Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Rethinking Public Schools - 4.11.11

There’s been speculation that Robert Bobb might possibly stay on as Emergency Financial Manager of Detroit’s Public Schools. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the evolving nature of public education.

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There’s been a flurry of speculation lately that perhaps the best choice to replace Robert Bobb as Emergency Financial Manager of the Detroit Public Schools might be ... Robert Bobb himself.

Bobb’s contract expires at the end of June. While he has faced endless financial problems, his main frustration during his two-year stint running the schools seems to have been a court decision that his powers did not extend to determining what kids actually learn.

The academic curriculum, in other words. However, that has been changed by the new Emergency Financial Manager law. Last Thursday, Bobb said in an interview with the Detroit News that he wasn’t lobbying to keep the job, but added, “I do drool when I think of the pace of change we could achieve under the new law.“

That same day, I had a wide-ranging conversation with Dteroit Mayor Dave Bing about a number of topics, including education.

He said he admires much of what Bobb had done. “He made a lot of hard decisions that had to be made, and I respect him for that. He had an impossible job from a fiscal standpoint.”

However the mayor didn’t think the emergency financial manager deserved an A. He noted that whether out of necessity or not, Bobb had alienated teachers and people in the community.

And Bing felt that it was clearly time for Bobb to go. Indeed, the governor’s office also seems to be lukewarm at best to the idea of his staying around. But the mayor said something else I found even more interesting about public education in Detroit.

What may indeed be happening is that in the future, most public education in the city will take place apart from the trouble-plagued Detroit public schools. “People are now talking about systems of education, rather than DPS,” the mayor told me.

What he meant by that was this: “There are private schools, parochial schools, charters. You know, forty percent of our kids now go to charters -- forty percent! -- and that number is only going to grow.” Charter schools, are, by the way, alternative public schools. Incidentally, even many fairly sophisticated adults don’t understand exactly what they are. They are not private in any sense.

They receive state money and have to meet statewide standards, including the use of certified teachers. Regardless of how you feel about traditional public education, it is clear that the people of Detroit have overwhelmingly rejected their school system. Mayor Bing feels that if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. Or, as he put it, “if they are going to lose students out of DPS, we don’t want to lose them out of the city of Detroit.“

Detroit is a special case, but there are communities all over this state where traditional public school systems are losing popularity and the newer public schools, mostly chartered by colleges and universities, are gaining ground. Perhaps we all may need to rethink our concept of public education along these lines:

Supporting a particular school system or bureaucracy should no longer be the name of the game. Instead, we should be looking for and supporting the system of public education that best educates our kids, whatever that is, and however that may be.

Essay: A Talk with Mayor Bing - 4.8.11

Detroit was hit last month with census numbers worse than anyone expected, which may worsen the city’s economic crisis. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked with the mayor about where his city now stands.

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I went to see Detroit Mayor Dave Bing yesterday afternoon to discuss the state of his city. It’s been a bruising few weeks for Detroit. The census showed a population loss considerably greater than expected -- which means a further loss of both federal and state dollars. The governor’s budget has yet to be approved, but it seems clear that it means more cuts in revenue sharing.

Nevertheless, I found the mayor upbeat, candid and energetic. He’s convinced the census missed people, and is going to do all he can to get the count adjusted. But for now, he has to plan as if the number is going to stay at seven hundred and thirteen thousand.

There’s no doubt in his mind what Detroit needs most. “Jobs are the key,” he said. There are some hopeful signs. General Motors, Blue Cross, Quicken Loans and some other firms have announced plans to add jobs recently. But the city has a long way to go.

When the recession was at its peak, Mayor Bing made headlines when he said that he thought the city’s true unemployment rate was as high as forty-five percent, when you counted workers who are so discouraged they aren‘t even taking part in the labor force. What does he think it is now? “Still about the same,” he said.

“There are some signs the country is coming out of the recession, but that hasn’t really translated into jobs in Detroit.”

I asked the mayor, himself a former successful businessman, about Governor Rick Snyder’s theory that lowering taxes will help bring a new flood of jobs. He smiled. “Well, it should help,” he said.

But he added that maximizing profits doesnn’t always mean adding jobs. The mayor, who took office after a special election following the resignation of Kwame Kilpatrick, has been in office almost two years now. What does he think is his greatest accomplishment?

