Full disclosure: I used to observe WWE “Monday Evening Uncooked” after I was in faculty.

It was chock stuffed with standoffs, trash speak and foolish gimmicks, comparable to wrestlers hitting folks with bedpans and others lighting issues on hearth. All of it occurred throughout what is understood in WWE circles because the “Perspective Period.”

I ate it up. Right this moment, every time I see or hear UAW President Shawn Fain, I can’t assist feeling as if I’m as soon as once more watching wrestling on a Monday night time in 1998.

His public bargaining techniques with the Detroit Three strike me as one thing “Stone Chilly” Steve Austin would script in a defiant showdown with then-WWE proprietor Vince McMahon.

In March, lengthy earlier than bargaining started, Fain warned that his union was getting ready for “warfare in opposition to the one and solely true enemy: multibillion-dollar firms and employers who refuse to provide our members their fair proportion.”

In early July, Fain determined in opposition to the normal conciliatory handshake with Detroit Three executives. It’s the equal of a wrestler turning his again on his opponent.

And at last, on Aug. 8 — and I’m not making this up — Fain learn excerpts from Stellantis’ early bargaining proposals after which chucked them in a trash can, on a stay video stream.

I don’t actually know why Fain is behaving like a WWE heel. Maybe he’s attempting to distance himself from the union’s earlier management, a few of whom had been accused of being too cozy with the automakers and in the end ended up criminally charged and jailed after a number of scandals.

Regardless of the motive for the act — and let’s be sincere, that’s possible what it’s — I can solely assume it’s good for Unifor, which represents Detroit Three autoworkers in Canada and started bargaining this month.

From a negotiating standpoint, Fain has demanded a 40-percent elevate. No, that’s not a typo. He has threatened a strike. And he desires a contract that, oddly, lasts 4 years and eight months so it will probably finish on Worldwide Employees’ Day. So even the nuts and bolts of Fain’s bargaining within the media, are, properly, type of nuts. And if the UAW strikes, it would accomplish that earlier than Unifor’s contract even expires. They’re 4 days aside.

I can’t assist pondering that Detroit Three executives are a bit postpone by the theatre and perhaps trying ahead to sitting down with somebody a bit of extra measured and levelheaded.

Immediately, Canada would possibly appear to be a pleasant, regular place to do enterprise. Perhaps our stereotypical politeness in the end pays off. Maybe the Detroit Three flip their consideration to getting issues finished — and setting the wage and advantages bars — in Canada first.

No matter occurs, I envision Unifor President Lana Payne doing what I as soon as did on a weekly foundation: calmly consuming popcorn, watching the insanity unfold.