SEARCH
Auto Crisis Threatens Entire Economy; Union Ready to Do Its Part—Again |
|
 |
|
If Congress does not soon approve emergency loan legislation to keep Detroit’s Big Three automakers operating as they ride out the nation’s financial crisis, job losses will ripple not just through the auto industry but through the entire economy, warned UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.
At a news conference today following an emergency meeting with UAW local and regional leaders, Gettelfinger said the union is willing to “take the extra step” to aid the industry. Union leaders, he said, have agreed to delay automakers’ payments to a union-administered health care fund and to modify the union’s job banks program that provides laid-off workers with a portion of their wages and benefits.
But he reiterated that UAW members already have agreed to wage and benefit concessions that have lowered labor costs at the Big Three. Terms of the current contract will lower those costs even further.
We’re willing to take the extra step here….The important thing is to secure these jobs and we cannot do it as the UAW. It’s got to be something that’s done for this country.…We have to get this loan. Nobody’s kidding anybody. Main Street, side street and rural America are all impacted by what the Congress does.
Yesterday, Chrysler, General Motors Corp. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. submitted to Congress detailed plans outlining how they would use federal loan funds to retool and revive the industry. Tomorrow and on Friday, Gettelfinger and the Detroit CEOs will appear before U.S. Senate and House committees to answer questions about the plans.
The plans stemmed from two days of often contentious hearings in November in which the auto CEOs, as well Gettelfinger, were harshly questioned by lawmakers about the industry’s failures and how the proposed bridge loan would be used. All three automakers say they will reduce their model lines and product lines, shed unprofitable subsidiaries, boost fuel efficiency and engage in other cost-cutting and quality control measures. They will give taxpayers in a stake in the companies.
GM and Chrysler are seeking immediate cash assistance and Ford is asking for a $6 billion “standby line of credit” that it says would not be tapped unless one of the other Big Three fails. Combined, the automakers are seeking $34 billion in loans and lines of credit. A vote on the package could come next week.
During the debate on the auto industry assistance, news reports—especially conservative commentators—have focused on labor costs. Some, such as Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett, have gone as far as laying the blame for industry’s failures at the feet of the workers and the UAW.
But labor costs are just about 10 percent of the costs of producing a vehicle. The other 90 percent includes research and development, parts, advertising, marketing and management overhead.
Monday on the “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said blaming workers is a “phony attack”:
Of course, it’s a phony attack. An auto worker who makes $57,000 a year, working some overtime, who produces a good car, who has a half decent pension who now has had their pension equity whacked by more corruption and calamity on Wall Street, who has some decent health care after working 30 or 40 years in the workplace, an employer that’s trying to provide that health care because it’s the only country on earth where society doesn’t get its health care provided through a universal system….
And all of the sudden, we’re going to blame the workers? It’s not the workers’ fault.
9 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
********************************************
Washington to Detroit - Drop Dead?
with
Frank Hammer, Former President, UAW Local 909,
Warren, Michigan
and
Warren Brown, Auto Columnist, “Washington Post ”
When auto executives and unions leaders came to Washington
to ask for a $25 billion bailout, they expected a cold shoulder
from Bush, but got one from many in the Congress as well. Is
the Federal government really willing to take the risk of adding
more than a million auto workers to the unemployment lines
that snake through-out the Midwest? And, what would happen
to the wages and working conditions of auto workers that
might keep their jobs with the big three companies, or other
auto workers across the region and nation?
****************************************
To Download or listen to this 27:36 minute program,
go to
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/30444
OR
http://www.archive.org/details/WashingtonToDetroit-DropDead
for more information contact Ken Nash - knash@igc.org
Building Bridges is regularly broadcast live over WBAI,
99.5 FM in the N.Y.C Metropolitan area on Mondays from
7-8pm EST and is streamed, archived and pod cast at
http://www.wbai.org .
Our website is http://www.buildingbridgesradio.org
Building Bridges National Edition is regularly broadcast over:
WGOT - Gainesville, Florida.
WUOW - Oneonta, N.Y.
