Dehumanizing Work and Obstructionary Unions

When looking at the economic crater which is the US auto industry, liberals have a tendency to blame “big business” while conservatives tend to blame the UAW’s stranglehold on the big three.  Both are right to an extent.  Detroit’s current straights are the result of bad strategic decisions, bad design, bad regulation and the immense financial drag of pension and health benefit promises made to its workers back in the 60s and 70s when the US auto industry reigned supreme in the world, and promising future payouts seemed no object.  In this last regard, the unions had quite a hand in planting the seeds of their own fall.  And although they’re striven to be more flexible in recent years, union work rules still provide major obstacles to change in union plants.

There was an interesting post about this from Michael Barone (referencing Mickey Kaus) on one of the US News magazine blogs.

The problem, he argues, is not just the high level of benefits that the United Auto Workers has secured for its members but the work rules—some 5,000 pages of them—it has imposed on the automakers. As Kaus points out, unionism as established by the Wagner Act is inherently adversarial. The union once certified as bargaining agent has a duty not only to negotiate wages and fringe benefits but also to negotiate work rules and to represent workers in constant disputes about work procedures.

The plight of the Detroit Three auto companies raises the question of why people ever thought this was a good idea.

The answer to that question which he provides is interesting, and I think illustrative for those seeking a proper understanding of the dignity of work in its relationship to unionism and good business practices:

Don’t Make It Hurt

So here’s an argument against irreducible complexity.  Take a family that works hard for a living, saves a large chunk of its earnings for old age, emergencies, sending kids through college, and so on.  Then create (through some combination of amino acids and other proteins) an institute that offers insurance against disaster.  The family, being prudent, realizes that the insurance, while it costs them a little more each month, could potentially save them thousands of dollars in the long run, and so it buys into the insurance company.  Now introduce a mutation: the family decides that since disasters are covered, they can divert a little more money into luxuries. Repeat this process with a health care institute that helps cover the soaring prices of medication; a loan agency to cover college tuition (which is steadily outpacing what the normal family can afford); a loan agency to cover the cost of a business; a house; a car; anything at all with the swipe of a plastic card with a magnetic strip.  With that final mutation, we now have a system in which the removal one component causes the whole organism to fail, and yet was built up by increments.

Nearly half a year after the great crash that marked our current recession as one of the worst in decades, we are still bleeding.  Our economy continues to shed jobs; the stock market wavers, falls, stabilizes, wavers, and falls again; big businesses, like the insurance titan AIG, continue to need billions of dollars of bailout money just to survive; and the government continues to scramble to pass legislation that supposedly will fix all our problems, but in reality will simply make matters worse.  The gigantic stimulus package was laughable (in more a mad, gibbering, hysterical laughter than a ha-ha laughter) in that hundreds of pet projects suddenly found funding, but precious little in the bill actually targeted economic stimulus, and much of the spending won’t happen immediately.

Res et Explicatio Anno Domine 3-2-2009

Salvete AC readers!

I’m still tinkering with the format of how I want to do this, mostly just the name of the post from here on out, so any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Today I just want to share the Seven Hot Topics/Links of the day:

1.  I stumbled across the equivalent of the Catholic Netflix called Pius Media.  I haven’t subscribed to it (yet), but it will look familiar to many Netflix users.  Here is the link: http://piusmedia.com/

2.  Looking for the nearest Catholic book & gift store in your area?  Well there is a website that will do just that.  It’s called Catholic Store Finder.  So far it looks like it only conducts it searches in the United States.  Here is the link:  http://catholicstorefinder.com/

3.  Regular Guy Paul, Just This Guy, You Know? is blogging over at Southern Appeal it seems.

4.  I’ve touched on this before and I’ll go more in depth in a future posting, but for those serious Catholics that are looking to pursue their marriage vocation I would highly suggest Ave Maria Singles by Anthony Buono.  It isn’t cheap, but it sure is a highly professional and well done website.  Here is the link:  http://avemariasingles.com/

5.  For those ambitious bloggers and web designers that are looking to make their sites more ‘Catholic’, here is an interesting link called Catholic Desktops.  It’s been recommended by Thomas Peters of American Papist so it has a level of approval.  Here is the link:  http://www.catholicdesktops.com/index.html

6.  Finally figured out why my Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari browsers were unable to view video’s online.  I needed to upgrade my Adobe Flash Player.  Now I can watch BSG on Hulu without any issue!

7.  Speaking of Apple Safari, they have their new Safari 4 out and it is very neat.  The graphics have been smoothed out so you won’t get the ‘Mac’ feel on your PC, but their Top Sites feature is pretty snazzy.  Check it out.

Sebelius for HHS-Fitting

Hattip to Jay Anderson at Pro Ecclesia who has done yeoman work in keeping his eye on Sebelius.  It is fitting that President Obama, the most pro-abort president in our nation’s history, has nominated for Secretary of  Health and Human Services, the most pro-abort governor in our nation, Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius.