1y ago

This is how you negotiate.

106 comments

I'm very glad to see that US workers finally start to make their voices heard on a meaningful scale!
And a little amused at the utter inability of managements to deal with a world in which "just boss the underlings around, because we can" isn't a viable tactic anymore.
- It's giving me hope for the future of workers, I'm thinking of deeper effects strikes like this could have. Thousands of people going on strike, a lot of them likely for the first time. If these get results, thousands of people will know first hand the power of class-consciousness and collective action, without relying on voting or petitions but concrete action. It will inspire their views going forward and inspire other workers.

Very happy to see workers from different industries finally standing up for their rights and forcing the companies to the negotiating table, and winning.
Unions are awesome, and strikes work.
- I used to truck drive for a while and if there is any industry that needs to stand up for themselves it is that on.
  I worked for Warner and the CEOs slogan was " You make less now to make more later" super dumb.
  
  That's fucked up. You should have been a teamster. Those boys have a pretty strong union.
  I am a dues-paying member of IUPAT Painters Local 10 and will be till the day I die!
- Haven't won anything yet
  
  WGA did. I'm hoping SAG-AFTRA will too, you probably won't see me here as much after the strike is done though.
  
  Can't win if you don't play cuz

What is a Kentucky truck
- Quick search says
  Kentucky Truck is Ford's largest plant and one of the largest auto factories in America and the world
- kentucky truck refers to the ford plant in kentucky that makes a number of trucks for ford, mostly their commercial fleet, that accounts for around half of ford’s revenue
  the meaning here is that the kentucky truck plant has ceased operation as part of the strike
- The largest truck plant Ford has. They manufactured everything from industrial diesel trucks to pickups. Now they're on strike, this promises to be a huge blow to Ford's quarterlies.
- Kentucky Truck is one of the biggest Ford plants.
- A truck from the Kentucky factory?

- I wonder.

Too fucking right! Local 10 till I die!

Is there a way I can donate to a pool that directly helps striking workers? If there's not, is there a way to start a go fund me and hand control over to a union representative?

A-ha ! sounds good ! Did they seize the means of production or what ?
- That's a little too far for America, unfortunately.
  
  It's way too far in any capitalist country. These shithead will send armies of cops if you do that.
- Looks like they just expanded their strike, so no... not yet.

I'm glad to see these workers getting what they want but don't we all know the cost of whatever they get will just be passed on to the consumer and further balloon the price of cars? If car prices get much higher you'll have to be a factory worker making 100k just to buy one.
- So executive bonuses and salaries can keep skyrocketing with no consequence, but workers getting what they need is what you complain about?
  
  No. I'm complaining that what they are getting is just a bandaid to the problem. These workers getting paid more won't stop executive bonuses and salaries from skyrocketing and the money to fund those bonuses will just be pulled from our pockets. Until some regulation is in place to fix the underlying issue, employers and employees will just keep trading blows and running up the cost. Everyone is acting like these car companies are suddenly going to stop doing what they've been doing for decades.
- Oh yeah because cars are selling close to cost and not at hyper inflated prices.
  Come on, the current insane prices aren’t because it costs so much to pay workers that make them, it’s because people are willing to pay it. If people stopped paying insane prices for cars and they were rotting on lots, prices would go down- but people get their 6 year finance on their 85k 2024 whatever.
  
  And very little of the recent explosion in car prices is from the manufacturers. It's the dealerships.
  Just a few years ago NOBODY paid sticker price. That's still true, but now it's because the dealerships are charging 20-50 percent ABOVE stocker price
  
  I'm not disagreeing with you but it seems naive to think that these companies would do anything but pass the cost along and keep paying execs way too much. Are we really under the assumption that car manufacturers are going to accept making less money?
- The workers shouldn't be the ones to suffer so that we have cheaper cars. The greed of the ownership class has to be contained.
  
  Agreed but this strike isn't going to do that.
- The big automakers are already pricing themselves out of most consumers reach.
  Hell at this point you’re not even buying a car, you’re buying a 7-10 year loan and getting a car as part of it. The car itself exists only as a means to sell the loan (and long-term service).
  
