japanese did not eat us automotive industry alive because of unions. japanese primarily eat the us automotive industry alive because of far superior manufacturing innovation.

And of course, unions have never been known to stand in the way of manufacturing innovation.

German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. It's one of the sectors with the strongest union presence. They also outcompete US manufacturers. Maybe, just maybe, unions are not to blame. Maybe, just maybe, data indicates that management may have something to do with it.

I can tell you that German automotive unions (OEMs and suppliers) are among the main opponents of electromobility. ZF, Mahle ... a lot of components are just no longer needed for a gearless EV where the motor consists of a large coil instead of thousands of high-precision parts.

They are also responsible for making sure that government grants flow into OEMs instead of generic EV charging infrastructure.

We regularly have reengineering projects for end-of-line testing equipment and other test benches where we are contractually required to guarantee that the new version does not make the personnel operating the equipment redundant (i.e. it may not be more efficient than the 15 year old version). (I won't blame anyone for disbelieving this.)

So, yes, they are very much against manufacturing improvements.

Union-management relations used to be better in the US as well. There was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court that required that relationship to become more adversarial.

The ideal labor innovation would allow for unions to be subject to competitive pressure the way that companies are (ideally, assuming a functioning marketplace rather than oligopoly, crony capitalism etc) so that unions could evolve in the same way that companies evolve.

A union that faces no competition becomes sclerotic just like a monopoly company.

In this case it will be Japanese ROBOTS!