WWUH, - West Hartford, CT
WVJW- Benwood, WV
KRFP, Moscow, ID
KCSB, Santa Barbara, CA
WXOJ, Northampton, MA
KSOW,Cottage Grove, Oregon
WKNH ,Keene, NH
CKDU, Halifax, N.S., Canada
KRFC, Fort Collins, Colorado
WRPI, Troy, New York
WNRB, Wausau, WI
KRBS, Oroville, CA
WHLD, Buffalo, NY
Free Radio Olympia, Olympia,WA
KQRP Salida, California
East Hill Radio, Snoqualmie, WA
KSKQ, Ashland, Oregon
as well as internet stations:
Radio Veronica, West Point, PA
The Journey Radio
WXXE
Seattle Radical Radio
Radio for Peace International
Radio Labourstart
AmericanFM.org
RadioDriftless.org
Grateful Dread Public Radio
=======================================
For archived Building Bridges National Programs go to
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Building+Bridges
For archived of all Building Bridges program go to our new website:
http://www.buildingbridgesradio.org
UAW has worked long and hard to achieve higher wages and better working conditions, while auto company executives have been living high on the hog with their million dollar salaries, golden retirements, and huge stock options, in addition to failing to produce top selling fuel efficient vehicles for the public. NO, the union should not give up anything in their contracts, let the Board of Directors and stock holders toss the big out on their ears. Then the union would know that some real changes are about to take place.
12-4-08 in my opinion uscongress shall work with UAW and detroit to safe jobs for benefit of all americans
I believe any concessions should entitle The UAW a board seat and stock options for the Auto Workers.
Also, a weekly meeting with the UAW with respective CEO to discuss improvements.
47 days till Bush is gone and Barack is in office!!! Then, the economy will be fixed. May take a year but it will be fixed. The auto industry has to hang in there. They also need to make better cars that can compete with Toyota and Honda.
Renege
(Or, How Capital and Congress Lied To Working Class Americans)
re•nege:
1. To fail to carry out a promise or commitment
What follows is an extremely abbreviated part of history that is all too often ignored:
Mass production, it was said, would result in lower prices for goods. “Americans will be able to afford products that had previously been too expensive” said the proponents of mechanization. Mass production is, of course, another way of saying automation and technology.
Congress realized that workers, both organized and unorganized, were fearful of losing their jobs due to increased automation. Initially, there was great resistance to mechanization. Congress, for its part, recognized that increased productivity would benefit capitalists. Those lawmakers also realized that without promises of safeguards, resistance to automation would be accompanied by perpetual unrest between labor and capital.
Several laws were enacted that pretended to deal with the concerns of US workers. One was “The Employment Act” of 1946. Another was “The Manpower Developent and Training Act of 1962”. Yet a third was the “Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act” of 1978. All three promised assurances from government that workers would be protected. In practice, none ever delivered on that promise. Labor, therefore, began negotiating certain safeguards to protect workers from unemployment or other hardships due to automation or plant closures.
Congress welcomed those pacts. Business was free to automate, and labor was mollified. Over the years, labor continued negotiating protections, but always from weakened positions due to attrition.
Here it is, 2008. Capital and its apologists in Congress, as we have learned, often practice selective memory loss. Corporate CEOs and ideologically-challenged, coiffed and manicured suits and ties in Washington, D.C. – joined by their trained seals in the media – are saying that labor has to make more concessions in order for Congress to approve loans to the Big Three.
Congress and capital are both reneging on the promises they made years before when they wanted a smooth transition into automation. Those promises did not have sunset clauses. The intent of those promises are as relevant and binding today as they were when they were made. An irreversible motion was put into action when labor took steps to accommodate automation. That action had two components:
1) Workers would be protected against loss resulting from the introduction of mechanization
2) Business would be free to automate within certain limits.
Early on, topics of pre-automatioon discussions included
the “likelihood” that labor would actually add workers because mass production would decrease prices for products, thus affording large numbers of consumers at home and abroad the wherewithal to puchase them. Accompanying reduced manpower requirements at semi-automated factories would be the need to build new factories to meet the demands for now-affordable products. In essence, building new factories and increases in overall demand would offset automation-induced manpower reductions it was said.
That model worked for a while. Then, capital began reneging on its part of the bargain. Capital began moving factories offshore to lower wage environs. US capital entered into joint ventures with foreign capital to devise methods to increase profits for both. Congress did little to enforce legislation intended to protect US workers. In some instances it did just the opposite. It passed laws that were and are detrimental to America’s working class.
