I have some thoughts today on the real problem with the UAW, over at PJM.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from Mickey Kaus — from Taylorism To Wagnerism.

[Update a little after 9 Eastern]

Here’s an excellent piece on the same subject by Michael Barone.

[Afternoon update]

Jim Manzi has more thoughts on Wagnerism versus Taylorism:

…there appears to be a cyclical nature to these things. More-or-less the same, basically sensible, method for business operational improvement — carefully observe current work practices, think of them holistically and in light of the goals of the business, and then redesign work practices — keeps getting reinvented. Taylorism, “Goals and Methods”, factory statistical process control (SPC), Total Quality Management (TQM), reengineering, and so on are all just manifestations of this approach. Each is typically pioneered by innovators who have a fairly supple understanding of the often unarticulated complexity of the task. It drives clear profit gains, and many other people want to apply it. A group of experts are trained by the pioneers, who are also quite effective. There is an inevitable desire to scale up the activity and apply it as widely as possible. It becomes codified into some kind of a cookbook process that can be replicated. This process becomes a caricature of the original work, and the method is discredited by failure and ridicule. (Seeing this phase of reengineering at several companies in the 1990s, a close friend of mine once described it as “like the Planet of the Apes, but the monkeys have taken over from the humans”.) Within a few years, some new pioneers develop some new manifestation of the approach, and the cycle begins again.

Just before I left Rockwell in the early nineties, they had caught on to the latest TQM management fad. We all went to courses on it, as well as taking classes based on the management philosophy of Stephen Covey.

Much of it was absurd. There is no sensible way to apply statistical management process control to research and development, but they attempted to do so, having us set out the processes by which we did trade studies, etc. This senseless training was, of course, charged to overhead (i.e., it was included as part of the burden on our Air Force and NASA cost-plus contracts). Just in case you were looking for more reasons that space stuff costs so much.

…but won’t get. Iain Murray describes what will be necessary for a successful auto industry:

…the best way to save the auto industry remains a deregulatory bailout, reducing government-imposed burdens on the industry, and in particular Congress backing off on its destructive CAFE requirements.

One of those government-imposed burdens is the Wagner Act and the NLRB that enables the UAW to maintain a stranglehold on the industry. Unfortunately, all of the above, while the most needed, are also the most unlikely things to be had from the new regime. If anything, as I’ll note in a Pajamas column tomorrow, they’re only going to make things worse.

“Blame me for the job losses”:

I caused part of this job loss and I know precisely why; the election. The results portend big trouble for small business.

The job destruction process has started. We are about 20% of the way through our ramp down process and on schedule to complete the shut down by spring 2009. Watch the financial news and you will see continued job cuts each month. We are not alone in our strategy. Far from it. Atlas has shrugged all over the country.

Like many business owners, we are no longer willing to take all of the financial and legal risks and put up with all of the aggravation of owning and running a business. Not with the prospects of even higher taxes, more regulation, more litigation and more emboldened bureaucrats on the horizon. Like others we know, we are getting out while the getting is, well, tolerable. Many who aren’t getting out are scaling back.

We learned just this week that getting out of business is harder than we thought. Take Republic Windows & Doors of Chicago, where being out of money and out of paying customers apparently does not give a business the right to shut down. Nor does it give that business’ bank the right to withhold credit. According to the unions, Jesse Jackson and the Governor of Illinois (yes, THAT governor), this company must continue to pay its employees salaries and benefits.

But pay them with WHAT? Liberals seem to be clueless as to where “the money” comes from. They love to tax, regulate and redistribute wealth — all the while decrying the very profit motive that created it — something they do not understand. If they did, they would not naively insist that a business that is out of money, out of customers and out of credit stay open so as to pay employees.

And that is but one example of why the lay-offs of November 2008 – which will be part of George W. Bush’s statistical record – fall in reality on the Obama election. Business owners understand that the election of 2008 just gave a lot more power to people who think like these liberals in Illinois. For crying out loud, an Illinois liberal is now “President elect” and he chose another one for his Chief of Staff. He chose Michigan liberals for his economic team. Illinois and Michigan are broke!

It is no secret that owners circulated endless emails leading up to election day discussing lay off plans were Obama to win. Entrepreneurs instinctively understand the danger posed by larger liberal majorities in power. The risk-reward equation and fierce independence spirit of start up businesses are anathema to the class warfare, equality of outcome and spread the wealth mentality of the left.

I blame the Democrats and big-government Republicans myself. Read the whole thing.