  You never own the car any more, it runs closed source offline software that farms you for data. It is a rented tool for the neo digital feudal serf class. Ownership is only a right for citizens. Proprietary means ownership through a loss of agency. Once ownership rights are lost slavery follows. This is the true legacy of our time that people will talk about for hundreds of years.
- This neocon "pass on the cost" lie is so pervasive it sounds convincing until you think about it for two seconds. If that were true, then I would just "pass on the cost" of my labor and charge my employer more for my wages. But that's not how the economy works. The shareholders and executives will just make a little less.
  
  It's a little more nuanced than that. Prices are always set to "what the market will bear." By complaining about the additional labor costs (or patting themselves on the back for their benevolence), they may be able to shift market attitudes to increase the price, thus 'passing it on."
  
  That's not how it works because the majority of us don't get to adjust the rate of our labor on the fly. Passing the cost to consumers literally happens all the time and it's not a secret.
- Don't be a crab.
- The definition of a bootlicker
  
  Not bootlicking. Just being realistic about the capitalist tendencies of any large company beholden to shareholders.
- Who is upvoting this brain dead take?
  Cars are sold for as much as they possibly can get consumers to pay. If they managed to lower the cost of production, price would also remain exactly the same because... They are charging as much as they possibly can.
  Everything between the cost of making the car and that price is profit to shareholders.
  
  So you actually think this strike is going to fundamentally change how they do business? With no additional regulation they will just decide to make less money and make no attempt to do exactly what they've been doing all these years which is to increase profits at all costs.
- Sounds like as good a time as ever to start ditching cars and moving to/building communities that allow us to affordably exist without owning one.
  !fuck cars@lemmy.ml
- And fewer people will be able to afford their products.
  
  I don't think most people buy a car they can actually afford anyways. They take loans with ridiculously long notes and as long as the payment from month to month sounds good they'll sign.

Is it? The Big 3 have made significant concessions at this point. There Is a certain level where a plant like that could move to Mexico. Dodge Ram has about half of its production in Mexico and their sales volume has not been impacted.
Just to keep the record straight, they are currently offering elimination of tiers, 3 years to the max wage level, 23% pay increase, COLA reinstatement. This puts their workers in a place to make $100k per year with no education at all after 3 years of work. Where else is that possible?
- Those concessions don't apply to their EV factories, both existing and new, meaning they are worthless in 5-10 years when they phase ICE out. They want, and frankly deserve, long term guarantees.
  
  "The company said it had offered pay increases of more than 20% to permanent workers, raises of 26% for temporary workers, the return of cost-of-living adjustments, a ratification bonus, increased 401(k) contributions, additional paid time off and "no job loss due to EV battery plants," among other things" https://www.axios.com/2023/10/12/uaw-strike-update-ford-shawn-fain
  Incorrect. And you're dreaming if you think commercial trucks in particular (F-series and SuperDuty) move to all electric in the next 5-10 years
- I don't understand this mindset.
  "The workers should be lucky they aren't getting fair compensation because they are uneducated half wits." "who cares that they have up more than what they are currently asking back in 2008?" "I mean their labor created record profits for the companies, and what they are asking for isn't even 10% of those profits, but the shareholders and executives deserve that 10% more!"
  Ya no. It's about them getting a slice of the profits. Acting as workers are not deserving of greater amounts due to their labor is a joke. The 40% increase is low considering they generated $32 billion last year. They could demand immediate pay increases of $80k but are asking for $32k over the life of the contract.
  
  Just because they work on assembly lines doesn’t make them “uneducated half wits” either. They are still jobs that require a level of skill to perform well. I’d like to see any “C” level Ford executive perform similar tasks for hours a day with the same levels of quality and skill.
- Dodge Ram has about half of its production in Mexico and their sales volume has not been impacted.
  To a certain degree. But I just want to give you a size of scope and realize it isn't just labor that effects where a company is located, but also the tax rate, the ability to get resources in and out, also the cost of extracting materials and having them shipped, and cooperation with local government(s).
  But biggest problem a CEO has to face when moving to a new country is how the hell all that equipment gets there. You aren't talking about moving computer equipment, you are talking about hundreds of Press Wielding machines that are measured in tons and acres.
  What you are talking about, moving hundreds of miles of electrical wiring, hundreds of tons of pinpoint accurate equipment, thousands of computer networking systems with their own unique operating system, and we haven't even gotten to power regulations, and labor yet.
  TL:DR
  If these companies could save money by moving to Mexico, they would have already tried.
  
