Written by
Mike Grace (formerly with the Public Employee Department and now with the CWA trapped by the snow in DC, took time to scribe the following--as he calls it--rant.

Hello Gang:

 I have been reading and thinking about this Toyota situation and I have a sound off I need to do. So please listen:
 
 We have these recalls taking place. But now a top Toyota official claims that last year the company negotiated a sweet-heart deal with U.S. government auto-safety regulators over sudden acceleration that prevented a widespread vehicle recall and saved the company more than $100 million (at that time.)
 
 All of which opens Toyota up to criticism that it is putting profits ahead of people. The company had a 16% drop in sales in January, sales on many  models have halted and some dealers don’t expect to sell any Toyotas for another 30 or 60 days.

 Articles I’ve read say the company “forgot what the Toyota Way was all about,” was too aggressive in cost-cutting to increase profits, didn’t maintain quality in its drive to be the number 1 carmaker.

 When GM and Chrysler were struggling last year, the main target of ire that I heard from the pundits, the so-called experts, economists and my friends were “lazy and greedy” United Auto Workers: the union workers' higher
 wages and more generous benefits compared to those working at plants like Toyota in the U.S. was one of the primary reasons for the poor competitiveness of the Big Three.

 The New York Times even editorialized last year that the average UAW worker was paid $70 per hour, including health and pension costs, while Toyota workers in the US receive $10 to $20 less (later proven to be not true.
 According to the 2007 GM Annual Report, typical union autoworkers earned a base wage of approximately $28 per hour. Following the 2007 National Agreement, the base starting wage was lowered to about $15 per hour.)
 In fact, while this anti-union screed against the UAW was taking place last year, we learned that the Big Three were already selling their cars for about $2,500 less than equivalent cars from Japanese companies, analysts at
 the International Motor Vehicle Program now say.
 Yet, even though Toyota is mired in a crisis, we have not heard one word about the role of non-union workers in this disaster.  Interesting.

 Meanwhile, Ford posted a $2.7 billion profit in 2009 and expects to be profitable this year; the reason:  Great management, of course.
 
 Ford has a union contract similar to GM’s and Chrysler. Yet—once again—while union workers are blamed for bankruptcies, there is no place in the public mind for their contributions to profits.

 I’ve also read that Volkswagen could overtake Toyota this year as the world’s No. 1 carmaker. The reason: great management, of course.

 But Volkswagen is a heavily unionized company. In fact, Volkswagen recently reached an agreement two weeks ago with industrial union IG Metall safeguarding 100,000 German union jobs until the end of 2014. They must not have
 greedy unions in Europe, I guess. (FYI—IG Metal is one of the toughest, strike-happy unions in Europe .)

 So there you have it: 
 When a union company goes sour, it is the union workers’ fault. When a nonunion company goes sour, management “has lost its way.”
  Is it just me, or is there a double standard at work or are the American people just plain stupid?  

Michael Grace

P.S. I wish this snow would melt so that I can get out and play some golf and stop thinking about this shit. I need a bubble.
 
 "I find it interesting that you have a lot of the Republicans running around and pushing back on stimulus money and saying this doesn't create any new jobs, and then they go out and do photo-ops and they're posing with the big check and they say, 'Isn't this great!"