Decline and Fall

In the rise and fall of Great Powers, there is the inevitable descent into decadence and decay, as corrupt sons and grandsons squander the wealth and opportunities into which they are born. Such is the case with GM.

We are intimately familiar with the lifestyles of GM's useless executives, whose lavish salaries and opulent perks were inversely proportional to the actual work they did managing their company. But GM's unionized work force did just as much to slowly destroy their employer. GM's financial problems are management's fault, of course. But, GM's more basic troubles - bad build quality, reliability problems - can be traced straight to the factory floor. In a largely sympathetic article about the decline of the black middle class in Detroit, the NY Times inadvertently gives us a glimpse of what has been going on at GM's factories: GM, Detroit and the Decline of the Black Middle Class

A practicing Christian, Powell was taken aback by what he saw taking place around him. The plant was a world of temptations unto itself, with drugs, alcohol, numbers runners, bookies and even “parking-lot girls” who would come to the plant during lunch breaks to service male workers. “Anything you can find outside the plant, you can find inside the plant,” Powell says. “You either get caught up in it, or stay apart from it.”

Powell gradually settled in at Pontiac Assembly and was soon piling on as much overtime as he could. In a good week, he worked four 12-hour days and a 16-hour day. Overtime was especially abundant between the beginning of November and Christmas, when hunting season caused rampant absenteeism at the plant.

Charming. There's nothing like a "Last Days of Pompeii" atmosphere to add to the portrait of American manufacturing gone deeply wrong.

The problems that arise from the UAW's monopoly on labor are not just limited to excessive pay, unsustainable pensions, and the use of union dues to buy political protection from the Democrats. On a more basic level, unions ruin the work ethic of its employees, who can't be fired, and who spend their days whiningly adhering to the letter of their work rules, rather than simply putting in an honest days' work. Read the above again and ask yourself if the same is going on at a typical Toyota plant. The answer is "No," at least with regard to Toyota's Japanese factories. I will make no great claims for the quality Toyota's American workers.

Good luck learning that either in the media or popular culture, by the way. In the newspaper, the bad guys are always management. In songs and movies, the guys "on the line" are always noble and "gettin' the shaft," while management conducts their business in sinister undertones. The unions get Bruce Springsteen and John Sayles, while management gets unreadable 1000-page Ayn Rand novels. The last movie I can remember that took a critical look at unions was "F.I.S.T." That was 30 years ago. Since then, it's been "My Hometown," "The Boss Man giving you Hell," etc.

Unions - like many favored progressive institutions - benefit from favorable media portraits that let them wear a cheap chrome halo, while the grubby truth goes unreported and largely unremarked.