This is going to be quick since I have homework to do, but I had to talk about this. I still don’t think the workers are going to go on strike. I think a deal is going to be reached before the deadline at midnight tonight. The demands of the UAW are so ridiculous as to be comical. If you want a four-day work week, 32 hours, that’s great. But to ask to be paid as if you’re working 40-hour weeks is just stupid.

This genuinely makes me incredibly frustrated. All of these people are going to lose their jobs at worst, and at best, auto working in the US just die over the coming decades. Ford reported that if these demands had been implemented in 2019 they would have swung from an operating profit of $30 billion to a loss of $14 billion. Obviously, if those changes had been implemented in 2019, Ford would have implemented cost-saving measures, so the loss wouldn’t have been that bad. However, a swing of $44 billion is absolutely insane. This would bring the salaries of factory union workers to 60% higher than that of Tesla’s AMERICAN factory workers. You simply cannot run a company paying your workers 60% more than your direct competitors.

This is no way to do business, and Fein is a moron. Worse than that, he is actively endangering these people’s livelihoods for what? A decade of higher earnings. What is the 35-year-old plant worker at Ford going to do when he’s 50 and Ford has to lay him off or shut down? For those saying “They’ll find the money, they always do” you need to open your eyes. Tell me in what world does a company paying 60% more to its employees than its competitors in a hyper-competitive field, in which you must be fast or die, work out well for anyone involved?

I would consider myself pro-union, but like all things, there has to be a limit. This, this is just fanciful. Obviously, this won’t have too much of an impact on the US or global economy, but the American car industry will struggle to recover. I could see GM or Stellantis, maybe even Ford getting bought out and split up.