Greg Vernon

Blaming unions is not class warfare

Recently, a comment was made on my blog that placing partial blame on unions for the automotive sector's collapse.  Eto, you couldn't be further from the truth!  By agreeing to poorly contrived contracts the United Automotive Workers union not only priced themselves out of the market, but agreed to huge fiscal overheads placed on labor.

In a perfect world, unions are a good thing; that is a group of workers willing to actively strike and protest the unfair treatment they sustain on the workplace.  These utopian unions would be a simple association of workers working towards goals of honest compensation and reasonable working conditions.

Somehow, these unions became more than this association of workers and blossomed into a full-blown criminal business.  Workers represented by the unions pay a price for the "privilege."  Union dues are far from cheep; my mother, represented by a teachers union, has dues equal too federal taxes.

If these union costs went to pay for the benefits gained through union actions, it would be understandable - even a bargain!  But instead these dues pay the salaries of the union leaders; that's reasonable until you learn how much they make.

Example: John Sweeny, a union leader, earns upwards of $200,000 per year - fourteen times the amount an minimum wage worker earns or seven times the average salary in the United States.  For those who don't know: John Sweeny is the President of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the US.  You read that correctly, he doesn't represent a single worker yet still takes home seven times the amount the average American earns.

In His book, "Give Me a Break" John Stossel published an interview he had with Mr. Sweeny.  One of the subjects Stossel questioned Sweeny about was his wage and the very clear disparity between him and the average worker.

Interestingly, while the federal minimum wage has only been raised about $4 in the past thirty years, Sweeny has never refused a pay increase.  Even when workers', who earn far less, pay his ever-increasing salary he maintains he isn't greedy.  As Stossel would say: "give me a break."

I suppose since my original argument was against the UAW, I should justify my remarks.  Tough Ron Gettelfinger, the UAW president, earns less than Mr. Sweeny, his salary is still in the triple digits.  Gettelfinger's yearly paycheck: $145,000 - three times the amount his workers represent.

I also have a theory as to why the UAW opposed the automotive bailout.  Their common reason is they don't want to see their workers lose pay; which really is a fair demand.  What the UAW may not mention is the average worker would only lose $5/hour - which makes their salary equal to what Honda, Toyota, and Nissan employees earn.  It is my opinion, that the UAW opposed the bailout not to protect its workers, but to protect its bank account.

Union dues at the UAW are equal to 2 hours per month - this is about $52/month.  Under the first bailout proposal, the UAW would lose $10/month, or $120/year.  Spread that figure across the total UAW membership of 600,000 and suddenly the union loses $72,000,000 every year.  Factoring what Mr. Sweeny said about greed and suddenly things become clearer.

I hope now, Eto, that you understand that unions today are far from what they were in the past.  Instead of protecting their represented workers, they're very much in it for the money.  So I guess, knowing that, wouldn't supporting the unions, and their greedy habits of stealing from workers, be class war far?

Main Break at T-1156

Today around 6:00pm a water main broke at Target T-1156 in the electronics department (which is by far the best place for this to happen).  The overhead main was shut off manually after thoroughly dousing the radios, land line phones, and a good portion of the video game areas.

Unfortunately, I did not have my phone/camera at the time so I have no pictures.

As an architecture student, I look at this as an opportunity to design stores and other buildings better to avoid mechanical failure and product loss.

It would appear, judging by the number of roof-insulating panels on the floor, that the main either exploded dislodging the panels or the main was on the outside of the insulation.  Quite frankly, neither make sense because the panels I (thought I) saw go on the outside of the building.  If I had more information about the nature of the building I could actually theorize what went wrong; but since I don't, I'll just leave it as a "water main break."

Moving on, how could this situation: a water main break above products, be avoided?  The obvious thing is to not put piping over mission-critical areas, instead put these pipes over storage and employee only sections.  In this case, if a water main break where to occur, customers would still be able to make purchases without being affected.  This would protect floor merchandise (where a majority of products are actually stored) from damage but would still leave backrooms and employee areas at risk.

Instead, here is what I propose: use under-slab piping for all water pipes.  This would protect merchandise and all backroom areas from potential damage.  Additionally, to save cost, I would only use two pipes for all water actions; 1 cold water main and 1 return.  In the places where hot water is required (washrooms, food areas, etc) I would use a tankless water heater.  You would only need two or three and developers would save thousands of dollars in pipe installations.

If a buried water main were to break, it would cost a lot more to repair.  However, the repair costs would likely be less than the damage to products which would be ruined.

What Gives, Advertisers?

Its no secret I have a lot of ads on my web site.  Lots and lots of ads pretty much everywhere.

What may be a little bit of a surprise is how many visitors I get.  I've clocked some 55,000 page impressions since I started monetizing my website.  I've earned $60 not bad, but for a website who's sole drive is a page on how to run your own proxy, I'm satisfied.

This month has been a little different.  2000 page impressions for a whole $0.17.  So what gives?  That's below my already low average of earnings per month.

I want answers dangit.

