Another metric: Trump would have to do one Carrier-sized deal a week for 30 years to save as many jobs as Obama's auto bailout
In case anyone thinks that companies aren’t very excited about the evisceration of unions and labor regulations so that they can go back to pre-1935 ways of dealing with workers, let’s take a quick look at Chrysler. The recently bailed out auto company has instituted a 10-hour day that includes Saturday work and the switching of workers from day to evening shift and back. This cuts back on lunch breaks and eliminates overtime pay on Saturdays. This is a pretty awful way to work. UAW Local 869 has fought back. Alex Wassell has led the fight against this, including writing articles publicizing it and leading a picking line.
Chrysler has now fired Wassell, a man with a 20 year record of unblemished work. Why?
The company claimed Wassell had violated one of its “standards of conduct”: “engaging in, participating in, aiding or approving conduct constituting or appearing to constitute a conflict with the interests of the Company.”In other words, we fire you because we can and who’s going to stop us?
It’s possible of course that the National Labor Relations Board could step in. But with the recess appointments declared unconstitutional by a conservative hack judge, who knows if the NLRB will remain functional long enough to decide this. Even if it does decide in Wassell’s favor, we are looking at months if not over a year. What is he to do during that time?
Chrysler is clearly intimidating its labor force.
Billionaire investors like Mitt Romney wanted Detroit to fail. It was the federal government and unions that saved the industry that saved the economy. Remember that the next time some rich parasite starts blathering about "job creators."
Full transcript here.
Remember the Tom Tomorrow cartoon from around 2006 in which Bush and Cheney were actually hippie radicals who plotted back in the '60s to destroy conservatism once and for all by getting elected as republicans and then implementing policies so outrageous that the American people would rise up in disgust and reject conservatism forever?
Only no matter what they tried - blowing a trillion-dollar surplus, letting al Qaeda attack the towers, invading Iraq to steal its oil, torturing innocent detainees, refusing to rescue New Orleans - Americans just kept cheering.
Sometimes the Romney campaign sounds just that ludicrous.
Igor Volsky at Think Progress:
During an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday morning, Mitt Romney surrogate and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R) argued that President Obama did not have the requisite business experience to create jobs because he was “smoking something” in Hawaii:
An even bigger accomplishment in the auto restructuring, and one on which the administration is even more unwilling to focus, for obvious reasons, was the action the president took once he realized (correctly) that that both the management and boards of GM and Chrysler were incompetent and unworthy of investment. Obama, through car czar Steve Rattner, did what a truly great CEO or private-equity guy would do ... he fired them, and brought in new guys from outside Detroit. That was a huge risk, undertaken at lightning speed, which all of the traditionalists in the industry thought was crazy.
But in one fell swoop, he fixed fifty years of Detroit incompetence at the highest levels.
SNIP
To put it another way, Obama has done two private-equity deals in his life. They were bigger than the sum total of everything Mitt Romney has ever done, and they worked better and faster ... and all the benefit accrued to the nation at large, no skim-off required.
That level of direct involvement and decision-making, like his direct decision to "go" on Osama bin Laden, shows that Obama actually has great courage and decisiveness when the chips are down and a big decision must be made.
What’s clear from a review of the public record during his management of the private-equity firm Bain Capital from 1985 to 1999 is that Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for its investors. He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain. Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses.
What’s less clear is how his skills are relevant to the job of overseeing the U.S. economy, strengthening competitiveness and looking out for the welfare of the general public, especially the middle class.
Current's The War Room with Jennifer Granholm won't ever be Rachel or Keith, but it's improving slowly but steadily. Although at least once an episode I have to yell at the former governor of Michigan to stop scheduling evil repugs like Bay Buchanan and that horrible California state chair, she makes up for it with superb segments like these.
It's cable, Jen - you can say "lying motherfucker."
Is this man running for governor of Michigan and if not why not?
Last week was the 75th Anniversary of the Flint Strike that forced the auto industry to accept collective bargaining with the UAW. The Big Three's cave led directly to the capitulation of the steel industry shortly thereafter.
Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:
On (Feb. 11) in 1937, the Flint Sit-Down strike ended after General Motors recognized the United Auto Workers at the bargaining agent for GM employees. This titanic victory legitimized the AFL and the CIO more broades. The UAW’s militant organizers had to teach unionism to workers at the same time that they battled the auto companies.