  Agreed that it would be gone if it was feasible. I worked for a small manufacturer and helped with quoting. It was three times less for us to send a product to Mexico for production.
  Where the US is better is automation and complexity. In Mexico or was difficult to find the technical resources able to handle automated and complex projects. Mexico was better for any manually/ sinple assembly job, as they could just throw more people at it to ramp up production. Note that these are generalities that my specific team used.
  
  You know Ford already has factory operations in Mexico, right?
- Meanwhile the CxO ranks got 40% raises years ago.
  
  And the workers took pay cuts earlier. A 40% increase is less impressive when you take a 15% cut first. (That's a 19% net increase, but this isn't based on actual numbers.)
  
  Who gives a shit? Their comp has little to do with the rank and file. They are entirely unrelated. Farley could donate his entire comp package and it would result in a roughly $300 payment to UAW workers. UAW also gets profit sharing and a ratification bonus, meanwhile the rest of the salaried workforce - many of whom earn similar wages to UAW, will get fucked because they have actual performance metrics to hit that are being fucked by this.
  I'd also add that as a reward for having the most UAW workers in the US, Ford also has had the highest structural cost and the worst quality for 2 years running, likely 3 as measured by recalls. So they do terrible work and still get the same bonus, entirely independent of their performance.
- record profits mean record contracts
  solidarity with all workers forever
- How do those boots taste?
- Mexican vehicle plants are showing signs of worker solidarity with their US compatriots. They have unions that were not even voted in, thats leaders vote on contracts without membership votes. https://inthesetimes.com/article/uaw-strike-international-solidarity-mexico-brazil-union-labor
- If this was the 1990s that might have worked, but today is different for Mexico. There are hundreds of factory's now and do you think Mexicans are going to want to work for a company that moved from America for not paying it's workers enough? Also one of Ford's main advertising points is that the cars are made in America, not very smart to destroy your advertising. Conditions are always changing in the world, it's best to keep an eye of them lest you get left behind.
  
  Ford's vehicles are not all made in the USA already. A little basic research goes a long way before sprouting nonsense.
  
  No issues in Cuatelan building the Maverick or the Mach E. Your argument is ridiculous
  
  They can still say “made in America “ because Mexico is in America. North America.
- Hopefully we'll see that the possibility of skilled workers with no education can also take part. And that pay is stagent. In 1995.. 50k a year w benifits health care and retirement is now the new 80k - 100k a year. Even then take home and savings is less then it's ever been in 30 years.
  Follow the math of rising cost and inflation , and the increase of CEO pays and you one can conclude, workers can be paid more and should match cost ans inflation increases. People with schooling should make more. True.
  Many companies do pay more and they make their competition looks like hacks.
  Market Basket is a unionized grocery chain in the northeast. In Saco Maine there is a market basket right near a super Walmart. Market Basket is awesome.. but I digress.
  The Makret basket has 30 checkout isles and 1 cashier and 1 bagger per checkout. They are paid very well. That's 60 employees just in the check out. Their prices are the same and many times are less then Walmart. Walmart right across the way.. 5 minutes walk.., is 100% self checkout. Pays about half, Stores completly trashed, prices are not cheper, you gotta check your self out .. and its doubtful there's even 10 staffers in store.
  In ending the older you get.. the more it seems absurd to pay the younger gen that much.. however follow the math.
  https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1996?amount=50000
  50k in 1996 is worth 98k in today's numbers. Also remember a job back then..came with healthcare that covered you at 80 bucks a month. Retirement plans exisisted .. you'd even get bonus and go to company parties that were paid by owners.
- You got a bit of brown on your nose
- What's that $100k a year adjusted to inflation compared to in your mind?
  
  $100k per year is the 81st percentile of all US workers for 2022. Inflation in 2023 has been around 4%, so even with that they would still earn more than 8 out of 10 working adults in the US.
  It's not in my mind, it's just math.
- Where else is that possible?
  Ford factory. Then anywhere else.

106 comments