thanks to the UAW, and to all of America's industrial unions

[amborin]

<snip>

"It was the UAW that fought for national healthcare and pensions and, when those policy initiatives were blocked by reactionary Congresses, forced corporate America to create a social safety net for workers and retirees that would form the model for union and nonunion workplaces across the country. It was the UAW that fought government- and corporate-sanctioned racial discrimination, integrating Southern factories, supporting the 1963 March on Washington and bailing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail in Alabama.

It was the UAW that withdrew from the AFL-CIO in the 1960s and '70s rather than take labor's big right turn; the UAW that opposed the Vietnam War; set up a research department that studied the cost of bloated military budgets to domestic progress; opposed apartheid in South Africa with such passion that when Nelson Mandela toured the United States after his release from prison, he insisted on celebrating with Dearborn's UAW Local 600. And it was the UAW that, three decades ago, scored Detroit for failing to design and produce small fuel-efficient vehicles as a response to rising oil prices and mounting foreign competition....."

<snip>

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/nichols?rel=rightsideaccordian>

[David Dunham]

1. But the pension and retiree health care plans are now the big problem

It would have been better for the UAW to have pushed for higher wages in the 50s and 60s rather than pushing many of the costs off to now, which is hurting the big 3s ability to compete.

[Whisp]

2. what exactly are the big 3's competing for?

lack of vision and common sense?