries to rectify it. And ever since the city of Detroit has been stumbling about in a perpetual state of mediocrity, paralyzed by its own willful intransigence and slowly but surely grinding itself into smithereens.

So we’ve had to put up with every sound bite – each one sounding more outrageous and ridiculous than the one before – and wade through countless headlines and the endless streams of misplaced rhetoric, just so Ron Gettelfinger – the outgoing President of the UAW – can hand over the reins of power to UAW Vice President Bob King, yet another in a long line of over hyped and overblown “statesmen” to come out of the UAW whose sole contribution to societal discourse has been to consistently and relentlessly redefine the term “intractable.”

The gist of the convention - just so I can spare you the more outrageously infuriating details - is that the UAW is out to reclaim all of the concessions it was forced to make in order to keep the domestic automobile industry from totally imploding, so that they can get back to the way things used to be, like none of the sturm und drang of the last 24 months ever happened.

Really?

With Chrysler still very much in limbo, Ford finally just now righting itself after years of teetering on the brink, and GM still reaching for every positive development it can latch on to while it continues to claw its way out of the most humiliating corporate bankruptcy in American industrial history, the UAW is now ready – make that expecting – to have everything returned back to “the way it used to be” so that they can go back to getting “theirs” - ?

Yes, really.

How appalling has this display been down at Cobo? They even enlisted the President of the AFL-CIO, a guy by the name of Richard Trumka, to come on down and add his two cents to the proceedings, which he willingly obliged by spouting, "The three major U.S. companies are making profits again. We salute their success, and we demand that they do right by the workers who have done right by them. Just as there has been shared sacrifice in periods of pain, there must be shared prosperity in periods of gain."

Huh? Not that I’d expect any union leader to be encumbered with the facts by any means, but in case anybody bothered to look beyond the somewhat rosy headlines dealing with the state of the domestic automobile industry of late they’d find that none of these car companies - including Ford - are anywhere near being out of the woods yet. Not even close, in fact.

The bottom line is that the domestic automobile industry is still on the brink. Yes, there are real signs of optimism if you can learn to decipher the tea leaves properly but make no mistake, the “recovery” – no matter which way, shape, or form it takes – is going to be excruciatingly s-l-o-w. There will be no finger-snaps resulting in “happy days are here again” profitability, and there is never going to be a domestic automobile industry that even approaches what it once was at its peak. It’s just notgonnahappen.com.

So into this somber reality marches the lame-brained leadership – old and new – of the UAW. In his farewell speech to the conference, Ron Gettelfinger exhorted his minions in the rank and file to light the fires again. Here’s an excerpt:

“Employers have always known that a union is the only instrument that gives working men and women any form of equity and justice in the workplace. Most employers have consistently and vigorously opposed unions with every means at their disposal. During and since the auto crisis they focused their smear tactics on the UAW like never before.

Their rhetoric has become a drumbeat of anti-union chatter. It has no merit but it continues to shape and form opinions against unions. These pro-employer, anti-worker, anti-union forces continually attack unions and workers who want to form a union. Those they represent belong to organizations that help them to gain clout in the employer community but they prefer to have the ability to trample on workers rights individual by individual. These anti-union forces are simply motivated by greed.

We are driven by equity and justice in the workplace, and, brothers and sisters, in the end, we will prevail.”

Gettelfinger went on to say that, “Today, more than ever, we need to feel the passion of the labor movement.”

Really, Ron? Passion? How about that’s the very last thing the “movement” needs.

Instead, it would have been much better if you had performed a public service for the UAW members in attendance – and the rest of the nation for that matter - by injecting a large dose of reality into your “Constitutional Convention.”

By that I mean being straight-up with what’s left of your constituency by urging them to get their collective heads out of the sand and then telling them to turn off the “white noise” emanating from their so-called “enlightened” leadership – especially Bob King – because it will count for absolutely nothing going forward.

It’s hard to believe that at this juncture, with everything that has transpired in the global economy and with the near-death experience of the domestic automobile industry still raw in everyone’s mind, the UAW leadership is still clinging to hoary notions of entitlement and squawking about getting their “fair” share.

And even more outrageous to contemplate, that the UAW actually believes that they - and their “cause” - still have relevance in this age of brutal global competition, where leaders of newly invigorated countries manipulate everything in their path to extract an economic advantage over the rest of the world, while at the same time doing everything in their power to court automakers and convince them to do business there.

The bottom line in all of this is that time ran out on the UAW a long time ago.

Enabled by a domestic auto industry that kept acquiescing to escalating union demands out of fear of what would happen if they didn’t, the UAW and “Detroit” wandered down the primrose path to oblivion together, smugly ensconced in their pathetic self-righteousness and maniacal short-term thinking while staunchly convinced that The End would never come and that the good times would last forever.

Well guess what? The End did come and with a ferociousness and finality that even the most jaded among us couldn’t have predicted.

Everything that worked, everything that used to be accepted as standard operating procedure in this industry is now gone, never to return. This industry has undergone a fundamental transformation requiring a scope of change only witnessed once before, and that was during World War II.

It’s just too bad that no one over at the “Solidarity House” got the memo.

Out of touch, out of time, and totally irrelevant, the UAW is an entity whose time has most assuredly passed.

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" hosted by Autoline Detroit's John McElroy, with Peter De Lorenzo and friends this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

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