WTF is wrong with our Senate? UAW disaster and the Big 3 BS

Could never happen.

Man you are moronic. What makes you think I'm afraid to get my hands dirty? You seem to have me pegged as a silver spooner or something... not. You haven't got a ******* clue.

What I said about Gettelfinger came from Gettlefinger himself... and if you weren't rambling from pure ignorance; you'd know it. The re-runs are probably available on CSPAN if you'd like to stop talking completely out of your ass and learn what you think you're talking about.

The simple fact is... and there's really no getting around it: THE BIG 3 ARE CURRENTLY CLAIMING TO BE DOOMED UNDER THEIR CURRENT CONTRACTS... and GETTELFINGER AGREES... BUT: He doesn't have enough sense to admit to the very people he's hoping will save his stupid ass that the current system doesn't work. He was utterly unwilling to discuss a solution.

ONLY morons like you and Gettelfinger think a contract that results in bankrupting the very company it's made with is something that shouldn't be subject to renegotiation. Only a fool fights in a burning house. ONLY morons like you and Gettelfinger don't recognize the simple truth: The good ole days are already gone. The Big 3 don't have the cash for Socialist idiocy like "Jobs Bank" where laid off workers receive up to 95% of their pay for not working. How ******* clueless can you be?

Unless there are MAJOR CHANGES; those companies are going bankrupt and ONLY morons like you and Gettelfinger would literally cut off your nose to spite your face in denial.

Everyone with any sense at all understands this. You are the exception... and like usual; you're resorting to sophomoric attacks because no coherent argument exists to explain why people who make $10 and $20 an hour should subsidize jobs that pay $50 an hour for THE SAME KIND OF WORK.

A special kind of idiocy is required to think otherwise. The kind of idiocy that results in disasters like the Soviet Union or North Korea, and other likeminded fools that like to pretend you can divvy out dough based on need (or some liberal minded ideal) instead of deed (or some other tangible benchmark at the very least).

We can't all be winners Kuvasz... and all but the terminally obtuse understand this. You aren’t really dumb enough by half to believe half the **** you write… so why do you do it anyway?

Stop it. No one here is denying the tremendous contributions Unions have made to the American way of life. That doesn't mean this one didn't go too far overboard to be sustainable. The actual auto workers need to wake up and smell their own burning corpses before it's too late.

I see Gettelfrigginidiot succeeded in sabotaging the aid package with his utter lack of cooperation... seemingly unable to read the writing on the wall. What a total idiot.

So now Bush is going to fix it? That's a hoot. I'd wager they're figuring out, as we speak, how to sustain the contractual disasters until the Democrats can be blamed for their failure.

What a pity. A little common sense leadership and tough love for the UAW and these Icons could probably be saved. If the choice is between failure and Nationalization; I'll take the former.

Senator Bob Corker made the charge on Fox News Sunday that the UAW never bargained in good faith because they knew the White House would work toward providing the companies with TARP funds in the event of the aid package's failure. This sounds plausible given the total intransigence on the part of the union. There was never any honest negotiation on their part.

In nature, and effective parasite doesn't kill its host. Labor Unions however, aren't particularly effective parasites. Virtually every U.S. industry dominated by them is either long gone or in serious trouble. Indeed it is no accident that the current President of the AFL/CIO is a former head of the Government Employees union.

It is simply a great public misfortune that organized labor is one of the principal sources of funds (and some occasional dirty work) for the Democrat party. Democrat political leaders are more than willing to pour tens of billions of public money down a sinkhole in order to insure the continued flow of tens of millions into their own coffers.

The two principal payoffs union leaders expect from their hired hands in Congress are the UAW bailout and the repeal of existing legislation requiring a secret ballot among workers in a firm targeted for organization by labor leaders & organizers. This will enable union thugs to coerce workers and their other minions to fake the necessary ballots. It is a great business - the union's revenues are collected for them by the companies they infect - directly from the worker's paycheck and before they ever see it.

The sad truth is that the Big Three auto makers have (finally) closed the earlier quality gap with their foreign competitors. However, they simply can't make it with all the regressive work rules imposed by their labor contracts; the "job banks" that require them to provide full pay to thousands of non-working "workers"; and the retiree fringe benefits that the labor contracts require. Foreign auto makers with non union plants in the South are thriving: ours, crippled by union infestation, in the North are nearly dead.

I suppose that we could slam the UAW for allowing management to agree to deal that were not good for the company.....if were were in never never land

The UAW looks out for the best interest of the workers, management looks out for the best interests of the company, and no union employee is paid any more or any less than both management and the union have agreed to.

This blaming the union for incompetent management is so ridiculous...I don't see how anybody but idiots, the apologists for incompetent corporate management and ideologues fall for it. The rest of us should not.

