Dear Editor,
Is Shawn Fain a “savior” to the UAW and the working class of the USA , a charlatan, or the “Pied Piper of Hamlin? I don’t begin to answer that. His whole platform of demands can never be fulfilled. Maybe time will, but right now the UAW is like Humpty Dumpty, lining up for a great fall, and along with it, Fain himself. When his demands fail how does he walk them back? What happens when house payments, car payments, rents, food bills come due? Strike pay or state unemployment pay won’t cut it. Demands for a 40% plus pay raise, 32 hour work week, new employees at full pay, more paid time off, health benefits, pensions, etc. will be impossible and must fail not only because car prices will only become more unaffordable; the effects across the USA labor market won’t be a ripple it will be a tidal wave. Other workers saying “If they can get that we deserve the same pay and benefits.” If one thought inflation at 10% was bad, hang onto your hats. Strikes will be so massive that the recent so called supply chain issues will be a dream instead of a nightmare. Could “cottage industries” supply needed goods and services–an impossibility. Such an idea would never supply a growing nation like the U.S.
Remember when the idea of U.S. independence from foreign supplies would be the “ideal”. Would we not as consumers demand goods from wherever in a greater degree? Wouldn’t China be happy to supply our needed supplies? Would not China enjoy such turmoil here? No need for war; just walk right in. Years ago Nikita Khrushchev said “We will bury you”. Their “communist” idea did not work, but Fain saying “our fair share” strikes a note with Marxist-Leninist hate of business; the working people should rule and operate the nation’s industry-a pipe dream.
Fair is fine for sport games. But not for the nation’s major industries.
Sincerely,
— David Naeyaert
Allenton
