Charles E. Wilson Quotes
Many people do not realize that where unions have bargaining rights employers cannot raise wages or improve benefit plans any more than they can reduce them without of the consent of the union.
In 1892 President Harrison and the Republicans were trying to win a second term and were embarrassed by a bloody strike and riot at the Homestead steel works. Frick, the Homestead General Manager, was visited by a Republican emissary suggesting that Frick recognize the union and reduce the public embarrassment.. The Republicans lost to Grover Cleveland and the Democrats.
This quotation was reprinted and widely distributed by the CIO in its 1936 organizing drive of the Ford Motor Company
This is one of the classic labor-management problems. It can be solved by legislating minimum wages, having very strong labor unions, that can pressure all the employers of an industry at once, or to have industrial unions as they do in Germany.
The practice worked fine in the Automobile industry, until there was intense competition from imported cars, and price increases were not easy to sustain and keep market share at the same time. When the automobile executives made some bad decisions, there was great conflict with the Unions who argued that it was the management that made the big mistakes and therefore the workers should not have to reduce their remuneration, and the automobile companies were caught in a death spiral where there costs were too high for the cars they made, the quality had slipped in an effort to save costs, and they did not make the smaller, low gas mileage cars that were in demand. The industry would have failed completely had it not been for the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations working together to bail out the American auto companies to the distress of many conservative ideologues in and out of Congress. See {637913} for a classic right wing ideological response to bailouts earlier.
At the time, industrialists could not even conceive of the notion of negotiating over wages must less collective bargaining.
Charles Edward Wilson was a CEO of General Electric.
