Harley Seals Union Deal Just in Time for Spring
Spring is traditionally when the motorcycle business picks up, and while nobody expects Harley-Davidson's sales (or the entire industry's, for that matter) to recover in the next few months, the Motor Company has just signed labor agreements which should ensure that production can at least meet dealer demand.
The four-year agreement covers 2,210 employees and includes improvements in wages and revisions to health care plans. While these agreements enable Harley to keep building bikes and maintain their business, according to economic researcher Paul Kasriel (as quoted in the Wall Street Journal), "There is no consumer purchase more discretionary than a Harley-Davidson hog."
It's a sobering statement, one that reminds us how much of a luxury item a $25,000 bike really is; perhaps we'll know the motorcycle industry is truly out of the woods when (and if) hogs start selling like hotcakes again.
Photo © Basem Wasef
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Comments
Unions are the single biggest drain on business prosperity in North America.
Look at the permanent and irreversible damage they’ve done to GM, Ford, & Chrysler and every other business they ever sunk their hooks in to.
Every day, I’m glad I never got forced in to one.
unions rock baby! HD 4Ever!
Unions do not rock, they suck the life out of companies they touch. The link is an article that was published a couple of years ago when GM was getting hit with yet more labor demands, at a time they were losing money and while Toyota and their non-union plants were eating up market share.
http://www.mises.org/story/2124
Scottie…too true!
Unions rock only if you are satisfied to be a no mind, no account, no ambition, and no future employee, that will never amount to anything. If the average union person had to actually work hard, and apply a conscientious level of thought and initiative to their job, they wouldn’t last a month. They spend their entire working life getting everything handed to them in a contract and never actually earn anything.
“…ensure that production can at least meet dealer demand.”
Huh? Has “The Motor Company” been to one of its many dealers lately? You can barely walk through a dealership without bumping into twenty bikes around you. Went to a dealer two weeks ago, one of the bigger (and more popular) ones in my area. The salesman (a young twenty-something know-it-all, who was so willing to give out info, he might’ve divulged his SSN had I asked) told me they had 12 leftover 2006 bikes, 37 leftover 2007 bikes, and 60+ crates full of 2008 models yet to be opened. They didn’t even have any of the new models on the floor (Rocker, Cross-bones, or Street Bob), because they “didn’t have room.” As far as I can see, the factories can take a few months off so that dealers can catch up and flood out their inventories. You would think sluggish sales would be a reality check, but not for HD…no incentives or deals in sight.
I’d like to add that I work for a small start-up company and because of the nature of our business we have a lot of assets in more than 25 states. However, we don’t have much revenue yet, and no profits to share. Suddenly we are on the radar of every city, county and state and they all have their hands out. We are struggling to break even, but the company’s property tax liability may reach $500K this year. We need to get back to a country of self reliance and not a country that depends on unions, cities, counties, states and federal government to baby us through life.
If you are on the front lines of this type of bureaucratic abuse, it doesn’t take long for you to become a libertarian.
I worked for a small business many years ago. The owner wasn’t the least bit shy about making sure everyone knew, if the word ‘union’ was ever mentioned, he’d close the business so fast we wouldn’t have time to grab our jackets.
Unions are like many instutions in our society, they function as a pendulum, and a pendulum can swing too far in either direction.
It has, in the past, swung too far in unions’ direction, and now it has, and is, swinging too far in the other direction.
However, the reason for the problems which pension funds are causing at big companies, is that those companies made the H U G E error of allowing the pension funds to acquire gigantic unfunded liabilities, instead of making sure the funds were set aside on a pay as you go basis.
So, when the companies had financial downturns, which is something that also swings as a pendulum, they didn’t have the capital to pay, and blamed the unions.
Ask anyone whose company bankrupted what is American about allowing a bankrupting company to walk away from contracted pension liabilities.
This is especially troublesome since a lot of the problems that caused bankruptcies and financial losses resulted from bad management, bad product design, bad products (GM, Ford, others)and not because of the union.
And one more thought for some of you who neglect to consider it, even if you DON’T work in a union company; if you have group health insurance, something that resembles a 40 hour, 5 day work week, some off time for holidays, some vacation, maybe some sick time with pay, workers’ compensation(which you do), some measure of a safe working environment, and kids who don’t work 14 – 16 hour days in a sweat shop at age 10, plus a lot of other things that have made life better, then thank unions, and union workers.
Read a history book about the organized labor movement in the United States, and you’ll see that almost everything that relates to honor, dignity, safety, decent wages(even for non union people because union wages drag everyone’s wages up with them), non-killer work hours, etc., has been paid for by the efforts of unions and union members, who often were fired, harrassed, beaten, even killed, in the struggle to get those things for themselves and families.
Few of us are left who fought in World War II, but we all owe a hell of a debt to those who did, because their sacrifices made it possible for our society to exist in its current form.
The same thing holds true for unions and union members. Hats off to the vets of World War II (of which I am not one), and to the unions, and most particularly to union workers, who simply refused to me treated by employers as physical possessions and not human beings.
If you work for a non-union company, find a historian and ask him or her how much different your employment would be if there had never been a sucessful labor organizaing movement in the U.S.
Ok, let’s give up the labor unions. BUT, also, let’s give up everything that the unions have earned for us. Start with workmen’s comp. Labor Day, paid holidays, paid vacation, sick leave, Family Medical Leave Act, nondiscrimination clauses, equal rights in the work place, fighting to keep jobs here in the United States. Let’s lower the wages back to $2 or 3 an hour, reducew the minimum wage back to $.75 an hour. Personally, I wouldn’t want to fly on a plane that is built by $6 an hour labor. To blame all the nation’s financial woes on unions is being very misinformed.
OM….You’re fooling yourself.
They served (past tense) their purpose..and it was indeed a noble purpose. Now, they are blood sucking dinosaur feeding BMW and MB driving exec’s making far more than you’ll ever make….and you’re paying for it! Think about that when you’re getting your $250 strike pay.
Unions were good in their day, now the are as big as the companies. They the unions are sucking money out of the workers. The union bosses are getting rich off the backs of the workers. They are sitting in their offices and trying to find a place to eat lunch on the union account. I as a union member can see this–and these fools want to tell me how to vote-HA. H. D. Will be a thing of the past as Ford, GM
Two years ago GM quietly confessed that the cost of the retirement packages on their UAW contract was adding over $2000 to each vehicle that came off of the assembly line. When GM stopped production recently, the UAW workers were paid 90% of their pay for sitting on their collective greedy butts! If those creeps had to compete in the labor market like the rest of us do, they would all be in the unemployment lines and would be replaced by workers with real ambition rather than the monkey see – monkey do jerks that have been there for the last 50 years. Bottom line: Union benefits have gone too far in the other direction, and it’s time the pendulum swung the other way!