Automotive News, June 25, 2007

Copyright 2007 Crain Communications

All Rights Reserved

Automotive News

June 25, 2007

SECTION: LETTERS; Pg. 12

HEADLINE: Letters to the Editor

BODY:

Unions: Employees deserve a free choice

To the Editor:

I feel compelled to disagree with a number of the assertions made in the May 28 editorial ``Card check: A bad idea.''

Contrary to the myth that a growing number of Americans seem to consider unions irrelevant, research conducted in December 2006 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates concluded that some 60 million U.S. employees would join a union if they could.

Unfortunately, under the current system, when employees do try to gain a voice in the workplace through a union, they are routinely met with employer intimidation, harassment and retaliation.

A recent survey of National Labor Relations Board election campaigns in 1998 and 1999, conducted by Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner, found that private sector employers illegally fire employees for union activity in at least 25 percent of all efforts to join a union.

The same survey found that management forces employees to attend group anti-union presentations in 92 percent of all union campaigns.

Under the current NLRB election process, delays of many months are common. If the employees file a complaint with the NLRB, the election is delayed even further.

Surely it is easier to fend off the persuasions of a fellow employee than it is to fend off the threats of the boss.

A secret ballot does not guarantee a democratic process during an NLRB election. What is arguably equally important, if not more important, is the need to ensure the ability to make a free choice.

The Employee Free Choice Act makes it possible for employees to exercise their free choice without the threat of losing their livelihood.

Passage of that measure will go a long way in strengthening the economic security of America's middle class and working poor.

It is time for our elected representatives to repair this broken system so that American workers can freely exercise their right to organize and form a union.

JOHN PERQUIN

Assistant to the International Secretary-Treasurer

United Steelworkers

Pittsburgh

Savings wind up in CEOs' pockets

To the Editor:

I read ``Supplier CEOs top payday list'' (May 28), and I find it unbelievable and incredible that individuals can show such greed in an industry that is causing so much economic destruction to the hourly work force.

Factories are closed, jobs are shipped overseas, retirees' health benefits are reduced or eliminated, and most of the savings seem to end up in the CEOs' paychecks. If a company has to cut costs, the entire chain, hourly workers to top management, should be part of the solution.

Why should the economic pain be shouldered only by the hourly work force? I feel no need to purchase my next vehicle from an automotive company that, along with its suppliers, compensates executive officers at the level indicated in your article.

The rich getting richer at the expense of the poor and middle class is not my idea of the American dream.

ROBERT VARIELL

Jackson, Mich.

The writer is an engineer for an automotive parts supplier.

The spirit of MG refuses to die

To the Editor:

The current owner of MG is among the smallest and weakest in a Chinese incubator full of fledgling automakers.

Yet, unlike anyone else dealing with MG (or Rover), Nanjing Automobile Corp. has met every mark on its timeline. It doesn't speak much or often, but when it does, it has delivered. Vehicles are being made, and plants are going up.

The spirit of MG was always that of the underdog - of the gritty, rugged, pugnacious upstart that stubbornly refused to die. I hope it is a case of ``the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone.''

If you can't tell, I drove in to work today in my 1972 MGB. Top down? Of course!

I can't wait to turn a key on its heir.

JOHN H. ZAJAC

Adjunct Professor of Marketing

Concordia University

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Dealer vet recalls the bad old days

To the Editor:

After the Navy and St. Louis University at the end of World War II, I worked for Mendenhall Ford in St. Louis for 20 years. In 1970, a school chum and I purchased the Ford dealership in Festus Mo. My partner retired in 1979, and I owned the dealership, Kordsmeier Ford, until I sold it in 1992.

I remember the wild 1950s. The live-for-the-moment dealers were king.

Mendenhall Ford was an old-school dealer and did business in a very reputable manner. We sold about 100 new vehicles a month, so we were not too popular with Ford.

Some of the new dealers in St. Louis with one or two mechanics and one parts man were selling about 250 a month. Therefore, they could get the inventory.

The theme was to live for the moment and sell to every person who came into the dealership - work him over any way possible; get the full loaf, or a half loaf or break even or lose money. ``Volume will take care of you.''

As for warranty, some of the newer dealers would tell their customers to ``take it down to Mendenhall.'' As a result, cars would be lined up around the block each morning trying to get warranty work done.

Human nature being what it is, many of those people went back to the high-pressure dealer next time to try to get even. Many couldn't believe that Ford would allow the underhanded dealings, and those people would be suckered in again by false and misleading advertising.

In fact, the people at the Better Business Bureau would not take complaints about car dealers. They said that if they did, they could not do anything else; they would be overwhelmed.

GEORGE KORDSMEIER

Naples, Fla.