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10 Reasons to Support the U.S. Auto Industry |
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Chances are the upcoming holiday get-togethers will provide plenty of encounters with relatives and friends who are against helping out the auto industry. Opponents of a bridge loan have plenty to say. And we should, too. Here’s a quick list of reasons for countering arguments by Uncle CEO and Cousin It.
1. Unlike the taxpayer giveaway to Wall Street, the funds for the auto industry are loans. These loans have to be paid back. The Big Banks who got our $700 billion get to keep it.
2. It’s cheaper to support the auto industry than to let it die. Anderson Economic Group and BBK Ltd. determined that over a two-year period, a $30 billion bridge loan with only half of the amount repaid would result in a $16.4 billion cost to taxpayers in lost sales, taxes and jobs, while a bankruptcy would cost $65.9 billion when costs for pensions, unemployment insurance, loan losses and professional and other fees are added.
3. The jobs of autoworkers aren’t the only ones at stake. One in 10 jobs in the United States depend in some way upon the auto industry. Between 3 million and 5 million U.S. jobs would be lost in the first year alone if the auto industry doesn’t get support. With unemployment likely to worsen to 8 percent or 9 percent next year, adding millions more to the jobless rolls easily could turn the recession into a Depression.
4. The U.S. Treasury Department’s quick handout of taxpayer money to Bank of America, AIG, Wachovia and other white-collar firms contrasts sharply with the way in which auto industry CEOs have been grilled. The Bush administration has a laundry list of requirements for the Big Three if they get a loan. So does that mean the Bush administration now will tell its Wall Street buddies to stop using our money to buy up smaller firms, lobby for better deals, free up credit—the supposed goal of the bailout—and not throw away hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on lavish executive retreats?
5. The double standard for treating the auto industry like unwashed beggers while granting every wish for the Wizards of Wall Street who melted from their own greed is fundamentally about two things: Rewarding Bush administration cronies in a last-minute raiding of public funds and attacking a unionized workforce as part of the corporate class war against workers.
6. It’s not an accident the salaries of nonunion autoworkers in the South are nearly the same as those of UAW members—when an industry offers competitive salaries, even nonunionized workers benefit. But if the plug is pulled on the Big Three, chances are the wages of autoworkers in the South will sink.
7. The bridge loan provides a key opportunity to Fast Track the creation of energy-efficient American cars by making “green cars” one of the stipulations of the loan.
8. Strengthening the U.S. manufacturing industry is in the interest of our nation. Higher-paying manufacturing jobs don’t only benefit workers and our communities. Manufacturing is a critical part of national strength—imagine if, during World War II, there was no auto industry to transform into creating the military support we needed to defeat the Nazis?
9. Opponents of a bridge loan are advancing the argument of Big Business, not Main Street. It’s in the interest of corporate giants like GE-owned NBC to pay anchors like Brian Williams to hype the lower-benefit auto jobs in the South and wipe out unionized workforces by hailing companies that provide bare-bones wages with no health care, retirement or other basics.
10. Sadly, the moral argument—a bridge loan is the right thing to do—is last on the list. Because for some out there, saving U.S. workers’ jobs and ensuring a strong nation doesn’t seem to be enough of a reason in itself for helping a homegrown industry when it’s down.
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I called Sen. Byrd and Sen. Rockefeller’s office and spoke to someone and voiced my concerns about the Emergency Bridge Loans for the Auto Industry. I said that I hoped they supported this bevause we cannot afford to lose jobs or let the companies file for bankruptcy. If we do, it will be devastating to our economy and will allow the companies to bust the UAW. We cannot allow this! We have to stand up! Judge Andrew Napolitaon said it on Fox a few weeks ago…the companies need to file for bankruptcy so that they can reorganize and get rid of the UAW and if the people feel they need a union, they can have small unions so they won’t have power. That is scary! We need the unions and I am in support of these loans! Pray for those in charge of the people and the money that they do right by the people!
mrs merriner
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!