Old-fashioned union activism is loosed upon us again. The UAW. Wow. The UAW has won an organizational vote at a VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2024/04/19/tennessee-workers-vote-to-join-uaw-union/73382830007/ Once upon a time, when my own age figured in the single digits, there were the "Big Three" auto makers in Detroit Michigan and they dominated the auto industry not just in the US but in the world. So much so that union-management relations came to seem a domestic US centric affair. During the Kennedy administration, the Attorney General's pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters drew some heat from Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Why? Well, first because Goldwater was entertaining thoughts of a run for President himself. But that wasn't the reason he gave, "I need the issue, people." No, Goldwater said that the Kennedys were going after the wrong union and the wrong union leader. The real crooks we...
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When I was young, there was a lot of talk about "planned obsolescence," especially in the automotive industry. The idea was that the Detroit Big Three (who dominated the auto manufacturing world in those distant days) were deliberately creating cars that would wear out in four to five years and need to be replaced. This was understood to be both rational and predatory behavior, a sign of how buyers and sellers are necessarily at odds. Because how could makers not want repeat business? And how could motorists not want long lasting vehicles? Nobody uses that expression any more today. Perhaps the theory now seems somewhat silly. The duration of cars has significantly expanded since the days when that expression was a thing. And the Cubans have demonstrated throughout the Castro era that it is perfectly possible to keep even 1950s era Detroit vehicles on the road in working condition into the second decade of the 21st century. How? Did the "planning" go wrong, or...
Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July 2013. On December 3, a U.S. bankruptcy court ruled against parties who had challenged its eligibility for chapter 9 protection. Since Detroit is the most populous city in the state of Michigan and is the center of a metropolitan region of 5.2 million, this event has attracted a lot of attention, inspiring different ‘takes,’ involving in each case a distinct ideological or psychological prism. For example, Detroit has long been the center of the American automobile industry, so much so that the word “Detroit” is used as a metonym for that industry, and that has inspired some commentators who have seen the failure of municipal finances as of a piece with the failure of that industry in the face of innovative overseas competitors and changing public tastes. This was the take for example, of Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of PIMCO. This take is also broadly consistent with a mantra of Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, who ke...