Jay Weber Is UAW's Gettelfinger

On Friday morning, Jay Weber became Ron Gettelfinger. You didn't notice?

Weber posed the question "Would you take a 5% pay cut to preserve the jobs of other workers?" and answered in the negative.

He explained that he 'had worked hard, on small wages' to 'get to the income he had,' and was not about to cut that income for the sake of 'a bunch of people he did not know.'

On Friday night, it became clear that the UAW's Gettelfinger was not going to allow 'a wage cut' to 'preserve the jobs' of the UAW workers in the Big3.

Both are foolish (and we add, selfish.) If 5% is all it takes to preserve the 200 jobs (??) at ClearChannel/Milwaukee's operation, thus feeding, housing, and transporting 199 others and their children, what else can you say about Weber other than that he is remarkably selfish?

And what of Gettelfinger? Reportedly, 1 million jobs are at stake. Gettelfinger willingly deprives 1 million people of sustenance for ...what?....a pittance in wages?

Funny. They don't look much alike, Jay and Ron.

Maybe they should jointly host a radio show. What would it be called?

"Two Pigs in a Poke"?

"We Got Ours"?

"YOU Can Eat Cake"?

This post results from reading this essay in First Things; the pertinent excerpt:

Many Christians, possibly most Christians, have uncritically accepted the dichotomy between public and private, between fact and value, between knowledge and meaning. These dichotomies are deeply entrenched in American religion and culture and are closely associated with what is often described, and frequently decried, as American individualism.

In what is called our high culture, this understanding of religion as private and intensely subjective was influentially depicted a hundred years ago in William James’ classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Early on in that work, James defines religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” In this understanding, church, community, doctrine, tradition, morality—all of these are secondary and, as often as not, hindrances to genuine religion. Genuine religion is subjective experience, and subjective experience in solitude.

Weber talks about his Catholicism--which is the primal Christianity--and I'll assume that Gettelfinger and most of his UAW membership are also Christian.

Gettelfinger & Co. have strayed quite a distance from the real meaning of "Solidarity," if they think that said 'solidarity' pertains only to the UAW club.

I cannot begin to venture what motivated Weber. If it was 'ratings,' good luck with that, Jay.