He said, “reducing the deficit from more than $330 million dollars to $155 million. Given the economy, that was really a Herculean task.”

Unfortunately, he fears the deficit may now rise somewhat, “if everything in the governor’s budget becomes stark reality.”

I told him there was speculation that sooner or later, Detroit would need an Emergency Financial Manager. “Everything we do here day to day is to avoid that happening,” Bing said. But he knows he can‘t completely rule out the possibility. If that were to happen, would he take the job if it were offered? My impression was that he would. In fact, the mayor added that the new, tougher financial manager law would make it easier to do some of the things that need to be done.

Whether or not that happens, he intends to keep fighting. He’s already announced his intention to run for re-election in two years; saying turning things around will take more than one term.

If he is re-elected, Dave Bing would be seventy-four by the end of his second term. Does he expect to see a point where Detroit saw true prosperity again? The former basketball superstar smiled.

He believes in making progress, he said, a layup at a time, not in trying for grandstand, three-point plays. “Solvency. I think solvency is possible.” Prosperity is further away.

Essay: Why Journalism Matters - 4.7.11

Detroit’s Society of Professional Journalists presented its annual awards last night. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks journalism may never have been harder, or more necessary.

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We’re living today in a confusing and somewhat frightening time. Michigan is in trouble, economically. Trouble of a different kind than we’ve been through before. The longtime mainstay of our economy, the automotive industry, will never again be what it was.

This has plunged us from one of the nation’s richer states to one of its poorer ones. State government is finally facing a financial crisis it tried to ignore for years, and the governor is proposing changes that seem radical and sometimes hard to understand.

Beyond that, education at all levels is in crisis. We learned last month that our largest city has suffered a staggering population loss over the last decade. There are real questions about whether Detroit and other cities, communities and school districts are going to have to be taken over by Emergency Financial Managers.

Understanding all this is vitally important in order to make key decisions for our own lives. Should we trust the public schools? Should we buy a house? Where should we live?

And even, should we leave the state?

We clearly need thoughtful, intelligent and easily accessible journalism to help make sense of these and other events -- and need it possibly more than at any other time in our history.

Yet journalism is in trouble too. Journalists, if they do their jobs right, are never very popular. Much of the time, we’re bringing you bad news, and some of the time, we are obnoxious about it.

But right now, we’re having trouble doing that. Digging our news is an expensive, labor-intensive job, and the vast majority has always been done by newspapers. Yet newspapers are facing a deep crisis of their own, thanks in large part to the internet revolution, and our changing lifestyles. Newspapers have been supported historically by advertising, and much of that has melted away to cyberspace. We also don’t read newspapers as much as we used to People read news on the internet, but internet providers produce little news. They merely collect it -- mainly from our shrinking newspapers.

That doesn’t mean some broadcast and even online publications don’t produce quality journalism. But in terms of content, it is comparatively small. Last night I spoke at the Detroit area Society of Professional Journalists annual banquet. Michigan Radio won a number of awards, and an encouraging amount of good journalism was on display. But attendance was smaller than last year. Some people have left the profession. Some companies no longer buy tickets.

Yet there were still an impressive corps of men and women there who work long hours for usually not much pay to find out what we need to know and shape it into an interesting package.

Those included the journalist of the year, John Carlisle, aka Detroitblogger John, a suburban newspaper editor by day who roams Detroit’s meanest streets in search of compelling tales at night.

There’s Mac Gordon, who has been covering the auto industry since 1944, and hundreds of others who try to keep democracy informed. Despite shrinking pay and opportunities, they’re still out there, speaking truth to power and trying to get us to pay attention.

Without journalists, we’d be in far deeper trouble than we are now. And we wouldn’t have the beginnings of a clue why.

Essay: Detroit Symphony Orchestra - 4.5.11

Striking musicians with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra reached a tentative agreement to go back to work. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about their historic importance.

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While historians debate just when and why Detroit began to decline, it’s much easier to say what its high point was:

July 28, 1951. That was the official two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Detroit’s founding, and the city was at its peak.

Detroit had nearly two million people. It was rich, vibrant and strong. President Harry Truman came all the way from Washington to speak -- a rare occurrence then -- and the city then celebrated with a five-hour long parade. And there was other good news, too.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra was being revived. Founded when the city had less than two hundred thousand people, it had been disbanded during the Great Depression. But now it was back, and on October 18th, it thrilled fans with its first concert.

