While there are definite mitigating circumstances (being locked into critical long-term contracts), the bottom line here is that outside of both sides getting their backs up and staking out the most extreme possible positions as attacks on each other, the union's position is more reasonable and the company were the ones who broke the law by engaging in illegal strikebreaking as its opening move.
In addition, the company created the whole situation in the first place by failing to invest in automation all along, and is now upset that its market dominance is being "undermined" by new competitors that "work smarter, not harder", made investments in automation, and as a result are now able to offer competitive services with lower overhead costs.
While there is fault on both sides at this point, it is really not the union that "locked the company into an unsustainable trajectory". The company made business decisions that made sense at the time but locked it into an unsustainable trajectory when the market shifted, but then they decided that the union and workers should be the ones to pay the price for those decisions.
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As a general truism, "Older company is outmaneuvered by fresh blood and new technology in a shifting market" is a good thing, and protectionist measures that protect old companies from the market consequences of their own decision making are one of the most direct examples of corrupt "crony capitalism". A healthy government doesn't want to punish innovative, successful businesses by artificially propping up their competition!
The big problem for us, as the government, is that this company is currently "too big to fail"; we can't afford the hit to the economy and to infrastructure availability that it would cost to allow the market to sort this out. And we arguably do bear some indirect responsibility because our decisions as a government *made* the economy shift rapidly and dramatically, but we absolutely don't "owe" them a bailout.
In addition, the company created the whole situation in the first place by failing to invest in automation all along, and is now upset that its market dominance is being "undermined" by new competitors that "work smarter, not harder", made investments in automation, and as a result are now able to offer competitive services with lower overhead costs.
The union was locking the company into an unsustainable trajectory, and insisting on impossible demands. Corporate did break the law, and then mirrored the escalation.
While there is fault on both sides at this point, it is really not the union that "locked the company into an unsustainable trajectory". The company made business decisions that made sense at the time but locked it into an unsustainable trajectory when the market shifted, but then they decided that the union and workers should be the ones to pay the price for those decisions.
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As a general truism, "Older company is outmaneuvered by fresh blood and new technology in a shifting market" is a good thing, and protectionist measures that protect old companies from the market consequences of their own decision making are one of the most direct examples of corrupt "crony capitalism". A healthy government doesn't want to punish innovative, successful businesses by artificially propping up their competition!
The big problem for us, as the government, is that this company is currently "too big to fail"; we can't afford the hit to the economy and to infrastructure availability that it would cost to allow the market to sort this out. And we arguably do bear some indirect responsibility because our decisions as a government *made* the economy shift rapidly and dramatically, but we absolutely don't "owe" them a bailout.
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