I was watching the UAW honcho on the telly this morning, and noticed that all of the discussion was about wages and benefits, and there was no discussion whatsoever of the real problem, familiar to anyone who has ever worked in the US auto industry. There would be no problem with the wages being paid if the workers were productive, but the work rules negotiated by the union make them just the opposite. They also make it very hard for supervisors to supervise. I was going to write a long post about this, but I don’t really have time this morning, and it turns out that Mickey beat me to it.

If the new regime was really serious about “change,” they’d repeal the Wagner Act, which is the root cause of the industry’s problems. Instead, they want to implement “card check” (better called the “freedom of thugs to intimidate workers into joining the union” act), to spread the infection throughout the rest of American industry.

Jim Manzi points out an excellent example of my piece on how those claiming to want “change” cling so desperately to the status quo, at the expense of the economy and productivity:

The amount that would ultimately be loaned to the Big 3 is unclear, but most observers believe that when all is said and done, it will be much, much more than the $34 billion that the Big 3 have requested. Let’s assume $100 billion. As a pure thought exercise, how many jobs could we create with an extra $100 billion of venture capital? How much more sustainable would these be than jobs in companies that need to come to Washington to beg for capital?

We’re not supposed to ask those questions. These threats of financial armageddon if we don’t bail out the UAW are just scare tactics. It will be very bad in the short run for some locales (including my home town of Flint, and my family there), but the nation would survive, and if we can break out of this “too big to fail” mentality, much the better for it.

Some thoughts from another Flint native on the plight of GM:

If GM were a horse I would call the vet and have it put out of its misery. I realize how a failed GM will devastate my family as well as this entire country. I get it probably more than most people because I grew up in Flint. But there has to be a better way then giving them our hard earned tax money.

Giving them what they want is only prolonging the inevitable. And, then who is next? Who else wants to go and beg to our government for free money? Steel companies, airlines, states like California? Heck, maybe I should drive to DC in my GM car and get in line?

I wish I had the answers and I realize what a tough job our politicians have on this one. I literally feel torn in half about this. After another blow up on the phone with my mom today I also realize that I can no longer talk to her about it.

I also have family who will be financially devastated by a complete failure of the company (and are already hurting — as she notes, parts of the city of Flint are becoming a post-apocalyptic nightmare). But the current plan is just delaying the inevitable, at taxpayer expense. Their only real hope is a legitimate bankruptcy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Flint’s (lunatic) mayor to the rescue with a plan:

Williamson is sending City Administrator Darryl Buchanan to Washington D.C. next week to tout his big idea to save the auto industry as part of the Mayors Automotive Coalition lobbying Congress for the Detroit Three’s $34-billion loan.

Williamson said under his idea, each household with a registered voter would receive a $5,000 voucher to purchase a new car. He hasn’t calculated how much the plan would cost taxpayers.

Williamson said the government should use some of the $700 billion previously set aside to bail out the financial industry to fund the vouchers.

“They’re using the money for the wrong things,” Williamson said.

He said he realizes some people may not believe that his ideas would work.

“A lot of people are in shock when I come up with these ideas,” said Williamson, who has previously touted his 2006 “Save All of America” plan aimed at saving General Motors and Delphi Corp. “Many think they’re off the wall, but I’m thinking.”

People in shock when you come up with these ideas? You don’t say…

Will there be a chicken in every pot, too?

[Late afternoon update]

Why the auto bailout sux:

4. Where are provisions for dealing with rewriting the Big Three’s union contracts? Where are provisions for preempting state franchise laws so that dealer contracts can be cancelled or rewritten? The Big Three have to reduce labor costs. They have to shed brands, which means closing some dealers. They have to develop a modern distribution system, which means fundamental changes in their relationship with the dealers.

5. It’s interesting that Ford is asking only for a line of credit rather than cash in hand. I suspect that their reluctance to take the cash now has a lot to do with Dodd’s efforts to force Rick Waggoner out at GM. It’s no secret that the current generation of Fords are modest talents, at best. Yet, so long as the Fords have their super voting rights stock, they will exercise control. One wonders whether Dodd would try to force them to give up their voting control as a condition of taking the cash.

6. If Rick Waggoner has to go, why doesn’t Ron Gettelfinger? The UAW is just as much at fault here as management.

I think we know why. And I’d be a lot more impressed with Chris Dodd’s demand that Wagoner leave if Senator Countrywide would first set an example by resigning from the Senate over his shameful role in the much larger finance disaster.