Everybody knew then that to be a truly world-class city, you had to have a world-class symphony orchestra.

Back in the jazz age, Detroit had one of the nation’s best orchestras. They had been the first orchestra to have a concert broadcast on the radio. They were regulars at Carnegie Hall. And for eight years, they were broadcast regularly to a nationwide audience.

Then hard times came, and people forgot how important a symphony is for a while. Some people evidently lost sight of that again last year, when the symphony’s season was destroyed by a six-month long strike caused by money problems.

The symphony has huge debts, big deficits, and a shrinking donor base. Everyone agreed the musicians had to take a massive pay cut, but the question was, how massive?

While I am not an expert on cultural economics, it is clear that neither side did much to help their public image during the work stoppage, and management’s handling of public relations was especially bad, as one board member admitted to me.

The trick now is to not only bring the patrons back, but increase and enlarge the base. The orchestra now probably will be able to make a deal with the banks to whom it owes $54 million in real estate loans. But that’s a temporary solution. What the symphony really needs to do is convince the public to begin coming to their concerts and donating to keep this cultural resource. Anne Parsons, the president of the symphony, thinks the only way to do that is through community outreach. It’s hard to disagree. These days, three-quarters of the metropolitan area’s population and ninety percent of the money is outside the city limits.

My guess is that the symphony’s future involves realizing that the modern definition of Detroit is not the city limits, but the four million people who live in the metro area. They may also need to broaden their idea of programming. Purists may like to think that it is all about traditional classical music. But that music itself was avant-garde once upon a time. There’s an old saying that the railroads lost their way when they forgot that they were really in the transportation business, and couldn’t afford to be tied to a nostalgic model.

If the Detroit Symphony Orchestra takes that to heart, the odds will increase that it will revive, and hopefully, in the long-term, thrive.

Essay: Medical Marijuana - 4.4.11

State voters legalized medical marijuana more than two years ago, but administering the new law has been anything but smooth. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has some thoughts about this.

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Two years ago, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Voters from liberal Ann Arbor to staunchly conservative Ottawa County supported this change.

Some, to be sure, saw this as opening the door to a complete legalization of marijuana. However, they appear to have been a minority. Most people seem to have felt that those who are legitimately suffering from disease such as glaucoma ought to be able to use the drug in cases where it could ease their pain.

But the devil is always in the details, and we probably should have foreseen that administering this law was going to be an unholy mess. Yesterday, the Detroit Free Press took a comprehensive look at how the medical marijuana law has been working.

To nobody’s surprise, their answer was: Not very well. The state is struggling with a huge backlog of applications to grow the stuff.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have been going after people who may be falsely claiming to be growing and selling pot for medical use, and there are also rumors that certain physicians are happy to certify that most anybody qualifies to use marijuana for “medical” purposes.

On top of that, neither the constitutional amendment -- or any other law -- has made it clear where medical marijuana is supposed to come from. Part of the problem is that marijuana is a controlled substance whose use is illegal under federal law.

So, basically, the original source of any pot supply has got to be illegal, even if the state of Michigan approves someone to grow marijuana for medical reasons. There is also, so far as I can tell, absolutely nothing to ensure purity or quality control of the supply.

Basically, then, we’ve got a system of something approaching anarchy when it comes to medical marijuana.

So, what do we do about it? The Free Press sensibly argues in favor of setting up a state-approved distribution network. They would then charge licensing fees which could then be used for the costs of administering the system, and what must be a rapidly growing bureaucracy connected with it. There might also be streamlined mechanisms for approval similar to what pharmacies use for other drugs.

These are all sensible ideas, on paper. However -- is the state really in a place or a position to create or vastly expand an administrative bureaucracy? No matter how foolproof a system we devise, people are going to try to get around it. We’re being told by the governor that we can’t fund schools and colleges the way we used to. We can’t give tax credits to the working poor, or to the movie industry.

Do we really want to spend our scarce resources chasing down casual potheads? I have no desire to use marijuana or any other drug, and even less desire to have someone high crash into my car.

But I am wondering if the most sensible approach right now might be a version of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” except in cases of the grossest abuse. We are in an age of limits, and Michigan can handle only so many crises at one time. My guess is that regulating the medical marijuana law isn’t the biggest problem we have.

