When he was working for GM/AC/Delco/GM (the plant was bought and resold and renamed many times) there was a guy on his shift who would hit the bar at lunch, most the time was able to finish work, sometimes had to take a quick nap before punching out. Any other job he would be fired but UAW protects its members. If the guy was scheduled for overtime, he would get so hammered at lunch he would literally pass-out at his working station. Then my dad would be ask to cover his overtime, which he did. My dad said this happened quite a few times. Then he learned that the union covered for him so not only he was not fired, but he was paid for the overtime he missed because he was passed out. So the company was paying two people for the single job. This went on for some time.

Needless to say this guy didn't have many friends. Well one day he's driving home after spending his paycheck at the Raincheck bar, which the shoprats called "Paycheck," and runs over some lady getting her mail. The car behind him follows him to his house and asks the neighbor to use the phone to call the police. The cops show up and this dude is sitting on his couch, beer in hand and blood and clothing in his truck grill.

Common sense would tell say you might go to jail for a while, but he actually said in court he made "too much" money to go away long, and, this is the kicker, he pulled only a year in county jail, not prison, and he still worked at his GM job 5 days a week! He said he made too much to not be able to work, and the union did what it could to keep a "good" dues paying member working.

So this drunk kills a woman in a hit and run, gets a year in county and still works his GM job 5 days a week. Then after that he moved home. My dad said everyone had finally wised up and would set this guy up to be fired, but the union had him transferred to another plant, after all that's one more dues paying member whose job they saved.

My dad had another story he used to tell, when he first started working his stamping press, the line was shut down. So he took some initiative that he learned in the Navy and started sweeping around his press. A committeeman walked by and said, "If I see you sweep again I'm going to write you up, and if you do it a second time it could lead to termination because you are taking a job away from a brother in the union." "Fine," my dad said and he didn't lift a finger to do anything that was outside of running his stamping press over the next 30 years. He didn't do this because he was lazy, or hated his employer, but because the real power in the plant was with the UAW. They decided who was promoted, laid-off, or fired. Of course merit weighed little into any decision. Because of the UAW thousands of idled workers weren't shifted to other jobs when the line would shut down. They would read or work on a hobby, my dad made fishing lures at work while earning his full pay because the union said the only thing he was allowed to do was work his stamping press. Stamping press not working, he didn't either. He told me stories of workers using multi-million dollar GM equipment to make baseball bats or furniture if they weren't working.

The UAW has done a lot of great things, but it really is covering up for people like that drunkard, dictating actual work for employees and using union dues to fund politicians without member's vote or even the politician's stance on labor (the UAW backed NAFTA supporter Al Gore over Ralf Nader or Pat Buchanan in 2000) only because he or she was Democrat. Because of this they bear a lot of responsibility for destroying GM.

My dad is one man who worked in only two plants over his 30 years, both of which were located in Flint, but now they have both been razed to the ground and those acres which used to make cars and trucks sit deserted, like the pictures of Hiroshima around late summer 1945. I'm sure other workers in other plants run by UAW not GM could tell similar stories. GM did a lot of "shooting themselves in the foot" over the past 20 years, but a union which controls the production is too large to keep a business successful. Now UAW owns a sizable chunk of GM on paper, which they will use to control the company officially, not just "on the inside."

Next week is Fathers-Day and my dad's birthday, he said his greatest gift to me was working his "ass off" so I wouldn't have to set foot in the shop. And some of my fondest memories of him is when we took a cross-country trip in the late 1980s and he would have to point out to people who we met along the way who drove certain GM vehicles that their dashboard in their car or truck "might've" been made by him.

For America's next GM look towards our public schools. God save our Republic.