The United Auto Workers Are Looking to Unionize the Whole Auto Industry
The United Auto Workers Are Looking to Unionize the Whole Auto Industry
In the wake of its historic strike victory, the United Auto Workers says thousands of nonunion autoworkers have reached out asking for support in organizing their plants. The UAW already has plans in motion to unionize the whole US auto sector.
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I sure hope they aren't too late to the party. With glut of overpriced trucks sitting on the domestic lots in the past few weeks as it seems they have caught up with demand and/or people are having a harder time getting financing from banks for $100,000+ trucks and EV product is not moving where they will put their production labour into next? This is even starting to happen with Tacos at Toyota.
EVs are not moving on purpose.
https://jalopnik.com/car-dealers-are-stopping-customers-from-buying-evs-1851017999
I like how that article assumes that they’re simply ignorant about EVs, rather than being malicious.
But then I think of how much less maintenance EVs need, and how much of many dealers’ business is from service, and I suspect that the general anti-EV tone at dealerships is being pushed down from the top.
I can see the malicious angle. They would pressure me a bunch to convince me to service my work vehicles at the dealer.
I only did early on as the salesman would give my ex-wife his car for the day when she would bring it in when needed. They were fantastic senior sales guys. Real gentlemen. I think they were at war with the service department though.
Usually their service department couldn't handle more than a oil change. One time my ex asked them to change out a hard to reach headlight bulb when I was out of town on a business trip.
The service department said it would cost $700 to replace the whole headlight assembly on our new car bought at their dealership as it had aftermarket remaned headlights. They said the car must of been in a accident and we were sold a repo.
When I got home from my trip it took me 2 minutes to change the bulb myself and I tore a strip off the Service Manager for not only for their gall to claim a brand new car with 5 kms they sold me was not new and their Bullshit scam preying on women.
They didn't seem to care. I never bought another car from them again. I had bought 3 in a row from them at that stage for work. God damn crooks and I feel bad for those that don't know any better. My ex-wife ended up driving around with 1 headlight in winter for a few days as a dealership was trying to scam her. They *must get some people on this BS to even be so bold.
That sounds awful, and unfortunately that’s what I expect going in to a dealership or independent garage.
Fortunately, the dealers we use near us seem to actually be good. I don’t think I’ve ever been sold some fix that I didn’t already know was a problem. Sure I’ve turned down some minor things, like not replacing the brake pads early on a low mileage car, or deciding to pop in a new air filter myself instead of paying them $99 to do it. And sometimes I’ve said fuck it, go ahead and do it and I’ll pay for the convenience.
One big factor, though, is that I think they are not hurting for business. They’re well located in the middle of sprawling suburbia and always busy.
Their techs seem good too. That helps!
Putting higher share of profits into workers' bank accounts strengthens aggregate demand. In other words more money for truck loans.
Henry Ford was great at this early on but these days I'm not sure automotive employees can support themselves with self funded purchases. It's going to more buyers than just the employees.
I'm concerned the auto industry have already taken the money at the trough with the crazy mark ups and tight supply of the past couple of years and now are going to say sorry our pockets are empty now...
The old story of capitalism for private profits and then socialism for the cycle of losses. It feels like the next loss cycle is ahead for the automotive industry and workers despite having good increases with their recent contracts are going to be bearing the brunt of the slowdowns again.
I really hope I'm wrong on this as it's not a great outcome and it hasn't been in the past either. I'm not sure the public is going to stomach another round of taxpayer buyouts again.