Essay: Thought Police - 3.31.11

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is asking for the e-mails of certain Michigan professors who have commented on the labor situation in Wisconsin. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about this.

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Several listeners have asked me why I haven’t commented on the battle over collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin. Well, there’s a good reason for that.

Which is, that we’ve got more than enough in Michigan to wrestle with to keep us all occupied. That doesn’t mean, as one of my devoted admirers e-mailed me, that I am a “gutless wonder.”

Matter of fact, I would like to get an inch or two off my gut. Seriously, I have a hard time accepting that anyone should lose their collective bargaining rights in America, no matter who their employer.

But I have an even harder time with anyone trying to suppress anybody’s freedom of expression in any way.

Which brings me to a very ominous development I first read about on the political blog Talking Points Memo, a story which involves Michigan and the Wisconsin mess.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Midland-based think tank best known for supporting free-market economics, is asking, under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, for all the emails by labor studies professors at our state’s three major public universities -- Michigan State, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State.

All the e-mails, that is, that these professors have sent regarding the union strike in Wisconsin, that state’s governor, and, oddly enough, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

Why are they asking for these e-mails? The managing editor of the Mackinac Center’s newsletter wouldn’t say. But some fear the center wants to use them to attack liberal professors for using state resources for what could be called improper political activity.

That, or cow them into not expressing their points of view.

Well, even though I am a full-time faculty member at Wayne State, nobody seems to have asked for my e-mails, since I am not in the labor studies department. I haven’t sent any e-mails about Wisconsin that I can remember, and, in any event, I generally use an America Online account for any e-mail more personal than, “please order the same textbooks next semester, Joe.”

But have I sent personal e-mails on what is technically company time? I plead guilty, and also plead guilty to doing work at home on my own time. I also suggest that the entire economy would come to a screeching halt if we fired everybody who ever sent a personal e-mail on company time.

And I am certain that the idea of anybody trying to create a chilling effect against free speech of any kind, is about as un-American as anyone can get. There seems to be a new spirit of intolerance in this country, especially when it comes to public employees, and especially in regards to teachers.

To quote one U of M professor whose e-mails have been requested, “I see it just simply as part of the political environment we exist in right now.” Well, that’s not good enough.

Similar environments existed in the days of Stalin and Hitler, in the American South during segregation, and in Washington, during the Red Scare of the early Cold War. They ended in part when people spoke up for their right to speak out. I hope everyone who has an opinion speaks out loudly on this issue, too.

After all, that’s the only way that any kind of progress is made.

Essay: Cutting Benefits - 3.30.11

The governor signed a bill two days ago that extends unemployment benefits for those collecting them now -- but which provides for less benefits for jobless workers in the future. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry explains.

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Two days ago a friend of mine called me in a semi-panic. Her unemployment benefits were about to run out, and she had eighty-seven dollars to her name. She wasn’t going to be able to make the modest payment on her small house, and didn’t know what to do. Nor did she understand what was going on in the legislature. Someone had told her that the governor was signing a bill to extend unemployment benefits. Somebody else told her he was going to shorten them. Which, she wanted to know, was it?

Well, both, I said. The governor signed a bill Monday that extends eligibility for federal extended unemployment benefits for up to ninety-nine weeks. That’s only, however, for people like my friend Karen, who already is collecting unemployment.

Next year, however, things will change drastically. Any Michigander who loses his or her job after January 15, 2012 will only be eligible for state unemployment benefits for a maximum of twenty weeks. That’s less than five months.

For years, jobless workers in Michigan have been able to collect benefits for a maximum of twenty-six weeks, or six months. They can collect them for longer periods of time now because the federal government decided to temporarily provide benefits, because of the lingering effects of the recession. Those effects are still hanging on in Michigan, where unemployment is still more than ten percent. Economists expect that to come down a little by next year, but we’re likely to continue to be a long way from full employment. What that means is that for many people, twenty weeks is not going to be enough time to find a job.

So why is our government making it tough for jobless workers? Interestingly, nobody is really coming forward to defend this. Governor Snyder said he signed this bill because it was necessary to extend benefits for those who are jobless now. He said he would have been happy to leave eligibility at twenty-six weeks, and blamed the legislature for shortening the time period. Why did they do this? Well, nobody is rushing forward to claim credit.

