Auto Industry - Can We Learn from the Past?

The US auto industry, now facing bankruptcy and/or possible government takeover, is now reaping the spoils of government regulation, union excesses and management's recklessness and inability to negotiate workable contracts with those same unions. As with the garment and steel industries, union contracts were viable in good times, but completely unmanageable in flat economies or worse. Perhaps a lesson can be learned from the makeover and resurgence of the steel industry here in the USA.


Steel Industry

The book "Steel Phoenix" describes the effects that excessive labor agreements and government regulations had on the demise of the Steel Industry in the late 70's and 80's and the resultant job losses, plant shutdowns and relocations. Only thru a complete change in the methods, work rules, employee involvement and facility modernizations, finally agreed to by the USWA, did the Industry arise from the dead. Pages 308 and 309 of the book's preview, refer to the new ways in which management and unions participated under what was called the "New Directions Bargaining Program"

Steel Phoenix by Christopher Hall