Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Chris Szabo

He's a modern-day skilled laborer. Apparently he knows someone in Louisiana.

Ok, so as a follow-up to yesterday's post, I want to talk about modern day labor issues through the lens of the global automotive industry. First things first, I need to disabuse all of you of unhelpful false assumptions.

There is no such thing as Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, KIA, Daimler, or any other automotive company. There is no such thing as union shops, non-union shops, or singularly distinguishable shops at all. So what is there, exactly, if these things which you think exist, don't actually exist?

Instead of individual tangible companies, there are more intangible concepts, such as the American domestic legacy auto industry, The American domestic transplant industry, the various foreign industries, and the American industry in foreign markets. Moreover, instead of union shops or non-union shops, there are shops that are more or less affected by unions. See, even in a non-union shop, it has to transport or receive its products from other shops, which may or may not be union, and the policies in those other shops affect all other shops that are connected.

Ok?

Any way, Chris Szabo felt incensed at a Facebook token sponsored by Honda, which I had given to Kim. Chris works for Fo-- oops. Chris works in the American domestic legacy auto industry, and works in a shop heavily influenced by unions. Any way, due to the utter horror show that has been the American domestic legacy auto industry experience these past few... decades, Chris is a bit sore at the idea of people buying a product that could, in his opinion, cost him his job. Luckily for him, a singular auto purchase will not in any meaningful way affect his employment.

What does affect his employment are things much bigger than him or me, and are not nearly as easily understood. See, Right-to-work states, NAFTA, the need to pacify Germany, Japan, and later Korea, those things are what really work for or against the future employment of Chris. All of this is rather convoluted, and seeing as I am leaving work in a few minutes (yes, I blog at work) I can't get into all of it in detail-- right now.

Still, it gives me something to write about. There is more to come.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

szabo is so kick-ass, though. he really is.

Paul Gray said...

Man I hate when folks blog about what some said BY NAME and don't link to it for us to evaluate for ourselves.
Doing it the way you have makes me doubt your words, all of them.