The sit-down strike put the company in a tricky position. Violence against the strikers threatened the capital of the plant itself, making a forceful eviction potentially costly. However, the success of the Fisher Body occupiers in galvanizing attention led to a huge wave of workers signing up for UAW membership and spawned radical actions throughout the GM system. In response, on January 11, GM ordered the city’s compliant police force to attack the occupiers. But the workers inside began spraying fire hoses and hurling metal objects onto the police below, quickly convincing GM that a frontal assault was not a good idea.
GM also hoped to convince the state or federal government to crack down, in the style of what corporations might soon call “the good old days.” Vice-President John Nance Garner wanted to send in the military to crush the strikers (side note, how disastrous would a Garner presidency have been had FDR not run for the 3rd term in 1940? Horrible). GM attempted to use an injunction to declare the sit-down strike illegal. A judge complied but UAW officials discovered he owned $200,000 in GM stock, which disqualified him from ruling on GM-related cases. More importantly, Frank Murphy took over as governor of Michigan. A committed New Dealer, Murphy has previously been the pro-working class mayor Detroit. He would later serve as Attorney General for Roosevelt and Supreme Court justice, where he dissented strongly in Korematsu v. U.S. In fact, the UAW had originally hoped to time the sit-in to coincide with Murphy taking office. Finally, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rejected federal intervention out of hand, despite the desires of his Dixiecrat Vice-President.
The strike worked because it galvanized the community. While workers might have feared for their jobs by joining the UAW in 1936, after the strike started, it unleashed enormous pent-up desires for justice, decent wages, and good working conditions within the people of Flint. The UAW did an outstanding job of tapping into the community. An women’s auxiliary quickly formed to support the workers inside, bringing them food, clean clothing, newspapers, and other items to wile away the long days of boredom inside the plant. While the whole idea of a women’s auxiliary reinforces the male-dominated single-income family, it was 1937 so it was a good strategy at the time. The workers both inside and outside the plant also showed a tremendous amount of discipline. Conditions inside the plant could have deteriorated quickly, giving the police a clear reason to evict the strikers. Strong leadership within the UAW and first-rate organizers worked closely with the workers and community to stay on message, keep the pressure on GM, and not allow frustrations to boil over in counter-productive ways. Today, In a world where a return to street-based organizing is giving anarchist-fringe groups room to hijack movements and engage in personally satisfying violence at the expense of larger movements, the actions of the UAW in 1937 should provide a lesson on how to organize. Self-discipline and community-discipline are both key tenets of successful organizing campaigns.
Another key lesson of the GM strike is the absolutely vital role state and federal governments play in deciding labor battles. Labor had been routinely crushed by the state before 1933. During the GM strike it was the neutral and even pro-labor attitudes of Murphy and Roosevelt that allowed the UAW to win. Recently, in a comment to one of my labor posts, a libertarian linked to a piece arguing that the state actually prevents unions from succeeding when it gets involved in labor disputes. This was patently absurd because the effect of the state depends entirely on which side it takes in the conflict. Traditionally, the American state had oppressed workers. The Roosevelt years saw a marked change in this attitude. Not surprisingly, millions of Americans joined unions. This seems self-evident, yet people seem to misunderstand this basic equation.
"And all you republicans who screamed communism and that I was destroying the country? Yeah, Fuck You."
No, of course he didn't say that. But he should have.
Especially as he managed to spend four whole minutes congratulating auto workers without once mentioning the single most salient fact about auto workers: their union.
Huge opportunity missed. Deliberately?
Full transcript here.
It cannot be emphasized enough that the auto "bailout" that saved the American car industry and thousands of American jobs was bitterly, savagely opposed by every rethuglican in Congress. Even today, with the bailout an unmitigated success, rethuglicans can't bring themselves to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it.
Yes, rethuglicans hate America. I don't ever care why anymore.
While everybody's bitching about AIG's bonuses and Citigroup's executive payouts, the same Obama administration that's handing the U.S. treasury over to Wall Street pirates is gutting the last bastion of good union manufacturing jobs in the country.
