Go back to work UAW!

The UAW (United Auto Workers) have once again gone on strike.

Let me pre-empt what I'm about to say otherwise it will sound unmerciful and hoity-toity. Unions were definitely needed in the day they started. The working man needed to stand up for their rights and to do so they had to stand together. I believe that we wouldn't have sane and healthy working conditions we have today if it weren't for them. I believe that today we have greater balance in life and family because of them. But they have overstayed their welcome. To stay competetive, employers offer health care, paid vacation, set amounts of hours and overtime pay. We no longer need to all stand together and walk out of our work and stand in a picket line to get fair, humane, and decent treatment. We have balance, we have rights.

In Michigan's struggling economy, the UAW is not only shooting themselves in the foot but they're killing our state! They went on strike. I don't know why but this is the result: the people that supply them parts to put cars and engines together (or whatever they do with them) will now be laid off. These UAW have benefits that provide them money of some sort so they can stand on the sidewalk and hold their signs but the people who are laid off will now go home without that. If the UAW wins, the Automobile manufacturers will no longer be able to afford to make a car in the US and will have to outsource their work to foreign countries or the result will be cars too expensive for people to buy. Then the UAW people will no longer have a job to strike for, the laid off people will have no hope for employment, and the saddest part is probably the fact that these people are not college educated for the most part and they will be unable to find adequate work to feed their families, pay their morgages, and pay their bills.

Michigan's primary industry will be the cause of death for everyone. Once the Automakers leave, there will be much less people buying christmas presents at our malls, food at our grocery stores and eateries, trinkets at our tourist stops. People will move out of our dear state to find better work somewhere else. That means less revenue for the state through income taxes, sales tax, and traffic violations. So less people will be needed to file, bill, and work stores. So more people will leave to find work in other places.

You think it won't be that way? Let's see what's happened in recent years from lay-offs and plant closings: Michigan is #1 or #2 for the worst economy, the state budget for 2007 still has no resolution and 2008 is far from the books, our school system is in the bottom ten of the nation, and we are in the top five for home foreclosures in the nation. This is all aside from the fact that poverty, bad education, and crime are all on the rise.

I would think that with all the factory jobs that once kept our economy steaming forward, getting fewer and fewer these UAW people would feel grateful for the fact that they have jobs that are contracted and they have payouts if the contract falls through. I would think they would feel lucky to have a job at all, not to mention one that allows them to retire after 30 years of work with full health care, fat pensions, and other financial benefits. I would think they would be happy. I would think that they would be extremely grateful knowing that it would cost their company less than half to give someone else the same sort of lifestyle in another country.

The Unions gave us a lot in their day and without them I'm sure our working conditions would be vastly different but they have over stayed they're welcome and they need to go. UAW get off the picket lines and go back to work. You hold us all back.