My guess is that this was pushed primarily by businesses, who have been paying the cost of these extra benefits. Michigan’s unemployment insurance fund ran dry long ago, and the state has been borrowing from the federal government. So far, we’ve borrowed almost four Billion dollars, and businesses have to come up with the repayment money.

Not surprisingly, to protect themselves, they sought the cut in benefits. That seems simple enough. But politically, it could be very risky. The Republican party could end up looking like the guys in the sadistic orphanage who denied Oliver Twist more gruel.

Next year is a national election year, and it isn’t going to help the national or the state Republican parties if Michigan ends up with tens of thousands of jobless and desperate men.

Sixteen years ago, Democratic bungling gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich then turned so many people off with his arrogance that President Clinton was reelected easily. Michigan Republicans might do well to remember that most famous axiom: Those who don’t remember the past are, more often than not, condemned to repeat it.

Essay: What’s Wrong With the Democrats - 3.29.11

Yesterday, the Democrats in the Michigan Senate called for a constitutional amendment to protect the School Aid Fund. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks we should ask, “where’s the beef?”

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A lot of people are uneasy about Governor Rick Snyder’s proposal to cut aid to education at all levels in order to balance the budget and give business a huge tax break. Even some of those in favor of cutting business taxes have problems with this.

They reason that no matter what happens, there aren’t going to be any jobs in the future for unskilled, undereducated workers -- and certainly not any good-paying ones. Our young adults are undereducated as it is, and cutting education won’t help.

So yesterday, we were alerted that the Michigan Senate Democrats were going to offer an alternate proposal. I was very interested to see what it would be. And frankly, I was hoping it would be an alternative I could support.

That’s because I am convinced that better education and training, more than anything else, is the key to Michigan’s future.

Well, I couldn’t have been more disappointed in the Democrats -- or in Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, a charismatic and intelligent figure who may be their best hope for the future.

The minority leader called for a state constitutional amendment that would prevent the governor from taking money out of the school aid fund in the future. In practical terms, this is the equivalent of my calling for an amendment requiring it to be seventy degrees so I don’t freeze when I walk the dog in the morning.

First of all, this does nothing to address this year’s problems. Even if the legislature thought this was a good idea, they’d have to agree to put it on a statewide ballot so people could vote on it.

That wouldn’t happen until long after this budget has been passed. But the legislature isn’t going to do any such thing. Republicans control both chambers. Democrats are especially weak in the Senate, where Gretchen Whitmer’s party has less than a third of the seats, and by themselves are powerless to do anything.

That’s not the worst part of her proposal, however. When she presented it to the media yesterday, she was asked this sensible question: If her proposal became law, how would Democrats then propose to fill the resulting deficit hole in the general fund?

The Senate minority leader refused to offer an answer -- other than to say the tax code should be “re-examined.“

This is precisely what has been wrong with Michigan government for the past decade, and what got the Democrats tossed out of office last fall. This is also why Governor Snyder’s plan is likely to be enacted. The governor has made a comprehensive proposal for changing the way things are done.

His numbers add up.

His critics are whining about many parts of his proposal. But they have yet to propose an alternative. That’s not because there aren’t any. It’s because any alternative involves raising taxes.

And they don’t have the guts to do that. Incredible as it might seem, nobody in a leadership position in the Democratic Party seems willing to argue that the well-off should pay more, so the have-nots won’t have to suffer. That’s why Governor Snyder is winning.

You can’t fight something with nothing. And so far, the alternative the minority party is offering is precisely that.

Essay: Why Business Supports the Budget - 3.28.11

Governor Snyder’s budget is intended to bring new jobs and business to the state of Michigan. But will it work? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked to some business leaders.

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The changes Governor Rick Snyder wants to make with his proposed budget are hugely controversial. But everyone agrees on this: They are designed to bring new business to Michigan.

The governor believes there is no other way to revitalize our state’s economy. But what does business really think of the governor’s budget? People in business aren’t monolithic. General Motors doesn’t have a lot in common with the mom-and-pop restaurant in my neighborhood with five employees.

So last week, I talked to two business leaders who each represent a broad cross-section of somewhat dissimilar interests. Doug Rothwell is president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan, a group of seventy-six of the state’s largest employers. Rob Fowler has the same title with the Small Business Association of Michigan, sometimes known as SBAM.

SBAM has more than ten thousand members, many of whom have fewer than a hundred employees. Fowler and Rothwell don’t always see eye to eye -- but they do on the governor’s budget.

