I tried to find the collective agreement and the figures I found were the only ones. I’ll look again.

We do agree on the point about union bureacracy – I truly believe it is one of the biggest hinderances to wage equality. Union bosses never seem to suffer during strikes or roll backs.
We also agree on the nonsense about nationalistic rhetoric. I find it sickening to the extreme. And at times borders on racism.
I have a question. Are you sincere about your last comment? Or did you read your Marx and Engels very carefully and are yanking my chain? Because your idea harkens back to the early days of unionization and workers movements – unions that worked hard to protect the workers not feed off them.

Try the collective agreement pay scales for a little more unbiased source of worker’s pay rates. You should know that newspapers lie and distort to further the interests of those who own them and those they represent.

Also I regret that you don’t understand my perspective, and that is that the unions have become junior partners to the corporations and work against the interests of those they are supposed to represent.

The CAW is working to find alternative employment in corporate friendly yet unionised environments like Magna, where they’ve given up fundamental rights in order to keep the dues income a rollin’ in. For those who remain in the auto factories, they can enjoy the corporate-friendly concessions that Buzz has arranged for them. And let’s not forget our friends the UAW that are agreeing to historic wage rollbacks lowering income to near poverty levels in the US of A. And thank both the UAW and CAW for employing nationalist rhetoric to play both sides off against each other in the race to the bottom.

My solution is to throw out the union bureacracy and build an international movement encompassing all workers in the struggle against their common enemy the capitalist profit system, a parasitic system that the unions work for and that benefits only the wealthy at the expense of everyone else including you.

What fantasy? Try the newspapers pal! That’s where I get the figure. Also, good paying? Absurd pay for unskilled labour.
AND IF YOU HAD READ WHAT I SAID – sales had dropped BEFORE the gas prices rose. As for not anticipating the sky rocketing prices. Again, try reading the papers – gas companies have been saying the prices will skyrocket for years. If this is a shock to GM and the rest, then they need to wake up.
Diffuse the anger? Sorry, no sympathy for a situation Buzz and the boys helped create.
I have nothing against good pay – I get angry at the sense of entitlement that goes along with these jobs.
These big trucks are a liability and the market is proving that.
I wholeheartedly disagree with what you say about trying to head off the anger. If anything the CAW is making it worse by not pursuing possible alternative jobs for it’s membership. Let’s force GM to keep making trucks that don’t sell, is that your solution?

GM and the other ‘big three’ didn’t anticipate skyrocketing fuel prices. Neither did the general population which is suffering under a heavy inflation burden. Why you are for the destruction of good-paying jobs in this environment makes no sense. The idea is to bring everyone up, not drag them down. The destruction of good-paying union jobs hurts everyone, including the nurses and the waitresses. And from which fantasy did you get figures of $35 to $70 an hour? I agree that trying to keep a plant that produces inefficient vehicles open is ludicrous, but that isn’t the intention of the CAW leadership. What they are doing is trying to diffuse the anger of the union membership before it becomes a real danger. The truth is that the unions – and in particular the CAW – are junior partners of the corporations.