SENIORITY AND MAJORITY.

Walter Russell Mead rediscovers union concessions as "I got mine" for older brothers, and crap sandwiches for members with new cards.

The reality is that American auto workers are not productive enough (and Detroit’s management is not creative enough) to justify their high wages.  (Don’t get me started on the outrageous salaries that management gets for running their companies into the ground.)  That’s sad but it’s a fact of life.  But when it comes to adjustments, the union movement and the older generation at large makes sure that the pain falls on the young rather than spreading it around.

It’s a shame, especially since the young workers will also be paying taxes into Medicare to fund health care for seniors today that the country won’t be able to afford when today’s twenty-somethings want to collect.

A commenter notes that something similar was the practice in the early 1980s, when The Atlantic noticed the phenomenon.

Union auto workers will never vote to share the pain. A 1983 Atlantic cover story, “Voting for Unemployment,” explained auto workers’ choice: keep wages high or layoffs low? They chose high wages.

The Washington Monthly noted the same dynamic somewhat earlier: because layoffs are by seniority, and entry level pay grades apply to the first three or six months, there are usually enough votes from the older heads to shift all the pain to people recently hired, or to people who might never be hired.