"spurious claims" that UAW make more than Foreign Auto employees in US: Please supply your information sources of this. Where is this claim coming from?

1) If they were not paid more, then foreign automotive makers would not locate in right-to-work states to take advantage of "lower" labor costs. Either auto manufacturers know something you don't, or you're full of shit. Likely the latter.

2) A long-time member of the teamsters union who recently accepted a 15% paycut and some company stock in order to help keep his company in business, a contract negotiated by the tough Teamsters lawyer Hoffa, doesn't support this fucking bailout. His comment: to get money from the United States, those fucking companies should have to do the following: 1) insist on paycuts and sacrifice from everyone from executives, to middle management, to line workers and 2) bring home the work they sent overseas TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF LOWER LABOR COSTS.

Damn, in your strong desire to create bad guys, can you please still keep a BRAIN? Thanks!

states ever get...they vote themselves into getting screwed and they vote their republican daddies/heroes ie elected representatives.

Call it ignorance or stupidity but it happens. Delay would have still been reelected if the media had not exposed his crimes. He could put pesticide in their kids lunches and they'd still vote for him.

These people BELIEVE it's unions that hurt them when in reality they are being screwed over and over and over by people like Corker. It is as sad as it is depressing.

Why is this news?

The anti-union sentiment is coming from the politicians. I live in Middle Tennessee, along that I-65 corridor, and it's all about jobs. People I speak to want the bailout so the GM plant in Spring Hill doesn't have to close. Spring Hill was a boom town ten years ago, and a lot of clapboard houses and strip malls would leave it a ghost town. Most people here aren't in a union and don't really think about it much; they want jobs, whether they come from foreign or domestic auto manufacturers. Otherwise, they're opposed to all bailouts without discrimination.

disapproval by Americans for this bailout is what you need to look at.

Also, I'd notice that BofA which isn't union is laying off 35,000.

Give me a break.

Dear Salon,

The CBC just ran a story where it compared GM wages to Honda employee wages. (I'm doing this from memory, so please forgive any inaccuracies). GM pays about $73/worker, vs. about $49 worker for Honda. It breaks down like this: the GM workers make about $28/hr vs. $26/hr for Honda. The GM people are paid about an additional $25/hr for various health benefits vs. about $20/hr for the Honda employees. The real difference in the cost per worker is on the "legacy benefits" where the GM people end up costing a lot more. I don't know anything about the car industry, but this seems to be money paid to keep retired people going and, I assume, money that goes to workers' pensions. Of course, the Big Three have also been around a lot longer and have a lot more retired worker than the non-American companies. So, in short, the CBC story backs up the idea that non-unionized and unionized employees don't make that much different in terms of take-home pay.

Sincerely

Shaun

The unions have been stealing money from their members and using it in elections againt republicans.

I am glad someonf finally started telling people that ran their companies into the ground "NO". I should have happened a few months ago, and I hope it continues.

Since the red states all get way more tax money from Washington than they send in, let those cracker motherfuckers have at it. Who needs them?

While we are at it, I am for killing all hedge fund managers as well. Say at half-time, during the Super Bowl.

No, I am no kidding.

... and they can shed their existing obligations -- including the union contracts -- and reorganize as new companies with no legacy labor costs ... would they then be able to compete with the foreign company labor costs, and would that make them competitive again with the Southern state factories?

If so, the southern Senators could win this battle, but end up losing the war.

In the long run, though, it's hard to imagine that today's battlefield will still be around tomorrow. This is big, no? The whole map for the whole came could get totally redrawn, this time around. Maybe what we need to do is provide national health insurance for every citizen and adequate national retirement for every old person, and then let all our companies in every industry shed those costs and compete on that basis -- paying for skills and work today, not paying to support yesterday's workforce. It might allow for a level playing field and a more rational outcome.

i meant to say

No, I am NOT kidding.

Sir, respectfully, even using your math, which isn't correct according to informaiton I've read, that's a SUBSTANTIAL difference in hourly wages just for active workers. You must not be in business if you consider that to be insignificant. That is quite damned significant in terms of labor costs. *boggling at your conclusion*

In any case, the facts of *amount* are irrelevant. If the UAW had a choice (and it did, it could have negotiated differently and agreed to take some paycuts), then the Senators who asked them to were not the only ones that had a choice. Oh, wait. They're gambling on getting TARP money, which they probably will.

Gee, they keep their salary and get bailout funds. Not stupid of them. Stupid of us if we allow it to happen. But wait, we can't do anything because TARP is at the discretion of Paulson, et al and we don't even have representation to save us from it.

the folks up in Michigan must be lazy good-for-nothings that only leach off the domestic automakers because of the cursed unions. Have the Senators gone into the plants and talked with the workers there? Nowhere do I sense a commonality with the workers, despite our shared citizenship, our human connections to family, community, and country.

I sense a regional and parochial fixation among these politicians, as well as the obvious partisan and ideological coloration. They are willing to gamble with literally a few million jobs, a few million families, and further gamble that such a loss of jobs would not push the economy past a tipping point into a hopeless depression. This because the seem to be unable to be Americans, and human beings, first.

If the argument goes that GM is too far gone already, what is called for is bold outside-the-box thinking. Why not forcibly merge GM with the Silicon Valley green car company startups like Tesla, and combine the economies of scale that the Silicon Valley people obviously need with the radical redesign thinking that GM obviously is lacking? And make the Silicon Valley people the top management, because it's ideas that have real value in the long run.