The Eagle Will Fly

As most Americans were preparing for Super Bowl Sunday, as reported by Bloomberg, Goodyear (GT:NYSE) the largest U.S. tiremaker, will close its main French plant and cut its workforce in the country by 39 percent amid labor disputes and plunging auto demand in Europe.

Why Goodyear has a plant in France is puzzling, but given the five years of negotiations with workers to resolve labor disputes with union leaders, the closing of this plant could not come as a shock.  Imagine that, unions making unrealistic demands and killing jobs.  Who could have seen this coming?

On the heels of regrettable slavery issues and some rather disturbing worker relations as the industrial revolution was emerging in our country, there can be no doubt that union representation played an important role in our history.

The French are notorious for hardly working, as evidenced by union victories against employers inclusive shortened work weeks and increased vacation. It would be great to hang our all the time, but nothing constructive comes from an inefficient work force handicapped by uncompetitive workers demands.

As such, Titan International, (TWI:NYSE) who specializes in tires for farm equipment and off-highway vehicles and acquired the Goodyear North American farm tire assets in 2005, was rumored to potentially be a purchaser of the plant.  No so fast!

Maurice Taylor, Chairman of Titan, wrote a letter to the French industry ministry informing them the company would not be purchasing the plant, citing French workers as "lazy" and "overpaid".  Taylor, it was reported, noted the French work force get "one hour for breaks, talk for three hours and work for three."  No doubt, that workforce will be unable to compete our global economy.

In America, unions have completely infiltrated and infested many large work forces, and the evidence of destruction is truly staggering.  More money is spent on our public school system than just about anything else with very poor scholastic results, alarming indoctrination and inhibiting political correctness.

Union bosses collect fees to line their pockets, elect progressive democrats and increase control over those they have fooled.  Can you imagine being forced to donate money our of your paycheck to thugs who distribute those funds to groups, associations or politicians who are at odds with your beliefs?  Unions are opponents of the free market system, as they establish wage and benefit packages for their workers that exceed common variance of similar packages in the private sector and create inefficient markets. Corporations who have lost these negotiations pay a heavy price and struggle to compete in the marketplace due to their bloated overhead. 

Their socialist objectives, inclusive of wealth transformation, fly in the face of the freedoms our country was based on.

Oppose these union bosses at your own peril, because these thugs do not operate on the same playing field you do. You may recall James Hoffa, Jr. threatening Tea Party members, who advocate free markets and fiscal sanity. The ends do justify the means with this group.

Meanwhile, this was a good decision for Goodyear.  The customers of Goodyear are hard working individuals and families all across the fruited plain, and the tires they travel on are very important. 

But the most demanding customers of Goodyear are the good ole boys who travel NASCAR's Sprint Cup, Nationwide and the Camping World Truck Series on tracks across America.  NASCAR provides a great testing center for research and development, helping Goodyear provide their everyday customers with the best product possible.



This type of excellence in an extremely competitive environment does not allow for the infiltration of impostor representatives who think they know better how the Goodyear workforce should be treated and compensated than the company itself. 

The market will dictate, and as such, that France plant will in fact be closed as opportunities for a more efficient plant location can be identified.

I continue to be a longtime shareholder of Goodyear Tire & Rubber (GT:NYSE),  having once ridden in the famous Goodyear blimp out of Pompano Beach, FL, and International Speedway Corporation (ISCA:NASDAQ).