Friday, July 02, 2010

Here's the union mentality for you....

....right here. Evidently, the new head of the United Auto Workers spent a lot of time growing up in a bar in Detroit (apparently, schools, parks, and movie theaters were not available to her?), and argues that if someone is smart enough to put a bolt on a car, they're smart enough to be sitting at the table of the board of directors making decisions impacting the entire business.

Now while I'm one who firmly believes that the rank and file often have some great ideas, and that management isn't always comprised of the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, the fact still remains that the guy who does a great job putting lug nuts on an F150 may not in fact have anything resembling a clue about how to run the company. This is especially the case when he belongs to a union that apparently does not understand that the cost of retirement benefits for autoworkers is indeed one of the things which caused the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler.

Maybe Ms. Estrada spent a little too much time at Leroy's U.S. Star Bar when she was a kid.

7 comments:

pentamom said...

In defense of the "growing up at the bar" thing, as someone who was also raised in a family business, I can tell you that a kid can have a normal kid life, and still spend a good deal of time hanging around the family business -- particularly if Dad runs the place full time, and Mom goes in to help out now and then. Kid doesn't go to the babysitter, or home alone after school, she goes to the business. If it was a decent bar, it doesn't make that much difference that it was a bar, rather than a restaurant or (in my case) a pharmacy.

pentamom said...

BTW, I completely agree. It's idiotic to say that if you can do any of the jobs on the assembly floor, you're qualified to participate in high-level decision making. Just like anywhere else, sometimes the guys in the jeans are smarter than the guys in the suits, and sometimes they're barely competent to run their own lives, let alone a mega-corporation. Gluing down interior carpet really isn't a qualification for long-range strategic planning.

Bike Bubba said...

Let's just say the review of the bar that I saw commented on how strong the cocktails were....

Gino said...

i wish i grew up in a bar.

well, at times i did SOME growing up in bars, but i was much older by then.

pentamom said...

Any review of a bar posted on the Internet is probably not pertinent to what it was like under a different owner when a 40-something person was growing up, ISTM. In fact, I rather doubt Mr. Estrada was serving a lot of "cocktails," based on the description of the bar's clientele back then.

Bike Bubba said...

Maybe Boilermakers?

pentamom said...

Maybe, but people like Mr. Estrada's described clientele don't refer to Boilermakers as "cocktails." They call them "drinks." If the reviewer is talking about "cocktails," it's a sure sign that it's not a blue-collar bar where the fanciest mixed drink on the menu is rum and coke. It's more likely the kind of place where they call things that contain neither gin nor vermouth but do contain all kinds of ridiculous herbs and fruits and sweet liqueurs "martinis."