Union receives generous pay, burdens industry
The Union of Auto Workers President Bob King issued a rallying cry in favor of the Occupy Wall Street movement at an anniversary event of a factory shutdown last week. Calling for union workers to “be willing to face arrest”, King hopes to rally support from his union to go after corporations that, he claims, are bankrupting American by not paying taxes.
His first target is American staple General Electric. King called for UAW workers to join others, including the Occupy movement, in protesting at the GE shareholders’ meeting held in April. Under the banner of “It’s immoral” and saying union workers “should be outraged at the injustice in America,” King’s pipe dream appears to be a protest on a quintessentially American company that has paid an inordinate amount in taxes.
King’s rally cry falls short on substance, as his claim that target corporations pay little to no taxes — in the case of GE — doesn’t ring true. While it’s well known that GE continually attempts to minimize its tax liability, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pay taxes.
A GE spokesperson responded to the UAW accusations by saying GE paid $1 billion in taxes in 2010, which is a vast sum. The fact is, the tax code has numerous ways to legally defer and bypass taxes under certain situations. Don’t blame the corporation for doing as it should in reducing expenses; blame members of Congress.
Everyone attempts to minimize one’s tax liability. It’s the nature of taxes; it’s how the tax system has worked for decades, not just recently.
So while King takes advantage of headline rally cries and a frail economy, it turns out many in the UAW abuse their worker contracts and choose to turn your local American assembly line into a pub. Since 2010, there have been two incidents of groups of UAW workers drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana while on the job.
Just last week a man coming home from work at another assembly plant was arrested on DUI charges after admitting he had been drinking all day at the factory. It turns out that Chrysler’s reliability issues weren’t the company’s fault at all; its drunken colleagues at the UAW couldn’t see straight enough to tighten the lug nuts.
These are the employees with whom the UAW negotiated a benefit package containing a total hourly pay equivalent of $75, while simultaneously blaming major corporations for bankrupting America.
But the fact is that the Big Three automakers struggled to survive in their most dire hour back in 2008. One of the largest items on the balance sheet turned out to be — what a surprise — the billions in required payments to the luxury pension plans handed out to tenured UAW employees.
For a union with a perpetual drinking problem to enjoy benefits that many would give an arm and a leg for while calling a corporation such as GE “unjust and immoral” is laughable. The UAW, and Mr. King, ought to take a long, hard look in the mirror.