UAW, Biting the Hand Which Feeds It

Forbes Magazine
July 4th Issue
Outfront
Autos
"Jobs Hunt"

The article about GM, their president and the company's future; "Wagoner's pledge to cut jobs is designed to get to a larger goal of his: to operate at full capacity. "

In 2004 GM employed 136K workers and needed just 86K to do the work. The company is currently suffering from very similar overly staffed factories and too much capacity.

The article gives more stats "...Assuming by 2008 GM is fortunate enough to keep its share of the market at 25% (this may be optimistic due to GM losing share every year) and that productivity gains shrink its Canadian and Mexican workforces by 10%, the company will have roughly 109K workers -doing what 78K could do."

This is the 5th article I have read on this topic of the GM predicament. GM is at a cross roads and no analyst or publication has yet to have the confidence and honesty with their readership to put the blame where it belongs. The UAW is honestly the primary reason why GM has too many workers. The UAW is causing GM to be in a environment with the inability to eb and flow with the market and then to compete against other automakers, namely Japanese autos.

Come on Forbes.. Come on The Wall Street Journal, Arizona Republic... you want to publish something truthful, yet controversial to sell more copies? Front page of your next issue, write an article with the title "UAW Cutting the Hand Which Feeds It."