What would have happened if labor had refused to accommodate automation decades ago? What would have happened if labor had just said “NO”? What would have happened if labor had taken economic action in its battle against automation, or in its fight to restrict the cheap imports that would undercut prices of domestic products? Remember, over 35% of the US workforce was organized back then. Labor had a formidable influence on the affairs of our nation.
Capital – acting through its surrogates in Congress – could have challeneged labor back then had labor refused to allow automation to go forward. Who knows the lenghts that the capital/government combine would have been willing to go to in order to assue maximum profits for industrialists? It is a sure bet, however, that an organized effort against automation would have resulted in lasting adverse effects on this nation’s manufacturing capabilities.
It is safe to say that organized resistance would have severely delayed automation. We’d be back in the 70’s or 80’s here in 2008.
A capital/government conspiracy now claims “the global economy” requires even more concessions from workers. In saying that they are again reneging on the post-WWII promises they made.
Should anyone need evidence of the corporate/government double-cross, just look around you. In the 1990’s the richest 1% owned 18% of all the wealth. Today it owns 40%.
Every single national debate has a common thread: The rich are above the fray.
It is a rare event when the children of the wealthy go off to war. The rich get all the medical care they require or desire. Their kids go to expensive private schools. Their mortgage payments are mere blips on their economic radar screens. They never fear unemployment. Security in retirement is a given for them.
The ongoing national debates over Iraq, funding public education, affordable housing, jobs paying family-sustaining wages, access to health care, and Social Security and pensions are being conducted within parameters dictated by the wealthiest 10%. And the majority in Congress support their misdeeds!
Isn’t something wrong when 10% of the population decides the fate of the other 90%?
People can fawn over elected officials. Self-defeating excuses for corporate excesses can be offered. Those with health care can turn their backs on those without. For the time being we can always find people more economically disadvantaged than we are to kick If, however, we collaborate in holding others down with the vain illusion that we’ll somehow be spared their fate, we most assuredly will eventually join them in suffering. Capital knows no bounds. Its insatiable appetite will never be satifsfied.
The only thing that will provide some measure of justice is a strong labor movement built on a foundation of working class principles; one that demnads an egalitarian society.
Concessions by automakers will only undermine that effort.
Congress and corporate America are both reneging on the social compact they agreed to long ago. Now they’re asking workers to give up more.
If labor allows the double cross to continue, every worker’s head will eventually be on the chopping block. Remember, united we stand, divided we fall!
Nationalize the auto industry! Save the jobs and set the plants to making things we need - buses, trains, wind turbines, etc. the bottom line is that we make too many cars, period. What will a bridge loan do but extend the overproduction? Yes, maybe we’ll have more fuel efficient cars but that does not address that there are still more cars than we need being made in, and imported into, the US.
I don’t trust the management of Detroit to make the right decisions now, or any time in the future. Their track record proves it. And I don’t trust the leadership of the UAW to do anything other than what management asks it too. We’re going to give them 25+ billion dollars so they can lay off another 20,000 workers!?!?!? What is the UAW thinking?
Instead of pushing for the long term, big picture solution, the UAW has once again hopped in bed with management and are being led down the primrose path to oblivion.
This a real joke! If any body remembers we had the Government already bail out Chysler Corp. once already years ago and now they are back again. If any Corp should not be bailed out it is Chysler because of their piss poor management. The CEO’s of these companies make close to a quarter billion a year in income, bonuses, and perks and they have the balls to come to the government for a loan using our money to finance. Give me a break! This is THE MAJOR problem we have in this country. Corporate CEO’s raping the profits from their companies and walking away smiling while their companies go down in the toilet.
Of all the GM plant closings that are slated in the future, I believe I read something like 38 factories would be remaining out of 62 by the year 2012. I was just wondering how many plants in Mexico GM was thinking of closing? I recently bought a Chevrolet Silverado and it turns out it was made in Gilajo, Mexico. A buddy of mine at work bought a Chevrolet HHR and it was made in Mexico. My wife drives a Buick and it was made in Canada. What percentage of all of GM’s cars and trucks are now foreign made? If the vehicles were all made here and exported, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today and the big 3 auto chiefs wouldn’t be in Washington begging for relief.