Seriously:

Rank-and-file workers at the General Motors stamping plant in Indianapolis have begun to mobilize against the latest effort by the United Auto Workers to run roughshod over their opposition and impose a 50 percent wage cut on workers at the plant. On Wednesday, workers distributed a leaflet denouncing the betrayal of the UAW and calling for workers to join a rank-and-file committee to fight the wage cut and oppose any threat to shut the plant.

The leaflet was in response to revelations that the UAW is organizing a mail-in ballot on the proposal it has reached with investor JD Norman to buy the plant from GM, which would reduce hourly wages from $29 to $15.50.

A 10 percent cut is bad enough, but 50 percent is just criminal. I think this must be the flattening of the world that so impressed Thomas Friedman. But the flattening appears to have more to do with the creation of a global underclass rather than a universal market. When the process (the flattening) is fully realized, workers in the centers of the world (Shanghai, Jozi, Detroit, Manchester) will have the same wages, opportunities, and social service. Immigration will become useless. All forms of travel will be for business and pleasure.