Odd isn't it that unionized companies (and industries) are generally doing far worse than others that are free of this infestatation.

Unions don't get their way by "persuading" management of anything. Instead they use coercion; the threat (and fact) of strikes, generally timed to have the worst effect on the business; and the extraordinary legal protections provided by their hirelings in the Democrat Party.

Union leaders generally represent themselves far more energetically that they do the workers they supposedly "protect". I've seen (and dealt) with them up close, and have overseen the negotiation of three large collective bargaining agreements.

How is it that the non union auto manufacturers in this country are doing well, while those with union infestation are failing?

however, this all looks different if one has come to the conclusion that economic growth and prosperity has come at the expense of the working man and/or the middle class. Studies prove that the middle class is rapidly shrinking, and the the gap between rich and poor is getting wider...

Maybe the problem with our nation is not that the union members have done a reasonably good job of holding on to their wage structure over the last generation , maybe it is that most everyone else has done worse.

It was once known to businessmen that it was in their long term best interest to take care that their employees best interests were served over the long haul, for their employees to have enough wages to be able to afford the products and services that the economy produces. This nonsense that it is in a businesses best interest to drive wages down as far as they can possibly be is spoken by idiots who don't understand the big picture. One day soon free market capitalists will figure out that they are responsible for the death of free market economics, they committed suicide the moment they decided that jobs where just another market, that employees were just another expense line.

a comment i had posted some time ago when the economy was roaring .

a local businessman was presented with the annual chamber of commerce award for "best business in the city" .

an interviewer asked him if he attributed his success to pleasing his customers ( you know : "the customer is always right " - "the customer comes first" ) .
he said that his most important duty was to "make my emplyees happy - saisfied employees are my most important asset - when my emplyees are treated with resspect , they'll treat the customers with respect . if i don't treat my employees with respect , my business is finished" .

if employers treat their employees as their most important asset , we'd likely have few - if any - unions .
hbg

The fact is that most companies today (mine included) do treat their employees with respect. That is one reason why unionism is shrinking so fast in this country. The power of the UAW is a relic of an earlier age. None of the new automobile manufacturing firms operating in this country are burdened with them - their workers have repeatedly voted down attempts by the UAW to organize them.

This of course explains why one of the chief political goals of the CIO is passage of what they call a "Fair Employment Act" -- legislation that would repeal the existing legal requirement for a secret ballot for workers subject to attempts to organize them into labor unions. With this in hand (and Nancy Pelosi has promised it) they will be able to go back to the goon squads and ballot box stuffing methods through which they grew in decades past.

In a global economy all companies and all people compete to a large extent in a global marketplace. If you don't have any more skills than (say) a Chinese or Mexican laborer, then you won't long be able to command a higher wage. That is the dilemma facing business and working people alike, in thios country and others.

I didn't realize that banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds were unionized. The majority of the bailout has gone for companies that are not unionized.
AIG - sure - must have been the union
The 100 odd banks that the TARP went to - all those union employees must be the cause.

What's odd is that the majority of the bailout money has gone to non unionized companies and then you complain about how the unionized companies are doing worse. The only reason they are doing worse is because they are not getting bailed out unlike the fat cats that don't have large unions at their companies.

The bailouts went to banks. The rationalization for them involved the prevention of a collapse in our monetary system and a long term collapse in public confidence - something that would likely have lasting, pervasive effects on the economy. These actions were loudly supported by both political parties (though I would have been more inclined to let more of the troubled banks fail). Unionism - one way or another - had nothing whatever to do with it. If you are attempting to imply that, had bank employees been unionized all this wouldn't have happened, you will have to do much more than that feeble contradiction (sort of like saying if Tuesday were Wednesday it would be red.) to persuade anyone who actually thinks about what you write.

parados :

good for you ! i think your comments are quite approppriate .
bail out the banks : it's the money , stupid !
let the automakers sink : it's union jobs , stupid !

probably the strongest unions are such groups as the american medical association and various manufacturers' associations - nobody ever wants to call them unions - even though they excert strong pressure on all governments - republican and democrat (and it's the same in canada and all over the world . apparently those "associations/unions" exist merely for "the public good" ) .

georgebob doesn't like your comments - no surprise there .
hbg

Nonsense. The status under the law of these organizations is quite different from that of unions. Indeed organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the AMA are explicitly prohibited by law from doing what unions do - namely the setting of prices for the services offered by their members. Indeed any attempt on their part to do so would violate anti trust laws making them eligible for serious fines and penalties and liable for punitive damages of up to three times any injury claimed.

