Kirstin wrote a few weeks back about the strike at the American Axle plant in Three Rivers, asking if company CEOs were willing to sacrifice their salaries for budget cuts. Well, a short story in the Kalamazoo Gazette this weekend answers the question for American Axle's CEO:

American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc. Chairman and CEO Richard Dauch has been awarded an $8.5 million bonus in part for leading the auto parts supplier through a bitter strike.

Revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the bonus is in addition to his earlier reported 2007 compensation valued at $5.55 million.

About 3,650 United Auto Workers union members at American Axle's five original facilities in New York and Michigan went on strike Feb. 26 for nearly three months, but later ratified a contract with deep concessions.

Most of Dauch's previously reported pay was stock and options worth roughly $3.99 million on the day they were granted. He also earned $1.47 million in salary and $94,684 in other compensation.

Some of the "deep concessions" mentioned above have forced many American Axle workers to take a 50% cut in pay. Others simply took a one-time, lump sum buyout based on their years with the company, leaving them with a decent amount of money but without work.

Conversation around the strike has been interesting, with many people suggesting that the workers were being greedy during the strike. Granted, many long-term employees were making approximately $28/hour with benefits (significantly above most other laborers in the county), but why can't employees of a successful manufacturing company be paid well? And why should management reap all of the rewards of success?

Indeed, it seems curious that so many people are distrustful and suspicious of worker motivation instead of management greed. Even after seeing the story above and being incredulous that a single person earned so much money in one year, a friend, when we suggested that it was ridiculous in light of the worker concessions, still thought the workers had been earning too much money.

It seems that American culture has been so poisoned by fear of anarchism, communism and other labor movements that we have allowed capitalists free reign to trample over as many people as they'd like on their way to extraordinary wealth. And even when we're presented with evidence of corporate greed, we've been so paralyzed that we refuse to imagine or demand a different and more just way of operating. We are indignant, but held from action because we still won't allow ourselves to trust labor.

Lest I be accused, I'm not suggesting that labor movements are always in the right or that they are always acting in the best interest of the public good. Examples abound, particularly in education, of labor unions protecting incompetent employees for the sake of solidarity.

History shows us, though, that labor movements have been the catalyst for establishing 5-day work weeks, 8-hour days, child labor protection, safe working conditions and a host of other things we now take for granted. Without labor opposition, capitalists will run roughshod over people on their way to more profit. In fact, they're still doing it around the world in countries that don't have adequate labor laws.

And yet we still side with management. Worldviews are indeed difficult to change.