The Case of the Sighing Mechanics; T. Machan

This, unfortunately, corresponds with my own experience. I drive a 1985 Chrysler minivan, and I am always faced with problems-mostly with the suspension and the CV joints. Every four months or so I have to spend around $350 on something or other. My mechanic, an American, has told me I'd be much better off with a Japanese minivan. I can't afford one just now, but I am looking forward to when I can buy a Toyota or a Mazda. Why is this happening in the United States, whose "Made in USA" emblem once was a mark of excellence? Tibor R. Machan teaches business ethics at Auburn Uni versity, Alabama. He edited Commerce and Morality (Rowman & Littlefield, 1988). One reason might be that we now live in a soci ety where workers are more concerned with job security, health insurance, and other "entitle ments" than with doing well at their jobs or careers. Moreover, this attitude is encouraged by social and political theorists.

American academics and politicians focus not on merit but on equal welfare. The main thing in life, they tell us, is fairness. And fairness is mostly concerned with how well one's salary and benefits stack up against other workers'. Fairness is the nice term to use when one feels envy. So, the reason the American mechanics were distressed seems to be that they were beginning to sense the auto workers'-or at least their union leaders' -priorities. And these priorities no longer put a job well done at the top. Instead, U.S. auto workers are concerned mostly with get ting even, obtaining a "fair" wage, ample pension, good health insurance, and whatever else ~heir leaders-from academic political theorists to union officials-think they are "entitled." Entitlement politics has turned into entitle ment ethics-including the professional ethics of America's auto workers. That is what appears to have been perceived, at least implicitly,not only by car buyers but by their mechanics.

There are, no doubt, other problems 'with America's competitive posture. It is very likely, however, that in industries where workers are organized by leaders convinced that envy is a sound basis for collective bargaining, America's competitive edge will be difficult to recover. D 231 Saying"Yes" by Robert Zimmerman I t is the winter of 1992 in New York City, and everyone is talking economic doom and gloom. Macy's has just declared bankruptcy, Citicorp has lost almost a billion and a half dollars in the last six months, local unemployment has topped 10 percent, and shuttered storefronts dot local shopping districts. Into the midst of this dismal situation comes yours truly, trying to find (of all things) a location for a film shoot. I am representing Weekend at Bernie's II, a Hollywood feature film with a week's shooting in middle May. One of the locations I am searching for is a high-level corporate boardroom with a spectacular view of the New York skyline.