Unions under the laws of most states are local monopolies with exclusive rights to negotiate on behalf of all workers of a firm subject to their infestation - often for both workers who are members and those who are not.
Moreover companies are compelled by law to negotiate with them - whether they want to or not - and are subject to various prior restraints on their ability to replace union workers. Neither the AMA nor the NAM have the power to do that.

Your analogy doesn't hold water.

Fantastic job of separating fact from fiction, George. The perfect bookend to Hawkeye's mindless assertions. Well done.

What do you think of Bush’s Band-Aid-Bridge?

Hope you had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year!

I'm glad to hear that the UAW eliminated the 'jobs bank'.


Here's an article detailing a new buyout plan from GM to elminate labor costs and cut jobs. Sure glad we gave them $15 billion dollars to keep jobs in America.

(ps...it's sweet, sweet irony that the package is so much smaller now than what it was before)


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http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/03/news/companies/gm_buyouts/index.htm


GM offers buyouts to all hourly workers
GM follows move by Chrysler to further cut labor costs, offering its factory workers chance to cash out.


February 3, 2009: 11:17 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Motors is offering buyouts to virtually all of its remaining hourly workers, becoming the latest automaker to try to cut labor costs by giving nervous workers an incentive to leave the company.

The move follows a similar move by Chrysler LLC, which made an offer to its hourly workers on Monday.

The GM (GM, Fortune 500) offer, which takes effect Friday, is less lucrative than the deal proposed by Chrysler, or even offers that GM has made to its hourly staff in the past. The automaker will give most of its 62,000 U.S. hourly workers $20,000, as well as a voucher good towards the purchase of a GM car worth $25,000.

In the past, GM offered between $45,000 to $62,500 to workers to retire early, and $140,000 to employees who left the company and agreed to give up post-retirement health care coverage. Those offers were all cash.

Chrylser's offer is for to $50,000 to virtually all of its 27,000 U.S. hourly workers, along with a voucher good for up to $25,000 on the purchase of a vehicle.

"Given our financial situation, we feel this is a responsible," said Sherrie Childers Arb, a GM spokeswoman. She said the company has not set a target for how many workers it wants or expects to take the offer.

The UAW agreed last week to eliminate a so-called "jobs bank" at GM as well as at Chrysler and Ford. The jobs bank had provided near full pay to UAW members whose positions were eliminated.

Childers Arb said the company believes a significant number of workers will take the offer, even if they had turned down previous, more generous offers, especially with the changes in their contract and the less certain outlook for GM.

"We hope as many who are eligible to take the program take it," she said.

Neither Chrysler nor the UAW are commenting on the buyout offer there. According to a letter from UAW vice president General Holiefield, the head of the union's negotiating team with Chrysler, he negotiated the new offer with Chrysler because of the rising concern among some members about the company's future prospects.

His letter said that many workers may have accepted the earlier package if they had known about the end of the jobs bank and other difficulties facing the company. The letter was posted on one of the UAW local's Web site.

Some retirement-eligible workers at Chrysler plants that are set to close could get up to $115,000 in cash in addition to the $25,000 voucher. The packages are similar to ones Chrysler offered to its hourly workers late last year, although the voucher replaces part of the cash that was offered in 2008.

GM offered buyouts to all 74,000 of its U.S. hourly workers in 2008 and had about 19,000 leave the company. Ford had about 7,000 of about 54,000 workers take various buyout offers. Chrysler did not have buyout figures immediately available.

If more workers take the latest offers from GM or Chrysler than the companies want to cut, the 2007 labor deal allows them to hire new workers at a significantly lower pay scale, and with far less lucrative benefits than those who were on staff when the 2007 deal was struck.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, said the fact that the latest offer includes a voucher for a car, rather than all cash, is a sign of the need to preserve cash, as well as the realization that workers might be willing to leave with less money in their pocket this time around.

"As people become more scared, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," he said. Cole said if enough workers chose to leave Chrysler, it could increase the chance that Chrysler would chose to combine with another automaker rather than hire new workers.

The GM offer comes ahead of sales reports from major automakers due later Tuesday what are expected to show exceptionally weak January sales. It could end up being the worst month for the industry since 1982.

Sales tracker Edmunds.com is forecasting that GM sales fell 38%, while it expects Chrysler sales will plunge 48% from a year ago, the largest drop expected among the major automakers.

GM and Chrysler were both in danger of running out of the cash they needed to operate at the end of last year until they received a $13.4 billion in emergency loan from the Treasury Department.

Under terms of the loan, both companies must show progress towards bringing its labor costs in line with those at the nonunion U.S. plants of Asian automakers such as Toyota Motor (TM) and Honda Motor (HMC), or risk having the federal loan recalled.