Maryland politics

UAW Tries to Copy the Occupy Movement

Hoping to regain a bit of modern day relevancy, the United Auto Workers union is trying to copy the playbook of the Occupy Movement, the nationwide protest movement that has been dirtying parks across from shore to shore for close to half a year.

UAW President Bob King said he hopes that its members will stage nationwide protests to pull America from the clutches of the “right-wing Republicans” and the unfairly successful “one-percenters” who he says have hijacked democracy.

King’s first target is General Electric who he says pays no taxes. King said, “It is morally wrong, it is absolutely wrong, that they make billions and billions and billions of dollars and pay not a single penny in taxes, enough is enough. We’re the 99 percent who want 100 percent fairness for everyone.”

King failed to share his thoughts on the fairness of Chrysler and General Motors, two companies employing many of his union’s members, not only paying no taxes a few years back, but actually receiving big piles of other people’s money in the form of bailouts.

GE responded to King’s accusations.

“We paid a billion dollars in federal, state and local taxes in 2010,” said GE spokesman Andrew Williams while presumably wishing King would scoot away on his Hoveround. “The fact is that GE is investing in America and creating jobs at home. During 2011, GE announced the creation of over 8,000 new U.S. jobs.”

Conservative observers have also voiced concern over the rhetoric emitting from Flint, Michigan. Paul Kersey, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said, “The UAW is doubling-down on hard left-wing politics. They’re becoming more and more ideological. They’re concentrating less and less on bread-and-butter economic issues. It’s about politics. It’s not about the workplace anymore. The average autoworker is not an advocate of class warfare on this level. This is why Michigan needs right-to-work.”