[cheri1122]

Hawk: while I would in no way defend the bloated monster the UAW has become, I think the blame for the decline of the Big 3 rests squarely on the shoulders of the very same reason that unions were created to begin with: the arrogance, bullying, and greed of management. Historically, it was the tendency of management to cheat, exploit, and endanger their workers that inspired the creation of the unions.
The reason that Honda & Toyota have been able to take over the market, is that their management was smart enough to admit they didn't know it all, when Edward Deming proposed to turn around their reputation for building throwaway junk, after the Big 3 (to whom he took his ideas first) laughed him out of town - THEY didn't need his ideas.
One of Deming's most important points is that the trouble with management is management: an autocratic "because we say so" style is totally counterproductive to the goal of quality - management needs to recognize that the workers may actually have some valuable insight into the work, materials, methods, etc - no one in American management wanted to hear that! He also maintained that quality is an ever improving process, not a goal one can reach, and then relax.
Deming promised to turn the meaning of "Made in Japan" from junk to quality, in three years, and accomplished it in two. So who's laughing now?
That the American managers have made the progress they have in the past couple decades, is a direct result of paying attention, finally, to Edward Deming's principles and practices - but too little, and too late, it seems.
Blaming the union for the incompetence of management is a popular stance, but it doesn't hold up - management created the mess they have to deal with today. (And while you're bemoaning the wages of the assembly workers, give a thought to the 'compensation packages' awarded to the management, who weren't even reasonably competent, much less successful at their jobs, eh?)