Originally Posted by alancw3
... i think it is tradgic that the auto workers union destoryed schwinn. this was an old line company that contributed a lasting legesity to america bicyling history. at least we can be thankful that waterford survived. but it just isn't the same!!!!! schwinn was a great company. shame on america!!!
That is 100% false. Schwinn workers in Chicago had never had a union between 1900 and 1980. By 1980, some of the folks building Schwinns in Chicago had been building bikes for twenty, thirty, and forty years. Many of them had parents and grand-parents who built bikes for Schwinn.
Then, the "Boy Wonder", Edward Schwinn took control of the company. He made it known that Schwinn wanted to move production to a "low cost" third world country, or a southern "slave labor" zone in the USA. The company looked at Arkansas, and paid for plans for an Arkansas plant. But, it then bought land in Mississippi, with the goal of moving Chicago production there. Ed also bought a bike plant in what was then communist Hungary and also bought a large share of a bike plant in communist China. Ed thought that using "cheap" communist slave labor was going to be a "bargain" for the Schwinn family.
Ed then refused to discuss any agreement with the workers in Chicago that would assure them of a future with Schwinn. He was disrespectful to the folks who had worked for Schwinn long before he was born. In 1980, Schwinn sold over ten million bikes, in large part due to the high quality Chicago workforce.
After it was clear that Edward intended to move production out of Chicago, the workers turned to the UAW for help. By the time that the contract with the UAW came into effect, Schwinn had already begun building the plant in Mississippi, and was planning to begin phasing out the Chicago factories.
The factories in Mississippi and Hungary were major money losers. Cheap workers are cheap for a reason. The 2,000 workers in Chicago had about 40,000 years of bike building experience. Ed threw that all of that ability and experence away. At that exact same time, both Trek and Cannondale were using American workers to go from being small "custom" shops, to becoming the two largest bike makers in the USA.
Within seven years after the final bike was built in Chicago, the Schwinn family lost the company in bankrupcy court. The Mississippi plant and the plant in Hungary were gone. The Schwinn name was just a decal on a communist-Chinese bike.
It continues to stun me and amaze me that when the owners of American companies run the company into the ground, that SOMEONE will take a slap at the workers and at unions. I guess when a plane crashes, it could never be the pilot's fault. Gotta be the fault of the union guy who vacuums the carpets.