The Bailout Of Auto: Giving The "Big Three" A Club To Destroy The Auto Workers Union

[Better Believe It]

November 25, 2008

A Big Caravan to Washington?
The Auto Crisis: Management, Labor and the Struggle for the Future
By DAN LaBOTZ

The crisis in the auto industry is about many things: the possible collapse of GM, Detroit gas guzzlers, auto emission standards, the environment, and the need for mass transportation, among others. But as became clear this last week, at the center of it all is the struggle between management and the workers, that is, between capital and labor. The crisis in auto is fundamentally about driving down workers’ wages, taking away their benefits, and putting management firmly in control of the workplace.

Mitt Romney, candidate for president in the Republican primaries, in his op-ed piece in the New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” wrote that the Big Three’s “huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated.” How? By making “new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota.” Second, says Romney, “retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.”

A few days later New York Times columnist Joe Nocera argued that bankruptcy would be too long and slow a process to save the industry. He suggested that President-Elect Barack Obama create an auto Czar, someone like former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, to negotiate a new deal in auto. What would that deal look like? “It needs to dramatically reduce its legacy benefits, perhaps even eliminating health care benefits for union retirees. It needs to close plants. It needs to pay its workers what Toyota workers are paid in the United States—and not a penny more.”

The U.S. government, as the highest political expression of capital’s power in this country, will come to the aid of the auto industry—meaning aiding the auto companies to break one of the last strongholds of the old industrial unionism. A U.S. government bailout of auto, given with strict conditions demanding concessions, will stiffen the backbone of the Big Three and put a club in their hand so that they can finally and once and for all get rid what remains of what was once a powerful union. To America’s rich and powerful to save the auto industry means to save its profitability. It has nothing to do with saving jobs, workers or their communities.

If the auto companies and the government negotiate a bailout that drives the UAW and its members back into the past, we will be going back with them. Everyone’s job, everyone’s wages, everyone’s health care and pension is at state in this. We need to begin to fight back and there isn’t a moment to lose.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/labotz11252008.html

[riqster]

1. Like I said:

[Better Believe It]

3. The Writer Isn't Opposed To Congressional Aide To Domestic Auto Industry

He proposes public ownership and stake in the companies with a public advisory council:

President-Elect Barack Obama said in his press conference on Nov. 24 that the auto industry executive should come back to the new Congress and his administration with a plan. But shouldn’t the UAW and the auto workers—unions and workers who worked for Obama—come back with their own plan as well? What would be at the center of the auto workers’ plan? I don’t think that’s hard to guess: Saving our communities. Saving auto workers’ jobs. Rebuilding America’s auto, transportation, and energy industry—efficient autos, light rail, high-speed trains, wind turbines. Making a good job the center of a good life.

Shouldn’t the American people come back to Congress with their plan too? And if we did appear in Congress, wouldn’t we say, “Yes, of course, you can use some of my tax money to save these jobs. But if we put up the money, then we want ownership in these companies, and a voice, and a vote. If ‘We the People’ put up the money and take ownership of these companies, then we want a citizens advisory council made up of auto workers—engineers, technicians, skilled and unskilled workers—as well as consumers, and environmentalists to run the company.”

We Need a Broader Response

Autoworkers surely shouldn’t have to do all of this by themselves. What’s happening to autoworkers today happened to steelworkers a few decades ago, and even groups as apparently secure as health and hospital workers can expect to see similar industrial challenges—and the demand that workers pay for the problems—coming in the future. Auto has gone to Washington precisely because it faces a problem that can only be solved—from the standpoint of the CEOS—on a broad basis. The auto industry needs to have business generally, and the government in particular, to help it to reorganize the industry. Similarly auto workers to defend themselves need to have the support of the labor movement generally.

[riqster]

4. Nor am I opposed.

I want to see what we did not see with the financial bailouts: a solid plan with transparency and protections for the workers.

I AM opposed to throwing money at incompetent and corrupt fools, and acting as though the workers will automatically benefit by it.

[ellenfl]

5. i would imagine that obama has had the uaw plan for a while. eom

[Better Believe It]

6. The problem is the leadership of the UAW doesn't appear to have a plan!

At least not one along the lines of the article posted.

[TahitiNut]

2. This is what happens when we get to the point that a National Strike is beyond imagining.

We have people in the working class who fail to comprehend that the Tonya Harding approach to running from the Ownership Bear is doomed to failure ... the Bear gets fatter and faster and hungrier and the working class can only limp away.

[riqster]

7. Watch the plutocrats, always

We must insist on transparency and accountability, and protect the workers, in any Big 3 bailout. If it takes another few weeks, OK. And we CANNOT count on those who have consistently shown antipathy towards their workers in the past to suddenly protect them now.

We didn't stipulate that way when we bailed out Citi, and they just de-jobbed thousands of Americans, while setting up a new call center in the Phillipines.Your tax dollars at work: enriching fat cats, taking away American jobs, sending those jobs overseas and exploiting people in foreign countries.

Nope. Slow down, do it right, and do right by the workers.

There are those who see the current situation as an opportunity to take away what workers have gained over the last decades. We MUST not let that happen.

[Better Believe It]

8. Look at all the union auto workers sacrificed over the past decade

And what did the get for it? A kick in the ass.

[riqster]

9. And fewer medical benefits to take care of them

...after being kicked in said ass.