Automotive workers for the Big Three automakers are considering a strike if they can’t get better pay and working conditions, but the car makers have a plan – They are training their white collar workers to do factory jobs, a move that has led to disastrous consequences for companies in recent years. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Link – https://www.theautopian.com/ford-is-secretly-training-white-collar-employees-for-warehouse-work-if-the-uaw-strikes/
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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Automotive workers for the big three automakers are considering a strike if they can’t get better pay working conditions. But now the automakers have some hare-brained idea about how they’re gonna push back. This is the craziest idea I’ve ever seen. Anyway, talk about it, Farron, would you.
What we have right now, and this is almost comical. It’s something you would see in a sitcom, is you’ve got, Ford is leading the charge, and they’re saying, okay, listen, I know you work in human resources. I know you’re an engineer. You sit in an air conditioned office all day, but.
You’re a scientist.
Yeah. You’re a scientist. Uh, do you know how to work a forklift? Okay, come down to the warehouse and I’m gonna teach you how to work a forklift. I’m gonna teach you, person who’s in charge of getting our health insurance, I’m gonna teach you how to start making carburetors. They are taking the salaried workers and throwing them into these warehouses saying, guess what, you’re now on the assembly line because we could be facing a strike. And rather than actually just say, okay, we’ll pay you a living wage, they’re saying, no, we’ll take our scientists and our human resources folks, and you guys now work the assembly line.
Our number crunchers. You’re a good accountant. How would you like to work this complex machinery?
Yeah. Don’t stick your hand in here, it’ll get cut off.
Well, okay. So, and they’re also being asked, look, you have a choice, Joe, Mr. Accountant. It’s not so bad. You have a choice. You can go to Colorado, we’ll send you there. We’ll send you to Florida. We’ll send you to New Jersey. Anywhere you want to go, you can’t take your family, but you can go and hang out and work as a forklift operator. Yes, you’ve been in a white collar your entire life. You’ve never even been around a forklift. But this is gonna be the answer to it. Now, the thing that cracks me up is there’s already so much history that this doesn’t work. Didn’t Caterpillar try something like this?
Caterpillar tried it. John Deere tried it. And of course those videos went viral because you got these idiots, not that they’re idiots because they didn’t know any better, but they’re crashing.
Yeah, John Deere, not Caterpillar, excuse me.
Yeah. They’re crashing forklifts into the walls. They’re destroying product because they don’t know how to do any of this stuff. It is, it really, it’s like an episode of Seinfeld. Like Kramer gets a forklift and starts running through walls.
Are they serious about this or is this just some kind of, you strike, we’re gonna find a way to do this? I mean.
I think it is more of like, we’re gonna try to see if we can call your bluff. But if I were the auto workers, I would not be afraid of this at all. I would be encouraging it, saying, you know what? You think I’m so replaceable?
Yeah. You think what I do is not important?
Yeah. You go get Dr. John down here and see if he can run this.
Yeah.
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Meet the new “up-skill” movement
It’s like at FedEx when they had the office workers come throw boxes. They were so proud of themselves. I’ve had other warehouse jobs where management came to the floor or warehouse to help with inventory or catch up work. They were in the way!
I'm so glad many states have "right to work"
No doubt these white-collar workers will suck at assembly-line work.
Just wait until they go on strike too!
This should be amusing. Hopefully no one gets hurt.
Suit and ties attempting
to do real labor.. what a
laugh. They better hope
they're keepin the white
collar Health Insurance.
I have worked in several industries, but the number of companies that did this, while I was on their books ( as a temp, in both cases) – two. It went very, very badly – in a "Oh my god the factory has to be shut down, the inspectors are coming and ambulances are queueing round the block" kind of way.
I like the sienfeld theme Faron subtley put in.
Did Elon Musk train these bureaucrats? Ford X?
Engineers can learn this. But other White collar workers will never figure it out.
I’ll never buy a ford vehicle again! They defaulted on their promise to provide a pension to their workers for less weekly pay, then they cut workers pay and benefits while receiving cash bailouts from the taxpayers and took huge bonuses for your incompetent service, then you rely on foreign components to complete your product! Now you have the gaul to deny your employees the appreciation for their sacrifices that continued your company and their efforts to make their own products and livelihood better for continued success in your business! The people you want to harass are your professionals who created your company and it’s profits that you are not earning from your contribution or any competent corporate decision to place the company in a position of confidence and trust with the community and your employees that gave you everything and you have failed them and your country! Any monetary deposit that was made to the company after the federal bailout is to be given back to the workers and the shareholders who were paid for doing nothing to help the company and workers succeed in their business as a factory that has the public and community in their business model! And the money that was made from the workers deprived of wages and benefits should be given back with all interest it has earned from the day it was received and utilized in the company entitlement the workers of America provided and they abused forcing their workers into less secure conditions in their employment and homes, which is a huge violation of their basic legal rights when under a contract agreed to in a wage and working conditions agreement signed by both parties! The corporation doesn’t have the ability to fail to meet their obligations while mandating the workers must comply with their obligations! The government has to uphold the contract that the company signed as a direct result from its employees being paid less than the corporation pays its shareholders, board members, and other executive staff who don’t work under a contract that is required for the labor force who builds the company’s products and is responsible to comply with the contracts requirements for payment! The corporation is not allowed to operate its business with incompetence and take the profits and default the business as a result from their malpractice and other business practices that would otherwise have been used as compensation for the company’s benefit from financial failure!
They should start with the "corner office" guys and see how well they deal with a complex semi-robotic assembly line.
Those guys couldn't last a full shift.
This is the stupidest idea ever, upper management is always so stupid
Why is this such a surprise? I worked at the phone company (Ohio Bell, Ameritech, SBC, & AT&T) for over 34 years as both union and management. Every time the contract was due to be up and the negotiations were not going well, management was trained to do union work–customer service, operator, installation tech , repair tech, etc. I went to pole climbing school to be a tech in advance of the last time a strike was imminent. I always had a desk job and never worked outside. Needless to say, I failed pole climbing school…
Raising Cane's tried this a couple of years ago to address labor shortages. Had office workers/executives pull shifts in the actual restaurants. Two months later they announced that restaurant worker pay was going up $2/hour across the board
Eng, eng, eng! Here comes the AI Robot cavalry to the rescue.
Toxic capitalism.
I remember when phone company workers went on strike about 40 – 45 years ago. I remember driving past a few guys with hard hats on, sitting on the grass under a utility pole, looking at drawings and trying to figure out what they were doing.
No way I’d buy a vehicle built under those circumstances.
Are we sure this isn't a workplace sitcom? This won't end well. For anybody.
This'll go well… "I didn't have 10 ½" nuts so I used 5 1" nuts instead…"
Send controllers to do the work, then they might understand finally what impact their cuts are having!
Many of management are not the brightest.
John Deere tried this. It didn't go well.