The madness of the approach adopted by the Johnson and Nixon administrations to war in Vietnam was summed up by the American major who said after the destruction of the Vietnamese village of Ben Tre: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
The madness of the approach adopted by the Bush and Obama administrations to the renewal of the American auto industry has been summed up by the Treasury Department's latest statement on the "restructurings" of the Chrysler and General Motors automotive companies -- which are shaping up as plans for factory closings, mass layoffs and the shuttering of hundreds of car dealerships in communities across the country: "The Administration's commitment to this industry has given both companies a new lease on life."
It may be true that the tens of billions in federal tax dollars that are being pumped into Chrysler and General Motors will save the names of these companies. But the auto-industry "restructuring" is not saving auto plants that have been targeted for closing, tens of thousands of auto workers who face layoffs, auto dealers who are being "consolidated" out of business and perhaps 100,000 service and repair employees who are soon to be jobless.
SNIP
Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette says he and other members of Congress were briefed by top administration officials prior to the president's national address about the future of Chrysler. "Members of Congress on the call were assured that there would be no permanent plant closings... We were also assured that no jobs would be lost," says LaTourette, a Republican.
Democrat Dennis Kucinich, another Ohio congressman who was briefed, told the Plain Dealer he "is struggling even to understand why the administration would tell him and others something that wasn't true." Says Kucinich: "To me, it really becomes a question of credibility."
The question of credibility remains unsettled.
An auto industry "bailout" that shutters productive factories and dealerships, lays off tens of thousands of auto workers and perhaps 100,000 dealer employees, is not change that we can believe in. The Obama administration is headed in the wrong direction on this one.
The president needs to change course.
Instead of spending billions to steer America toward fewer jobs, fewer factories and fewer dealerships, the Obama administration should stop spinning and start investing in the workers, the small businesses and the communities that have always been the heart and soul of America's auto industry.
Chrysler is closing every single one of its 30 manufacturing plants until at least January 19.
GM, Toyota and Honda are also cutting production.
Is this how it seemed, those first months after Black Friday in September '29? A roller-coaster of bad-news panic, alleviated by reassurances from Those In Charge, followed by more bad news, followed by promises of a quick fix, followed by more bad news .... each short rise out of each ever-deeper trough accompanied by hope that this time, really, somebody will do something?
If Obama really does sign a massive emergency economic recovery bill at one minute after noon on January 20, will it be too late?
(UPDATE, 6:21 a.m.:Countdown has the incriminating memo.)
Let it be carved in stone in a prominent political spot that when the fate of the nation's economy lay in the hands of Senator Mitchell McConnell, he stood before Congress and told Kentucky's 82,000 auto workers and their families to fuck off and die.
Let it be written, also, that he did it not out of principle, not out of a belief that killing the auto industry would help the economy in the long term, not even out of personal animus against Kentuckians who each work harder every day than little mitchie has worked in his entire worthless life.
No, he did it because he'd rather bring on another Great Depression than miss an opportunity to destroy America's unions.
Kevin Drum identifies the idiocy of Senate republicans scuttling an economy-saving bill over a meaningless 18 months.
Apparently Democrats and the UAW had agreed to deep wage cuts and work rule changes, but it still wasn't enough:The automakers would [] have been required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees based in the United States, and the companies would have to impose equivalent work rules.
It was over this proposal that the talks ultimately deadlocked with Republicans demanding that the automakers meet that goal by a certain date in 2009 and Democrats and the union urging that the deadline wait until 2011 when the U.A.W. contract expires.
This is nuts. If you're just flatly against the bailout, fine. Vote against it. But if the wage cuts, along with the debt-for-equity swap that was also part of the bill, were enough to bring you around, why would you cavil at the cuts happening in 2011 instead of the end of 2009? It's only about an 18 month difference, and cutting wages makes a lot more sense in 2011 than it does in the middle of a massive recession anyway.
Another shining moment in the history of the modern GOP. Ideology uber alles.
Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University, notes that one of the ugliest aspects of the continued debate over the Big Three has been a virulent, thinly cloaked antiworker narrative.
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson recently wrote that a GM bankruptcy could serve as a reminder to all of the "social costs of...overpriced unionized labor." He and other finger-wagging pundits, politicians and free-market adherents have blamed unionized workers (with their solid wages and benefits) for their complicity in the crisis GM is facing.
These arguments falsely vilify working people and stem from a superficial understanding of the modern automotive industry. Historically, the auto industry has provided good middle-class jobs that have come with high wages, impressive healthcare and pension benefits packages, disability and overtime pay--the kinds of jobs that are in too short supply in today's economy.
