You not all wrong, although I still buy American, but my brother-in-law worked for GM (Fisher Body Plant). GM decided to close the plant several years ago. Some workers were reassigned to other jobs and the others were going to be out of a job. One would think that a company losing money should be able to let employees go when they are not doing well. Right? Wrong! The UAW would not hear of it. They made GM place these employees (not reassigned to other jobs) into a "job bank", at full pay and benefits, just in case things got better and the company had to put on more staff. He was in that job bank for 5 years. Well, things never got better so GM and the UAW reached an agreement to give them early retirement with full benefits. He and I were just speaking about this Friday evening. Now these retirees are worried about their pensions. The unions once served a useful purpose but have become their own worst enemy. The reason we don't make anything here any more is that it can be produced less expensively elsewhere. Year after year these companies send our jobs overseas for this exact reason.

In 1980 my good friend was the business agent for the Iron Workers Union in my area. He told me that including all benefits it cost $36.00 an hour to put one Iron worker on the job. Imagine overtime? I was working for the College Board at that time. I was there 11 years and making a whopping 25k.LOLl