Ford's problem isn't union wages but legacy costs. It takes a lot fewer assemblers to build a car than it did 20years ago but Ford continues to support those earlier employees through their pensions and health care benefits. That was the deal that both Ford and the union agreed to and I admire both Ford and GM for trying to work through their problems without sticking it to a bunch of retired folks, most of whom can't go back into the work force in any meaningful way. The easiest thing in world for the imports to do was to bring their production to the U.S. They have no retired employees to support (well, Toyota has 1,000 retired U.S. employees compared to 400,000 for GM) and their work force is younger because they hired them that way. Overall the pay scale isn't that different. If Ford and GM win big pay concessions from the UAW you can bet that all the non-union workers at Toyota, Honda, etc. in the U.S. will end up taking a pay cut as well. If the U.S. consumer starts buying Chinese cars in significant numbers in 4 or 5 years it won't matter anyway because all U.S. auto manufacturing will then disappear FAST!! It won't matter if its American, Japanese, or Korean. It'll be gone.
I am someone who has owned 26 American cars and 0 import brand cars.
Unfortunately GM & Ford are in a death spiral from which neither will recover.
20 years from now we won't be arguing about Ford & GM being able to survive in the face of the Japanese brands. The arguement will be whether the Japanese & Korean brands will be able to survive in the face of Chinese competition.