“They know this company doesn’t care anything about them,” so says a UAW official, local Huntsville president, Terry Scruggs. And he’s talking about Delphi Corp, the employer of those neglected orphans that nobody cares about. Delphi, as the financially informed world knows, has crippling problems.
Amazing statement by Mr Scruggs. He expects “care” from Delphi. Not wages, in reciprocity for their services, but “care”. The world is infatuated with love. Caring and love are now remunerative elements like retirement contributions and health insurance. Incidentally, what provokes Scruggs’ wail is the fact that Delphi is talking about closing a bunch of plants and sheltering itself in bankruptcy; that means dissolving its labor contracts.
Delphi is not happy about this situation either, but it simply can’t make a profit for its shareholder/owners at the prevailing, contracted wage rate. They’d love to show their care for UAW Local 2195. And they CAN by maudlin speeches of affection for their Union – “Lovely union, swell bunch of workers, great guys – but we can’t pay you.” Happy, Mr. Scruggs? They CAN express their “care”, but they CAN’T stuff money in a pay envelope because they can’t compete and make the profit to fill up those pay envelopes.
Mr. Scruggs is not the only economic player who deals in sentimentality. My bank has a huge billboard that simply says, “We want to be your friend”. I’m not kidding and they must mean it because it’s a giant billboard (the bigger the sign, the more it costs) in big, black letters that shouts at passing motorists. Imagine, they want to be my friend. I want efficiency, low loan rates, high savings interest rates, and financial stability – that’s what I expect from a bank. For friendship, I’ll look elsewhere.
Surely, our mushy planet needs a short, simple lesson in capitalism.
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I suspect if you get efficient but surly service from your bank you will look elsewhere.
Humans are emotional creatures. Employees can rarely do good jobs merely for wages. When employees “care” about the product (and are not the employers paying them to “care”), they do a better job. If you are paid a wage to run a machine, and it starts producing defective parts, you don’t care, you just pass them on as you are doing exactly what you were paid to do. If you care about the product that uses the parts, you will stop and correct the problem.
And even in that sense, machines are cared for – regular maintainence is performed, and broken ones are repaired. Should the company treat its human capital less well than its plant?
It goes beyond this. In hospitals, when patients are treated like objects, the malpractice rate goes up. When people care – treat people like creatures that feel – they don’t see the business as the cold, heartless machine. “Why not sue a cold, heartless machine, it won’t be as if you are going to hurt another human being…”
If Delphi itself is merely an object, then does it matter if the Union hates it or wants to extract as much as possible – the miner usually has no care for the stone except how much ore it contains.
If Delphi is like a drowning man calling for help, they are not acting like it. Normally someone who wants aid – including economic aid – will at least be polite and friendly.
Do the Delphi representatives act arrogantly in front of the bankruptcy judge, or do they show respect in asking him to grant something?
Why is the Union different?
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