Health insurance is not the only factor, of course, but its one of the biggest costs. In particular the cost of the retirees’ health insurance as well is very crippling to a company’s bottom line. Toyota, Honda, etc. don’t have nearly the number of retirees and they certainly aren’t paying anywhere near the same benefits package The Big Three have.

Another factor is, of course, the cars the Big 3 have been producing are of inferior quality. This is not the fault of the Unions, its the fault of engineers and quality control departments who decided that it was ok to cut corners on reliability.

It very much frightens me to see so many people calling these Unions communists and insinuating that they are some kind of unpatriotic rampaging Red Brigade. I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life and these men and women are not “Commies”, they are hardworking American citizens just like you who have little actual say in the negotiating process and are largely at the behest of the Union officials. My uncle works for DOW Chemical and has been a Union member for 30 years and he voted for Bush twice and owns an arsenal of guns and has 3 daughters.