How They See Us

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Posted by Richard Burr (The Detroit News) on Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:37 AM

Limbaugh spreads wrong UAW impression

UAW leaders have conveniently broken pattern bargaining before when it was to their advantage. But the defeat of the Ford concession contract is not an attempt by United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger to bring Ford Motor Co. under the thumb of the UAW and the federal government, as Rush Limbaugh argued on the air Monday.

The problem for Limbaugh is that Gettelfinger urged ratification of the deal. He acknowledged that the concessions were needed to deal with Ford's huge loan repayments due in 2010 and 2011.

Sure, the UAW can still dig in its heels at the wrong time and cost the domestic automakers money. But that's not what happened this time around. The Ford rank-and-file now feel like the company and the economy are surging, and they can resort to old union politics.

The workers are miscalculating if they think Ford can continue to carry a cost disadvantage compared with its foreign and domestic rivals. But don't blame Gettelfinger for making that mistake.

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Tue. 11/03/09 04:40 PM

Ford's #'s are bologna

The movement that Ford is seeing is completely a Government bubble paid for by your tax dollars a.k.a Cash4Clunkers.

When we're pushing more vehicles into a market already saturated with used and repossessed cars (see www.repofinder.com) it does nothing but decimate car values, and further the problem.

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About this Weblog

On this page, we'll track what the media outside of Detroit are saying about our city -- good, bad and otherwise.

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