68 Quotes by Harley Shaiken

GM is sending signals about its priorities. The 2007 negotiations are going to be tough.

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, has set a pattern. This will be the case, even if the rhetoric of lifetime jobs guarantees outstrip the language.

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

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.

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 has always been that U.S. firms paid the most.

There are some very hard choices and no easy answers. This is a long way from over.

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

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.

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,