Category Archives: jobs

Nice Company You Got There

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Shawn Fain, UAW union boss, is extending his threat to Ford, GM, and Stellantis, the three major American car companies against which he’s taken selective strike action, a selectivity he’s said he’s using to maximize current damage to the companies.

…what the union calls a “stand up strike,” in which specific locals are asked to go on strike at their facilities. The union has said that strategy will give it flexibility in escalating the strike incrementally up to a potential nationwide strike if negotiations do not deliver sufficient progress in its view, and will make it harder for the auto companies to predict its next move.

Give us what we want, or else:

further strikes will be announced if negotiations do not yield sufficient progress by Friday.

And so they did. The union struck additional plants at GM and Stellantis. Not Ford, though–Fain is claiming that Ford was “serious about reaching a deal,” and so he didn’t order a strike expansion there. Sure. More likely, this is just an attempt to sow dissension among the automakers and thereby add to pressure to surrender.

Be too bad if something was to happen to your company(s).

Greedy UAW

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The United Automobile Workers Union, per its president Shawn Fain, is threatening to strike the three automakers GM, Ford, and Stellantis (nee Chrysler) simultaneously after midnight Thursday (as I write Thursday midday). The union is demanding

  • 36% pay raises over the next four years
  • raises to correspond to the cost of living
  • an end to tiered-wages for factory jobs
  • a 32-hour work week with 40 hours of pay
  • pension increases

Some of those would seem legitimate, or at least open to discussion, and typical union wants that most employers could find some sort of agreement on. The pay raise demand is egregious, and the demand to be paid for hours not worked is simply greedy, glorified featherbedding.

Furthermore, the strike is a direct attack on the companies’ ability to function at all: by the design and purpose of the strike, it closes the businesses and prevents it from earning any revenue. From that, it closely approaches extortion. In the present case, the UAW plans to maximize the damage they intend to inflict with what Fain is calling a “Stand Up Strike:”

“…keep the companies guessing as to where and when the next local walkout would be,” Fain said.

The car companies need to stand tall and refuse to negotiate as long as the union holds this metaphorical gun to their heads.

Aside from that, in a world where unions weren’t given special considerations—they’re even exempt from antitrust law, even though they have a monopoly on workforces in union shops and in unionized industries like the auto manufacturing of Michigan—such overt attacks would invalidate any contract to which management is coerced into agreeing.

Update: The UAW has, indeed, struck all three automakers, one major plant each. The union has shut down GM’s Wentzville, MO, plant, a 4.25 million sq-ft facility that was producing mid-size trucks and full-size vans under the GMC and Chevrolet brands; Stellantis’ Toledo, OH, 3.64 million sq-ft facility that was producing Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators; and Ford’s Wayne, MI, 5 million sq-ft facility that was producing Rangers and Broncos.

Union Evidence Tampering

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The Jefferson County Education Association, the teachers union representing the teachers of Colorado’s Jefferson County school district, has instructed its members to destroy

evidence of students’ transgender information

Leaving aside the fact that the union has no authority to order this—that’s the sole purview of the school district’s board and superintendent—there’s this much larger problem: it’s evidence tampering, which is a serious felony.

The union even anticipated the fact that the docs might be called into evidence in some future proceeding:

The email said, “if you do a questionnaire, please make it a paper and pencil activity – any digital records are more permanent and may be requested under federal law.”

This is another teachers union that needs to be decertified.

AI to Teach Cops to be Politically Correct?

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The Los Angeles Police Department—yes, that one, of “violent extremist views” infamy regarding its cops displaying the Thin Blue Line flag anywhere in public—now is going to use Artificial Intelligence to teach cops how to be politically correct and suitably social justice-y when they make traffic stops and potentially in other, even more tension-filled, encounters.

The headline says it all:

AI to binge LAPD bodycam footage to weed out rude tone, aggressive language

Because rudeness is so terrible, and never mind the occasional—the often—need for cops to be aggressive during an encounter with an individual of the public, even on a traffic stop.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on Tuesday announced the research initiative during the Board of Police Commissioners meeting. LAPD Cmdr Marla Ciuffetelli said at the meeting the study will be used to help train future officers on how to best interact with the public while also promoting accountability, according to the Los Angeles Times.
…
Researchers at the University of Southern California will review [body camera] footage from about 1,000 traffic stops over the next three years and establish parameters on interactions deemed appropriate by department policies and public feedback, and inappropriate interactions.
…
The researchers will take into account the location of the traffic stop, the driver’s race, and the officer’s rank and age when analyzing their findings.

What could go wrong?

One major problem is that every stop is a unique encounter and those factors have greater or lesser influence depending on the individual cop and the individual person being stopped—and the degree of influence will vary from time to time for both the cop and the person being stopped.

What’s the difference between rude talk and banter? How do they differ from time to time? Even the most PC remark by the cop can be taken amiss by the stoppee, ranging from being viewed as condescending to not being PC enough to the stoppee simply feeling like taking offense because he woke up in an owly mood. Or because cop. Never mind that every traffic stop, and many other types of encounters, start out with the cop needing to be aggressive. “Kindly to stop doing that, Sir/Madam/Zir, and let’s chat for a bit” just isn’t going to cut it.

The “training” the LAPD line officers will be forced to undergo will, also, simply add to the tension any LA cop will feel when beginning an encounter—not over the encounter itself or the person’s reaction to the stop and to the cop, but over how LAPD…managers…will perceive the cop’s behavior when they review the encounter.

I have a problem with the proposed methodology, too.

LAPD has 150 cops and civilians for traffic enforcement. Those thousand traffic stops over three years works out to a bit over 2 stops per traffic enforcer per year. That’s not a big sample, even for something as supposedly magic as AI.

Maybe the city should leave off this kind of claptrap and use the money instead for hiring more cops, putting more cops on the street, and training cops how to be cops rather than everybody’s best friend out for a nice chat.

Nationalizing Private Enterprise

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OK, State-ifying private enterprise, for now, if this proposal goes through. Some California Progressive-Democratic Party legislators are setting up legislation that would have California pay unemployment benefits to strikers. The move also would put businesses and workers, both, at some risk from Government control, but never mind that.

A group of California Democrats are expected to propose handing out unemployment benefits to striking workers.
Language expected to be released in the coming days or weeks to provide striking workers with benefits from California’s unemployment insurance program that is $18 billion in debt. The move comes amid historic strikes by both screenwriters and actors, forcing many movies and TV shows to halt production.

This move would lessen the incentive for workers and their unions to build up strike funds. Uncle Sugar—or for now Daddy Gavin—will pick up increasing portions of the strike tab.

But this move is more dangerous than that in the longer term. This is an active assault on the free enterprise system that’s at the center of our economy, whether that’s the intention of this move or not.

Workers pay each other during strikes. That’s what a significant fraction of their union dues are for: setting up a strike fund so while workers are on strike, and so not being paid by their employer, still have money coming in to cover their critical expenses. The bigger the strike fund, the longer the strike can last, and the more the business(es) being struck can be damaged. It’s hard to find a bigger strike fund than Government’s control of its citizens’ tax remittals, which under this proposal would supplant union dues.

This move, if realized, would lead to Government saying to any business, individually or collectively, “Nice business you got there. Be too bad if your employees didn’t come to work for a while.”

This move also would put the labor force at risk of government control. With strike funding coming from Government under the guise of unemployment benefits, Government would be in a position to reward workers for not working striking, when Government wants to use them to pressure a Government-disfavored business. On the other hand, Government would be in a position to punish withhold benefits from workers who don’t strike this time from those who do strike on their own initiative at a later time, or who strike without Government’s prior permission.