This American Life is one of my favorite things. It's simply wonderful.

Man, the first time I clicked on that link, I closed the tab without giving it a second look, as a sort of reflex, because the page title started with "403:". Had to come back and click again.

Seconded. I loved that episode (though it made me mad at GM and their unions...)

Yes, the union doesn't come off very well except for one interesting bit: the same workers and union went from crap to good when management changed.

Yeah, the NUMMI workers really improved. But that was only after they were fired and could only come back to work if they accepted the change.

In all other GM plants, both the unions and management blocked the changes for something like 15-20 years.

The part I found most interesting is the focus GM had on what you could see. NUMMI worked because they could get the type of parts they needed etc but they needed to infect the rest of the organization with the idea before GM could really benefit.