(05-17-2016 04:37 PM)NIU007 Wrote: (05-17-2016 10:51 AM)Bull_In_Exile Wrote: (05-17-2016 10:37 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote: The unions were just a part of the issues a lot of companies faced. It's unfair to blame them for everything.
There were a lot of problems but one of the major things that kept the automakers from adjusting to them was their union contracts. You can't be agile or innovative when your locked down like they were.
It's not just costs, benefits either.
Can we agree that BOTH unions and management were to blame?
Well if you want to assign blame to management for agreeing to the union demands, then yes.
The case of the American steel industry is quite instructive for this question.
In 1959, the USW had gained tremendous power over the steel industry and made demands for a new contract that were not acceptable to big steel. So a strike was called that lasted 3-4 months (I remember it because my father was on strike and things got pretty tight.) In the end, management agreed to all the union demands. Because of this, they decided that they would never take a strike like that again, and simply passed the costs along in higher prices.
At the same time, the steel industries of Japan and Germany were bringing new technologies online and making steel more efficiently. Ironically, we destroyed their steel plants during WWII and helped them rebuild new and efficient plants.
First big steel abdicated the low margin rebar to the imports. In another few years, rail and piling bar were being imported. Next came structural steel and by the 1970s, the high margin sheet steel was being lost.
Throughout the 1960s, the unions made ever greater demands (I recall the 13 week vacation each worker received every 5 years) and management agreed, so as to avoid another crippling strike. By the late 1970s, big steel has basically lost.
Bethlehem Steel's Lackawanna Plant went from a high of 25,000 employees, to less than 2,000 when it closed in 1982.
