Beginning with Reagan, unions became an all purpose bogeyman for American business. For years and years everything bad that happened in American manufacturing was tied to unions. Somehow management was never wrong. CEOs never made bad decisions and never ever contributed to a business failure. It was all unions. Unions had become the business equivalent of the mythical “Welfare Queen Driving the Cadillac.”
But here is the thing, unions are nothing more or less than a natural reaction to mismanagement.
Where schools are mismanaged by short sighted and corrupt bureaucrats – you find unions.
Where companies are run by myopic greed heads that view labor as just another consumable raw material – you find unions.
So my question for the UAW is not, why are did you striking? My question is what took you so long?