What's good for GM is...oh, never mind.

[banned]

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/business/businessspecial2">www.nytimes.com/2005/11/1...ssspecial2</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>/19generations.html?hp&ex=1132376400&en=<br>c1f39488d9382847&ei=5094&partner=homepage<br><br><br>For a G.M. Family, the American Dream Vanishes<br><br>By DANNY HAKIM<br>Published: November 19, 2005<br><br>FLINT, Mich. - Four generations of the Roy family relied on General Motors for their prosperity.<br><br>Over more than seven decades, the company's wages bought the Roys homes, cars and once-unimaginable comforts, while G.M.'s enviable medical and pension benefits have kept them secure in their retirements.<br><br>But the G.M. that was once an unassailable symbol of the nation's industrial might is a shadow of its former self, and the post-World War II promise of blue-collar factory work being a secure path to the American dream has faded with it.<br><br>(more at link) <p></p><i></i>

[chiggerbit]

My husband was from the Flint area, and I remember in the old days listening to his friends who worked the assembly lines discussing how some new foreman was being taught how things were done by the line workers who played cards for six hours a day, and worked two, which went on for months, until the foreman "got it". This was a time when unions were all-powerful. It shouldn't have taken geniuses to figure out that there would be a price to pay for that attitude someday. It was like watching a trainwreck about to happen, in slow motion. I have nothing but respect for what unions are supposed to do and nothing but disgust for what the big ones "accomplished" with their arrogance and corruption. They have much to answer for. If they had acted professionally and reasonably, Reagan would never have been able to damage them all, the good ones and the bad ones, the way he did. RIP, PATCO. <p></p><i></i>