Seems it was a big weekend for union bashing in the nation’s major newspapers. Warren Brown, a Washington Post business page columnist who writes about the car industry, took the UAW to task in a column over the weekend. Explaining that corporations are “greedy….It is what it is”, Brown goes on to note that the union workers at Chrysler who are about to lose their jobs are paid the same as non-union workers in a couple successful US car plants. While Brown acknowledges that the Chrysler workers are not responsible for dumb choices made by executives (making the kind of trucks consumers no longer want, for example), he apparently thinks these workers should have taken some action since they must have known the execs were about to eliminate their jobs.
Brown seems to be suggesting workers should be willing to take a pay cut when it turns out executives aren’t so swift at decision-making and business planning. Now there’s a new definition of pay for performance! Brown says: When you’re getting paid as much as someone who is making popular, profitable products, and you’re making unpopular and unprofitable products, that’s a really serious problem. Something’s got to give, and more than likely it is going to be your job and your plant, and maybe your company. Say what? This article doesn’t make much sense. Maybe Brown left out some of his supporting argument, but it reads like a reflexive conservative slam on democratic workplaces with negotiated job benefits, even as Brown simultaneously acknowledges the real reason the company is in trouble stems from bad business decisions completely out of control of workers.
What’s really going on here? Any ideas? Maybe conservatives are nervous about all the movement in the other direction, what with businesses like Cingular volunteering to work with organized groups of workers to create a successful business venture for ALL of the actors involved. Brown asserts that consumer “purchase decisions aren’t based on what is good for the community, or the country, or the UAW. In that regard, they are much like corporations. They are in it for the money.” But, consumers do weigh social responsibility in their decision-making, particularly when all other things are equal. This Washington Post columnist overly simplifies consumer decision-making. Readers should know that all consumers do not make decisions solely on the basis of price. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the Post ran an article about a recently released list of employers utilizing socially responsible business practices and paid for a survey of consumers about how these influence purchasing? A socially responsible media outlet would provide better analysis of the reasons for Chrysler’s decision, and more reporting on businesses practices regarding human rights, employee relations, job standards, environmental impact, community accountability, transparency, and so on.