Daniel Howes' Weekend Essay

This week, Daniel Howes says the antics coming from the boardrooms of the state’s Big Three universities will not change until the way Michigan chooses its trustees does. This is what you get when the over-riding qualification to serve on the boards is surviving the state’s Republican and Democratic nominating conventions. We’re the only state in the nation to elect trustees to its flagship schools on partisan, at-large, statewide ballots.

This week, Daniel Howes says the new name for the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot of France should be United Nations Motors. Rarely has the global auto world seen a cultural mash-up like the one announced this week: Jeep SUVs meet Citroën cars. Forget pooling technology spending and rationalizing vehicle architectures. If this transnational merger is going to work, success will ride on the shoulders of its leaders. On their ability to navigate today’s auto industry and prepare for tomorrow’s. On their humility … their creativity … and their cultural patience … in equal measure.

This week, Daniel Howes says the United Auto Workers strike against General Motors Co. netted members a healthy set of economics – on pay and bonuses, profit-sharing and continuing Cadillac health-care coverage. But it didn’t repatriate production from Mexico, didn’t reverse plant closings in three states and didn’t seriously address the threat to union jobs posed by electrification of new lineups. That’s a challenge to be confronted by someone else. What a surprise.

This week, Howes says the strange United Auto Workers strike against General Motors Co. is getting stranger in the wake of a tentative agreement. Instead of returning to work pending ratification by Friday, union leaders are keeping members on picket lines as they consider details of a new four-year agreement. And nowhere to be seen or heard from is union President Gary Jones, whose public appearance before the media likely would devolve quickly into embarrassing questions about his implication in the federal investigation into union corruption.

This week, Daniel Howes says the United Auto Workers’ fight with General Motors Co. is a battle over dollars and cents pitting radically different visions of the future. And there’s no room for Old Detroit thinking because Old Detroit is dead, or should be, buried by denial, competition and the ignominy of begging Congress and taxpayers for money to avert collapse.

This week, Daniel Howes says the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump will freeze Detroit’s automotive agenda in Washington. From trade deals with China, Canada and Mexico to fights over emissions policy, the nation’s capital is likely to be fixated on the political process – and the first casualty, just months from the arrival of an election year, will be policy-making.

This week, Daniel Howes says that as United Auto Workers members strike General Motors Co., the union’s rank-and-file and its legion of retirees can thank the leadership’s corruption scandal for opening the political floodgates to the UAW’s traditional adversaries. The tales of greed and self-dealing will be used against UAW organizers … by anti-union Republicans … by right-to-work activists … by cranky union members who feel deceived.

This week, Daniel Howes says Detroit’s top two automakers – facing a potential circus surrounding national contract talks with the United Auto Workers – are jostling for position with the public and President Donald Trump. Ford’s claim? To be “America’s auto company,” a label freighted with meaning and subtle digs at rivals rescued a decade ago by American taxpayers.

This week, Daniel Howes says the federal corruption probe into the United Auto Workers and its joint training centers is heating up just as the union is negotiating new contracts with Detroit’s automakers. That’s a whole lot of not good for a UAW that once prided itself on being America’s, quote, “clean union.” The latest evidence and more than a half dozen convictions suggests that moniker no longer may be justified.

This week, Daniel Howes says there’s growing evidence that southeast Michigan’s auto towns are cool again. Credit the politics of the day, sure. But credit also a growing sense of obligation on the part of a new generation of leaders – and a belief that automakers in the heartland can succeed in an Auto 2.0 world with roots deeply planted in places that delivered the world Auto 1.0 It’s good business.