When the idea came up in August that might import a new Buick SUV made in China, the United Auto Workers’ top negotiator with GM called it a “tone-deaf” notion because of the “sacrifices made by U.S. taxpayers and the U.S. workforce to make GM profitable again” after the 2008 bailout.
But since then, two things have happened. First, UAW leaders have almost certainly sacrificed future jobs for hefty short-term pay increases in their new contract with GM. And second, it’s just been reported that GM plans to go ahead with its plan to import a Chinese-made, mid-sized Buick SUV to the United States that will be named Envision.
Expect no further emanations from the UAW brain trust complaining about this move. By taking not only GM but also Ford and Fiat Chrysler to the mat to extract the utmost short-term monetary gains for their aging members, in a knowing exchange of financial bounty for job security, union leadership made an epochal choice about the future of their organization: They are simply going to let it shrink in size and try to make each person in their dwindling membership as comfortable as possible in the process.
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