Kudos to the good congresspersons!

I've never been a fan of unions but ever since I was forced to pay dues to an union I chose not to belong in (as a grad student teaching undergrads) I've positively disliked them.

They called the 1% they pocketed from my meager teaching fees "agency fee".

To add insult to injury, they kept sending my little postcards with message going something like this: "since you are paying agency fee, you might as well should just join the union."

So I say, fuck them all!

Im surprised that no one seems to realize what will happen to the U.S. economy if another few million or so people find themselves suddenly without jobs. You people do realize that this economy runs on consumer spending and without that we're basically looking a full on depression in the face. SO if millions of more people no longer have the means to buy anything then how is that going to help us prop up this ailing economy?

I might be mistaken, I've only worked in a unionized job once, but I thought unions were supposed to be run by the workers and the workers were the ones who elected their union representatives who are suppose to represent and respond to the will of the workers. And if those reps. don't do the bidding of the labor force then can't the workers vote them out of their respective seats?

What I wonder is if the "Big 3" are forced into bankruptcy, and there are lots of huge auto assembly plants and other assets going at bargain prices and workers who are looking for jobs and states willing to make any kind of concession in order to get those jobs and keep those workers up North, what then will happen to all of the "deals" these Southern senators have to build new auto plants in their home states states. It seems to me it's better (for these Repub senators and their states) to keep their own competitive set strong rather than basically leveling the playing field for everyone.

Hyundai does not pay those wages. look into their wage scale for a good cry. I spoke to a fulltime, with overtime worker at the Montgomery Hyundai plant who made less than $25,000 in a year and had his children on state health insurance. No health insurance at all for his wife. I could not believe these southern Senators: I'm for workers, against Unions!! Bailout are against conservative values!! Every one of them supported huge payments to get those foreign commpanies into their states. I also understand that the foreign countries are bailing out their own car companies.

The claim was that UAW workers earn "significantly more" than non-UAW workers. Depending on your definition of "significant", that opinion may vary. But the claim of $73 per hour is way out of whack, and here's one article breaking it down:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1026e955-541c-4aa6-bcf2-56dfc3323682

Deeply Posted This on his blog Yesterday in the wee hours of the morning.

3:10 Am EST Friday, December 12, 2008

It is the Civil War all over again and The North Just Lost.

Way to go and hurrah for the tassel toed Wall Street Weasels and the Southern Crackers Too. Ever since the Rat aka Ronald Reagan went after the Air Traffic Controllers the Republican Party has heightened their agenda of destroying the unions in America. This means destroying business, the means of production, the driving consumption force of the American economy and the middle class. Way To Go Republicans. You have joined the South, turned traitor to your nation and have unleashed a rampage of economic despair and destruction.

The unions: As much as anyone who thinks he is special, unique, better, superior, or harder working wishes to think he does not need unions..he does. Without the union movement there would have been no middle class in America, without the closed shop there would have been no unions.

For ever the south has been against Unions. It was a land of boobs and bubbas and poverty and green teeth despair. And forever the greed besotted Republicans have been against the working man in America. Today a few Senators from southern states, the senate,appropriately the most unrepresentative body in the Congress,...a branch of the legislature where itty bitty backward states have the same voice as big states...have voted against the UAW, the people, and the middle class, because they say the UAW contracts pay workers too much...more per hour than the sweetheart deals the same senator's states have given to foreign manufactures.

What can one say? Rampant hypocrisy on the part of senators Shelby and company as they support foreign auto company subsidies in their states and try to wipe out the unions in the North. Rampant sleaze as they use the same destruction of the wage base of the nation they gave to BMW and Mercedes and Toyota and Honda to now destroy the unions of the North.

Their vote was not so much a vote against poorly run companies as it was a vote against the working men and women of America and the union movement. The South Will Rise Again. *uck the South!

It is the Civil War all over again and The North Just Lost.

The Republicans are clamoring to kill the auto industry in the US, and send all its workers into bankruptcy if they don't accept whatever lower wages foreign autoworkers get.

Why do Republicans hate America?

Good story. I live in Tennessee; Bob Corker is my Senator. Up until now, he's been pretty independent-minded, for a Republican, so needless to say his derailing of the auto bailout disappointed me mightily.

Corker might be excited about the VW plant coming to Chattanooga but he forgets that General Motors is already the largest employer in Spring Hill, TN, at the Saturn plant. Spring Hill was once the pride of Tennessee, a growing and prosperous community symbolic of the "New South." Last night's local TV broadcasts were all over the news that 2,000 people would be layed off in Spring Hill, just in time for Christmas.

Thanks, Senator Corker. And thanks to all the Tennesseans who voted for this guy because they were afraid that Harold Ford Jr. would steal your white women.

Elections have consequences.