But in recent decades, much of GM's manufacturing has been moved to nonunion parts plants in the South, allowing the company to drive down labor costs by avoiding United Auto Workers strongholds in the industrial Midwest. This, coupled with last year's agreement by the UAW to swallow concessions on a two-tiered pay scale, has dramatically lowered labor costs for GM. The UAW has also agreed to take over retiree health costs in 2010. These concessions--opposed by many union members for creating a divided workforce--have allowed GM to close the labor cost gap significantly with foreign manufacturers like Toyota. Analysts estimate that the 2007 agreement has saved GM $500 million in labor costs since its signing, and the company is set to save $4 billion annually starting in 2010.
Before there was talk of a "transformational presidency," Barack Obama needed a transformational moment. It came in February at a sprawling General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, where the Illinois senator--trailed by a press corps skeptical about his ability to appeal to white union members--electrified thousands of autoworkers with a populist promise of infrastructure investment, new trade policies and a future for American manufacturing.
His pre-Wisconsin primary vow to defend auto plants offered a lifeline to workers who knew that their industry--battered by years of bad CEO decisions, shortsighted federal energy policies and dysfunctional trade deals--was teetering on the brink of the disaster that unfolded as the year progressed. Days after Obama spoke to them, the autoworkers of Janesville voted in overwhelming numbers to make him the Democratic presidential nominee. It was a critical moment for the candidate, one that he would refer to repeatedly as the campaign progressed toward the November 4 election. Obama and his aides, taking counsel from Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, had picked the right room in the house of labor in which to make their move.
Seventy-three years earlier, United Auto Workers Federal Labor Union No. 19324 met near the plant where Obama spoke, forming a piece of the quilt of local unions that would become the nation's most powerful industrial organization. Today Janesville's UAW members, like their more than 1 million brothers and sisters nationwide, are members of a union that has for decades pushed the labor movement, the Democratic Party and the government to cross lines of racial and regional division in pursuit of social justice, sound yet humane economic principles and international solidarity
It was the UAW that fought for national healthcare and pensions and, when those policy initiatives were blocked by reactionary Congresses, forced corporate America to create a social safety net for workers and retirees that would form the model for union and nonunion workplaces across the country.
It was the UAW that fought government- and corporate-sanctioned racial discrimination, integrating Southern factories, supporting the 1963 March on Washington and bailing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail in Alabama.
It was the UAW that withdrew from the AFL-CIO in the 1960s and '70s rather than take labor's big right turn; the UAW that opposed the Vietnam War; set up a research department that studied the cost of bloated military budgets to domestic progress; opposed apartheid in South Africa with such passion that when Nelson Mandela toured the United States after his release from prison, he insisted on celebrating with Dearborn's UAW Local 600.
And it was the UAW that, three decades ago, scored Detroit for failing to design and produce small fuel-efficient vehicles as a response to rising oil prices and mounting foreign competition.
To a far greater extent than the auto companies, parts suppliers and distribution networks it has organized, the UAW has stood on the side of progress--never perfectly, as union dissidents have noted over the years, but invariably with an eye to providing economic security for working families and a future for communities in every region of the country that are threatened by a severe global economic crisis.
Remarkably, however, it is the UAW that is under attack. Despite the union's sweeping, some argue draconian, concessions to keep the auto giants competitive--lowering company costs to such an extent that a vehicle produced in a UAW plant is now competitive with one produced in a nonunion one--a primary argument for delaying a federal bailout of the auto giants is the union.
SNIP
The strategy of bankrupting the Big Three to break the UAW will not merely destabilize the auto industry. It will tear the heart out of a bulwark of industrial unionism and weaken a labor movement that economic royalists have attacked for decades as part of a broad campaign to weaken social and economic gains in every region of the United States.
Anyone who think that breaking the UAW will only weaken the circumstances of autoworkers is missing the point of the royalist enterprise, which is to weaken the ability of all American workers to demand fair pay and benefits. As such, almost any bailout would be better than bankruptcy, but the best bailout is one that--perhaps by giving the UAW a piece of the action and placing union representatives on corporate boards, perhaps by giving states a stake--strengthens the hand of the one player in the auto industry that is committed to assuring that federal dollars are spent to defend the interests of workers and retirees while modernizing an industry Obama calls "the backbone of American manufacturing."
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