WTF?
What does UAW stand for? U Ain’t Working!
I’m gonna be 52 in a few days and I was thinking about the good old days. The neighborhood I grew up in near 8 mile and Gratiot was just like most people’s in the Detroit area, working class and working for the auto industry.
Unlike all the other dads in my neighborhood, my dad didn’t work for the auto companies. He had , at one point, been a supervisor at Dodge Main, but hated the prisonlike feel of the place. He went to R.E.T.S. and learned radio and TV repair.
And, even though we weren’t a part of the car business, we had uncles and cousins and friends in the business. My brother, Dave once did part time work at Dodge Main cleaning the massive smoke stacks, earning money to go to Wayne State.
I remember the bad times in the auto industry, layoffs, strikes, and the constant tension between management and labor. But, when times were good, a working class family could have a good life. Not rich, but getting ahead with the expectation that we would inherit an even better standard of living.
But, as the seventies ended, the competition from the Japanese killed the American consumer electronics industry and foretold of the other industries to fall victim to foreign competition. Companies like Zenith and RCA, who once owned the market , now were bought out by foreign interests. New names came onto the store displays; Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Mitsubishi.
A lot of people do not know that JVC stands for Japanese Victor Corporation, a company set up by RCA/Victor after the Second World War in an effort to help the defeated Japanese rebuild their broken economy.
Ironic, yes, that the very people we helped back into the world economy were able to wrest the mantle of industrial dominance from us because we just couldn’t see what the negative potential outcome of our country’s generosity and compassion would be.
Now today we face the very clear danger of losing another of the industries that has employed thousands and helped us defeat the enemy not long ago.
I wonder if Senator Richard Shelby thinks Hyundai will build tanks for us when we are attacked again. Oh, that’s right, we can have the 10-20 million illegal aliens living in our country build them, that’s if they are through cleaning Sen. Shelby’s pool.
BRB