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JBSmoove

Germany's workforce in automotive and many other industries is HIGHLY unionized.

I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc.

In fact German engineering is the envy of the world!

VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!

Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality.

And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...

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You know what they also all of in common? Zero innovation since decades.

And German car engineering is mostly known for being overly complicated, I say that as a German.

Agree.

Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay resisting any change away from skills their members have, but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of parts required.

On what evidence do you say that? The German auto unions have been saying for years that the switch to electric needs to be planned and managed exactly so the sector remains competitive and can employ people

Who needs evidence when you have ideology?

VW group has twice the EVs in pipeline than Tesla. Sales are probably gonna overtake Tesla this or next year. They are not as fun as Teslas but they are solid products that people seem to prefer over fart mode that cost them extra $10k.

We'll see about that pipeline, as the underlying massive investment needed got blocked last year by union leaders.

>And German car engineering is mostly known for being overly complicated, I say that as a German

Being German doesn't give your statement credibility - you don't have to be German to drive or understand a German car.

If you said "as a German automotive engineer" then it might carry some weight, but only if also provided specifics.

The point is I'm not an American/Japanese who is biased against German cars for whatever reason..

The manufacturing unions surely have nothing to do with the engineering and design of the vehicles.

>VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!

Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants.

Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.

SO OP gets to claim based on his anecdotal experience that unions are awful and full of lazy people.

But pointing out there are wildly successful unions filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?

I didn't say unions are not successful, I said that workplaces like VW or Porsche are not the norm in Germany. They're like Germany's FAANG; very successful, but not the norm for every industry employee there since they don't all enjoy such good conditions.

I have yet to hear people in Europe being upset that they are unionized.

I had a friend from France getting his undergraduate degree in the US Marvel at how much learning we were getting done, since we didnt spend half of every semester on strike.

There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join a particular union as a condition of employment exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.

Again, I didn't say unions are bad, I said they're not the norm for every employee in europe

Um, some unemployed rioters and burning cars in France every single weekend would beg to differ with you.

I don't know why you claim that smaller companies in the automotive sector in Germany don't have ununionzed workforces, but the IG Metall has a »Organisationsgrad« in this sector (how many of the workers are union members) above 90 percent (see https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/gewerkschaften-die-u...).

It's likely not as bad as in France, but in a shifting economy, German unions are still hurting the manufacturers. Just last year they got the CEO of Volkswagen fired for wanting to invest massively in electric cars. Workers specialized in ICE drivetrains can't have that. Much easier to block the innovation at board level than to retrain. That will go on until somehow union dominance is overcome or the companies are dead in the water against new competitors.

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