CAW take their medicine

It appears that the CAW did the deal with Chrysler yesterday.

Tough times. All that fighting in the newspapers last week about how the company was spinning the benefits package wrong turned out to be true. According to the G&M:

The concessions, including cuts to health-care coverage, vacations, bonuses, incentives to buy Chrysler vehicles and other benefits, met the company's target of reducing labour costs by $19 an hour, CAW president Ken Lewenza said last night at a news conference at a Toronto hotel.

The CAW had me (and probably a lot of decent Canadians) convinced that the benefits package was all going towards paying for healthcare for elderly workers who needed heart bypasses. And now I hear they were getting cheap cars.

Cheap effin' cars! They've been holding out on a deal so they can buy cheap effin' cars? Why don't they just sneak the parts out of the factory and build their own cars during their vacations?

Yes, I know that would be wrong. And nobody that works in an Ontario auto-manufacturing facility would ever do that.

Silly Chrysler. If I were them, I'd have spun that part of the story... not the snowbirds healthcare story.

It stands to reason. If you want to divide and conquer, you have to create 'deh scorn' for the other side among the hoi polloi.

The snowbird health issue created 'deh jealousy', which is a useful divide and conquer strategy, but because it was about healthcare, it also created a 'hmmm, maybe I shouldn't dump on this because some day it could be me' factor. Because everyone wants to move somewhere warm with free healthcare when they're old.

Not very useful.

However, as we all know now, nobody wants a deal on a Chrysler. Now that I know they were holding out on that, I HAVE DEH SCORN.

Watching this public relations fight is like watching two drunk people mud-wrestle with their eyes blindfolded.

Dreadful application of the basic principles of a hearts and minds strategy.

Well, thank goodness for the deal I suppose.

The company is saved for another while.

Oh no, that's right, my tax dollars have to be handed over first.

Well, at least they're not going to be used to pay for people I don't know to get cut-price Chryslers.

Or. Fiats. Or Alfa Romeos.

You expect the banks to rip you off and fuck you over. You do.

But not the unions.

I am done with the Third Estate, until the model is changed and everyone can join a union, any union, and there are no more private clubs for 'certain' workers.

Done.