They support it, right down the line. “I think the governor’s tax plan is the right thing to do, even though some of our members are going to pay more,” said Rothwell, who ran Detroit Renaissance before it evolved into Business Leaders two years ago.

Rob Fowler, who has also had small business leadership positions in Indiana and Ohio, put it this way: “You have to understand the moment in time we are in.”

“Sure, there are things in the governor’s plan I am sure, standing by themselves, our members would not support.”

But both men said it was vitally important to pass the plan as a whole, that if lawmakers started picking off pieces, it would fall apart.

I talked to each man separately, and discovered that what both liked most about the plan was that it offers a coherent, comprehensive strategy for Michigan’s long-term economic recovery. Rothwell noted that this was not a budget of quick fixes and one-time solutions, but one with vision.

Critics have said that the governor is just betting an hunch, gambling that slashing taxes will bring new business into the state.

But both business leaders say there’s some hard data indicating that Snyder may be right. Fowler said a survey of his small business members found seventy-two percent said they expect they’d add workers with the governor’s plan and sixty-three percent said they’d expect to pay their current workers more.

Two thirds of the small businessmen said they would be likely to invest in new equipment. Both Fowler and Rothwell oppose the Republican legislators’ proposal to set the corporate income tax higher and exempt those currently getting pensions from tax.

Rothwell said that change would take Michigan from the fifteenth most business-friendly state to the thirtieth. “They are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” Fowler added.

That doesn’t mean both men love the entire plan. Fowler’s defense of eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit for the poor was unconvincing. Rothwell doesn’t like seeing cuts to education.

But they are both standing behind the plan, in part, perhaps, for one other reason. Despite all the critics, nobody’s proposed a comprehensive alternative. Michigan’s economy is seriously sick. And as of now, the Snyder plan is the only doctor in the house.

Essay: The UAW’s Dilemma - 3.24.11

The United Auto Workers union is holding its bargaining convention in Detroit this week. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says the labor movement is facing big challenges.

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You may not have noticed, but the United Auto Workers union has been holding its bargaining convention in Detroit this week.

Every four years, union leaders get together to plan and map out their strategy for negotiating a new contract with the automakers. Once, this convention was an enormous deal, intensely covered by both local and national labor media. The big question every time was -- which company would be the strike target?

Years ago, the union came up with the concept of “pattern bargaining.” One company -- Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler, would be selected as the target. Union officials would then try and hammer out a contact with that automaker first.

Sometimes they’d have to go on strike to achieve that; sometimes not. Meanwhile, the workers at the other companies would keep working under the old labor agreements.

Once the new contract was finally hammered out, the unions would then go to the other two automakers and say -- “okay; this is what we negotiated with them; this is what you need to agree to as well. No fooling around; take it or leave it; sign or we walk.”

That’s how it’s been done for many, many years. In the past, there were sometimes historic strikes which led to historic settlements that gradually won the workers everything from paid vacations to profit sharing to dental care, on top of high wages.

But as all the world knows, excesses and globalization caught up with the auto companies. General Motors and Chrysler nearly went out of business less than two years ago. They survived in part because the union was willing to make major concessions.

New hires, for example, now make half of what a longtime autoworker does -- $14 an hour, or #29,000 a year. The union decided that and other sacrifices were necessary to keep their employers alive.

Well, the world is different now. Ford and General Motors are now making profits in the billions. Chrysler is believed close to profitability, and at any rate, has a new owner with deep pockets.

Many in the UAW believe it is their turn to be rewarded and compensated for the sacrifices they’ve made. The companies, however, talk as if the concessions need to be permanent. They know the day when they dominated the national and even world auto markets are gone.

Some of the union’s clout is gone, too. Thirty-odd years ago, the UAW had one point six million members nationwide. Today, that’s down to three hundred and fifty thousand. A third of those aren’t even in auto-related occupations. Put another way, ninety percent of the blue-collar, General Motors jobs in the state in 1979 are gone.

When the bargaining talks begin in earnest later this year, the UAW isn’t just out to get a better contract. Union President Bob King knows the union is in a struggle to stay relevant, and survive.

He knows the union’s future depends on whether it can begin organizing workers at the “transplants” -- those factories built by foreign automakers in America. So far, they’ve had no success.

The union’s future depends on changing that. For those interested in the labor movement, we’re likely to be in for a few very interesting years.