If the unions have contracts that stipulate what cars the manufacturers can produce, that's news to me. Link please.
It's not in there as words as you'd like it to be, but you don't need to be a lawyer to figure out the intent of the contract. New manufacturing methods require new equipment and therefore training. The contracts require that the current workers must be trained by at the expense of the car companies rather than hiring new (and potentially cheaper) workers. So right out of the gate, it's a negative for two reasons. 1) I'm paying a highly-paid employee to sit in training and not be productive, and 2) He'll quit in a few years meaning I'll have to train him, and train his replacement rather than just training a replacement now. The union contract protects against being able to hire potentially better cheaper labor. Secondly, If a new manufacturing method requires less workers, that will be picketed as "jobs will be cut". So yes, in so many words, the "unions have contracts that stipulate what cars the manufacturers can produce".
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life. -- Schulz