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Friday, December 5. 2008
A Bridge to Detroit
For the better part of the morning the Senate hearings on the Big Three Bridge Loan, which has now grown from 25 billion to 34 billion, has been glued on the two TV’s in my sight lines. Got it on MSNBC and C-SPAN. And this is a farce of great proportions.The first observation, and it’s so clear even the talking heads had to comment on it, when the financial sector was collapsing and companies like Lehman Brothers were coming for over four times the amount the entire auto industry is asking for, they didn’t have to beg, weren’t turned away and weren’t asked if they would sell their private jets. The people who testified before the Senate didn’t have to ride to Washington in a convoy of hybrid vehicles.
Unlike the hearings for the automakers, when the financial crisis was being debated in Congress three months ago, members of the Bush Administration came before Congress to convince that body foisting a trillion dollars — that’s $1,000,000,000,0000 — into their coffers was the right thing to do. Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson lobbied passionately for it and when the House of Representatives rejected the plan, Bernanke and Paulson came back and lobbied even more passionately.
Not so with the Big Three automakers.
And the financial companies, who don’t create anything in America, in fact, they don’t create wealth, other than to move it from one pocket to another, weren’t subject to the same scrutiny as the Big Three automakers and now, the UAW. This is the farce. Three companies, that directly and indirectly, support the jobs of over three million people in this country and actually manufacture tangible goods, are subject to a public flogging no business has had to tolerate when asking the federal government for help.
It’s a double standard that chills the soul because it punishes the middle class. What’s the difference? There are many, but they don’t really speak to the financial problems. The big difference — the only difference that Republicans are concerned with — is the influence of the United Autoworkers Union, the UAW.One of the strongest, most influential unions in America, the UAW almost always supports Democrats in national elections and this angers the Republican Party. If there were no unions involved, or at least not the UAW, this hearing would not be taking place and the Big Three would have received the original 25 billion when they first asked for it.
Republicans won’t admit it though, there are millions of UAW members spread across the United States, but they would like nothing better than to see the Big Three go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the simple reason that if they did, the labor contracts with the union could be abrogated, broken and if that took place, it would diffuse the power of the UAW, if not dissolve the union altogether.
That’s why opponents of the Big Three Bridge Loan keep spouting the lie that the average UAW worker has an average salary of $70 per hour or higher, depending on which liar is selling the lie. The average salary, with benefits included, is actually about half that amount.
Senator Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee, brought it up in the hearings. Corker specifically brought up cutting out the benefits UAW members enjoy. Corker doesn’t say, “Let’s get rid of the union,” he asked UAW President Ron Gettelfinger would he cut 50% of the benefits the people he represents receive.Fifty-per cent. Corker really wasn’t too concerned with the testimony of the companies themselves; in fact he praised two of them, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Alan Mulally of Ford, for being “honest brokers.” Then he ripped into the union representative.
The Right likes to call the benefits “legacy costs,” as in benefits to people who no longer work for the automakers — retirees. Here’s the skinny on pension benefits and why the call for the automakers to eliminate them is bullshit. When the contracts that created the pensions were first drawn up and agreed upon, the automakers were supposed to be matching the employee contributions as the employee was making the contributions. So, when (fictional) Bob Smith put in his 50 bucks, Big Three Auto Company matched it with their contribution at the same time.
As it happens, when (fictional) Bob Smith and his fellow employees were making their contributions to their pensions — that they earned — the automakers were … err … putting off their contributions for another day. Well, now that day, today, is here and they are in Washington, cap in hand, asking for handouts.
Kudos to the CEO’s of the Big Three though for not blaming the current crisis on the union or “legacy costs.” No, squarely, they put this current crisis on the fact that people stopped buying cars once the credit crisis hit. Their sales are down over 30% from the same time last year — General Motors is down 45% — due, not because employees are getting health care and pension benefits, but because the economy has gone south and car buyers cannot get car loans. That’s why the Big Three are in trouble and nearly every economist has said as much, including a rather influential man by the name of Dr. Mark Zandi.He gave no kudos to the Big Three, but did say that A) not giving the U.S. automakers the loans would spell disaster; B) the European and Asian nations are bailing out their automakers; C) the problem isn’t “legacy costs” or even the CEO’s flying to Washington in private jets: it’s the economy.
I’ll give Chrysler Chairman Robert Nardelli kudos though. He went on Hardball With Chris Matthews and said unequivocally labor costs were not the problem, not for current employees or “legacy costs.”
Senator Bob Casey, Democrat from Pennsylvania, finally told, on the record, what this hearing was all about for the Republican Party, the dissolution of the United Autoworkers Union. Casey brought up the 150,000 auto workers who have already lost their jobs in the past eight years, reminded everyone the union members had already made many concessions in the past eight years and reminded everyone the financial industry wasn’t subjected to the same number of questions and scrutiny when it was before Congress asking for a bailout.
More importantly, Casey pointed out it was a lie that the average union auto worker made $70-plus per hour.Senator Jon Tester, the farmer from Montana, took Casey’s indignation even further, ripping the financial institutions that took the hundreds of billions of dollars, meant to shore up the nation’s lenders, and used that money to buy up other financial institutions and making it even more difficult for anyone to get a loan, calling the leaders of the financial institutions, “those birds.”
Gives me a smile to see at least two Democrats get up and tell it like it is: It’s a joke!
And I’ll just leave it right there, despite all that could still be said on the subject. Bottom line, the middle class — the working class, the people who don’t wear ties to work everyday — are being told, by the Republicans, they need to take it on the chin — again.
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