Good article but not surprising, and you didn’t even mention the workers who get paid to just sweep the same few square yards of floor space over and over(as long as they don’t venture into the next guy’s few yards of floor space).
I only have one criticism from the first paragraph–the UAW does indeed bear some degree of responsibility for design and quality issues. Every dollar of their wage and benefit costs (and management’s) must be allocated to every vehicle sold. If those costs are excessive to begin with and further bloated by low productivity, in order to make the sale price close to competitive the designers must go through and remove anything they can get away with that will reduce the vehicle’s production cost. Less complexity and simpler manufacture becomes paramount. So that extra strut that would make the car handle smoother in curves (and get better reviews in the press) is gone. That higher-quality sound system and color map GPS become extra-cost items instead of standard. The seat coverings aren’t as nicely fitted as they could have been. The tires might need to be a little narrower, the engine a little smaller, the sheet metal a little thinner, plastic a little more prevalent, the paint formula a little less expensive. Pretty soon, you have an “unimaginative design” of lower quality.
