Everyone on the picket line who thought they could be out of a job for good will be out of a job for good.

It’s certainly representative of the discontent that’s out there. The retirees are frustrated, but I don’t think it represents a major threat yet.

They have a very determined strategy and they are plunking a lot of resources into this. Northwest is not going to blink at this point.

[Others aren’t so sanguine.] How do U.S. firms compete in the global economy? … If the only way to compete is with $10 wages, we have a problem that is much larger than just Delphi....

There’s a cushion but it doesn’t prevent the fall. It eases the pain but it’s not the same as having the stability of a successful company.

For a plant closing of this magnitude, the overall impact is somewhere between traumatic and devastating.

Both sides have an interest in settling this. Nobody wants a strike.

What’s new about the global economy is First World productivity combined with Third World wages. That can create some real downward pressure on high-wage countries.

Because they (Delphi) have considerable leverage at a moment of bankruptcy is not the same as saying the UAW is out of the game,

The union has very painful choices, but it’s managed to preserve important principles in a very turbulent environment. At the end of the day, UAW retirees will still have paid health benefits. Less than before...

This was difficult for the union to do, but the union is being pragmatic. Its goal is to preserve jobs. It realizes the severity of the situation that GM is in.

The members are angry and fearful. Imagine you work a lifetime, and then you see it go up in smoke.

I suspect they felt that taking a very hard line would send a message to the union. Instead the message that they sent was to dig in your heels.

Northwest could become the next Eastern.

There is more than one way out of this canyon they are in right now,

It’s another sign of the tension that is enflaming this strike, … GM is just pushing the UAW here, tweaking them.

This contract could be a watershed event within the telecommunications industry because a major union has used its existing leverage to break into a new area. This isn’t simply any company. It’s the largest telecommunications...

A lot will depend on who’s the first company up. You may almost have an insipid auction taking place among the companies trying to be first.

It’s unclear if it’s a route to a better job or to a more educated unemployment.

They’re going to try to make an argument that simply cutting wages, slashing benefits, etc., is not the only way to go. Whether the bankruptcy judge buys that remains an open question.

This is the first pitch in the game of hard ball and I think the union is both angered and not by any means intimidated.

What we’re looking at in Seattle is a debate over the rules of the game and how the environment and labor will be treated — whether they will be debated elsewhere or whether they will...

Historically, GM has been the most tone-deaf of the auto companies when it comes to labor issues. But York is speaking plainly and directly about critical issues between GM and the UAW.

There’s no other way to diplomatically frame it – there’s an empty chair there.

It certainly has escalated,

Caterpillar is a powerful symbol of this process. It dominates its field. It is one of America’s largest exporters, and it is very profitable. If there ever was a company that could bring back the...

Delphi has essentially said: ‘We need competitive wages.’ Those wages currently are being set in China, not Flint, (Michigan).

Miller has clearly chosen bankruptcy over collective bargaining to restructure the company. Delphi is using a bankruptcy judge to begin moving in the direction of Chinese wages and benefits.

It may be

The global economy has become a blast furnace that seeks to eliminate many of the gains that steelworkers have won over the years.

The union was caught in a global hurricane, and they managed to come out of it with minimal structural damage. They preserved key principles; they gave up some money.

The corporation knows the sensitivity of these kinds of issues, they have a lot of experience with what will provoke a local strike. What I suspect they (the GM management) didn’t anticipate is that it...

These are very important findings that come at a critical moment in the immigration debate. What the study indicates is that if we view the contribution of immigrants to the total economy there may be...

If you cut wages by two-thirds, that creates a class of people that can’t afford to go to Wal-Marts. If other industries do this, America will have a far smaller middle class, and the whole...

Health benefits have been at the top of the list for what unions have sought to hang on to. This reflects how serious union leaders feel this is.

This could be the biggest buyout in memory and a turning point in the history of the industry.

I think this case is, in fact, a watershed. I think what it does is — in the most dramatic way we’ve seen to date — it introduces the wages of the global economy into...

If GM actually did pursue this route?there would be a really poisoned atmosphere in the United Auto Workers plants where the parts are shipped.

They’ve got tough issues, but nobody wants to put the moneymaking on hold to sort it out.

There’s a real awareness on both sides [of labor’s divide] that it’s not business as usual. There are some really tough challenges out there for unions, but it’s also a moment of real opportunity. There...

There are so many fewer moral barriers to a bankruptcy of this scale.

The pain and surprise may come when Delphi wages are cut and it sets a pattern of pressing down on wages to succeed competitively, … It reverses the success story of the American economy, which...

The notion of a buyout as large as 20,000 workers would go a long way toward settling the Delphi situation.

Whatever the final language, it will be the benchmark of how other negotiations are judged. Since the auto workers won pensions in ’48, a lot of things Detroit has done, for good or for bad,...

You could have the paradox of lifetime job guarantees and far fewer workers.

They are reaching out and offering the workers a service, but they are also laying out the possibility of workers beginning to work together. So as an individual, you don’t have to confront the largest...

This really is a wake up call to Wal-Mart that these class action suits in front of a jury can be costly.

Economic growth in the United States in the 20th century was based on building entrances to the middle class, from Henry Ford in 1913 to strong unions in the ’50s and ’60s.

I suspect they don’t want to strike, but they could be pushed into a corner, and if that’s the case they have considerable leverage,

The hotels are confronting a union that has significantly more leverage and more imagination than in the past. The union is slowly but surely introducing national bargaining in an industry in which the companies used...