How to Save GM

A simple bailout won't save GM and the US taxpayers definitely won't like saving the company either, I mean, MAYBE if the company made cars that DIDN'T SUCK they wouldn't need a bailout!

If GM wants to save themselves (even the biggest of bailouts won't help.  When your business can't turn a profit because you can't sell cars, a blank check won't change that) they have to do some really really drastic things really really quickly.

1. Cut executive pay and bonuses to less than $500,000/year.
   I don't think the executives at GM will like this, but they don't have a choice.  Making less money is better than making no money at all.  Plus, a massive cut in pay might show the US taxpayer they're serious about saving GM and will sway opinion in favor of a low-interest loan (if it comes to that)
2. Sell several car divisions and combine all operations into 4 or 5 successful brands.
   First, roll all European/Asian brands into their American equivalents.  Understandably, there is going to be a sadness with the dropping of the brands, but it will pass like it did with Oldsmobile.
   Second, destroy Hummer.  I don't care how; spin it off, close its factories, whatever - just get rid of it.
   Third, sell Saab.  This is probably going to be the hardest from the shareholders perspective since Saab is a brand which is performing comparatively, but GM will be able to get some cash selling a successful operation.  Fill the void with Buick, which is increasingly becoming a luxury brand.
   Fourth, shutter a few American brands. This is going to be just as or more difficult than losing Opel.  Unfortunately, if GM wants to survive it can't handle such a brand lineup.  I would keep Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, GMC and Chevy.  Each of these companies has a slightly different market, so they wouldn't be competing with each other.  As for Saturn, either sell it or roll it into the Chevy line.
3. Showcase the history of the remaining US brands. American car companies have something most European companies don't: history.  Recently, US automakers have put a lot of emphasis on the muscle cars they made in a bygone era, but the brands, for the most part, have a history of luxury too.  Showcase the finer side of your cars, they will sell.
4. Market OnStar to other companies. GM has a good thing going with OnStar, unfortunately they kept it for themselves.  Allowing for other companies (Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc) to use the system will bring in millions from additional subscriptions and technology licensing fees.
5. Move a majority of manufacturing overseas or to Mexico. If there is one thing the American worker is good at, it is pricing himself out of the workforce market (thank you, Unions!)  Undoubtedly people will whine about how the greedy-corporate-fat-cats just want more money, but simply put GM needs money to survive (even if it hurts their reputation), shipping manufacturing jobs overseas will allow GM to build their cars at an affordable rate.
6. Do some good engineering for once! More importantly, if you have something good, don't kill it like you did with the EV1 and what it seems you're going to do with the Chevy Volt.
   Doing quality engineering to create quality cars will be a huge boost for the company.  In fact, if you had some quality cars you might not be in this situation to begin with!

These are only a few of the things GM must do to save itself.  It will be tough, but it can be done.  What will come out of GM's transition, no one can be quite sure.  Hopefully, if they do not accept a bailout, GM will prove to be a leaner, meaner, company - the retirees which have their savings in stocks and pensions depend on it!

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, OY!

This election season I managed to get into an unbelievable amount of arguments over political issues.  It seemed like every other day I was in one of these debates being told I was "going to hell" or "had no regard for human life" because of the stances I took: the points of conservatism and liberty.

Unsurprisingly, the people who gave me the most frustrations where those who had an actual idea of what government is and what it's role should be.  These are the people (Ian, I'm looking at you) who had facts and data to actually "back up" their arguments, rather than hearsay and fabrications.

The rest of my opponents have managed to frustrate me not because they have a point, but instead because they consistently contradict their own arguments and have little or no understanding of what they believe in.

What is surprising, is that the majority of the uninformed people I argued with were members of the LDS church.  Every single one had backwards views on liberty.  Considering the church believes the constitution was written by divine intervention, that is disturbing on multiple levels.

The last person I argued with was Diego Carrión, self described conservative/crazy guy, is a friend of a friend (though I have met him) and a student at BYU-Idaho.  Read: Mormon.

The issue was Washington Initiative-1000: the right to assisted suicide by a lethal dose of medication.  The key parts of this proposition is who it covers: people who are terminally ill, mentally stable (note, not depressed), and have less than 6 months to live.

Why is this important?  His argument was over the sanctity of life - and how the state has to protect it.  By the way, him mentioning "the state" is key.  that proves he is not a conservative, but in fact a "neo-con" and a state-ist.  He should consider changing his "Facebook" political views section.

The hilarious part about his argument is he was trying to portray me as a liberal leftist, because I wanted to get the government out of people's lives and I shouldn't mention "liberty" in my arguments because libertarians want to raise taxes and bring more government control over peoples lives... or something...  I honestly have no idea.

Of course this was a fairly easy argument to win, he even admitted I had points and agreed with me on 90% of the arguments I submitted.  The key difference is he wanted "the state" to force his views on life & death on everyone else, yeah, some conservative.  The end of this argument was him resorting to ad hominem attacks when he realized he had no way of winning.  (just a note for everyone, if you resort to this type of argument, I won't continue, period.)