When the minimum wage was stagnant for decades and the Gringrich Republicans stopped health care reform for the nation, unions continued to fight for a living wage and appropriate benefits for working people. It's not that auto workers are OVER paid today; it's that the rest of working people are UNDER paid!

That said, I'm still ambivalent about the proposed bailout, even if TARP funds are used. I look at it this way: If we have $15 billion (or $25 or $35 billion) to inject into the economy to protect real people's jobs and businesses, what is the best way to spend it? Maybe it shouldn't be spent saving the Big 3, given their abismal track record. A few billion (billion! I still can't believe we're talking about billions) to support and develop 21st century industries, another few billion for education and training for workers for these new industries, and another few billion for health care would, it stands to reasons, go a long way toward stabilizing the economy and helping real people. We have never spent billions on any of these things. What would happen if we did?

Democrats permitted Reagan to kill PATCO without much complaint and subsequently most labor protection since. And, they continue to let conservatives get away with this incredible anti-labor bias without challenge. One could make a good case for Democrats being responsible for a good many of the ills we now suffer. Furthermore, given Obama's stance on several recent issues, I hold little hope that a Democratic majority will have any spine to stand up to conservative hatred of the working class in America.

Remember the Republicans are asking the union to lower their wages from the slavelike $150,000 total compensation to the pyramid-builders wage of $90,000. What Victorian cruelty!!

No Detroit autoworker is making $72 an hour. The genius who came up with that number was folding in not only current employees' health benefits and pension plans, but retired workers' pension plans as well.

And please note that no one ever folds in whatever health benefits the Toyota worker in Tennessee gets or whatever retirement benefits they get when comparing the wages. Detroit's and Alabama's hourly wages aren't that far from each other -- it's the benefits that differ.

Another argument for universal healthcare as far as I'm concerned.

I think it's a slightly unfair criticize why Morgan Stanley and Citibank rank and file employees haven't had their pay cut. It's true they haven't, but many of them are not going to have their jobs this coming year. If that's not a cut, I don't know what is.

top UAW members' wage is $28 per hour.

average GM worker's pay is $39.68 per hour, including base pay, overtime, shift differential, vacation pay, etc. http://www.media.gm.com/manufacturing/handbook/other_benefits.pdf that works out to 64K per year.

where does the bogus 150K/90K number come from? republican fuzzy math. Total labor costs per hour are that $39.68 plus "$33.58 in benefits for each active hour worked" http://www.media.gm.com/manufacturing/handbook/other_benefits.pdf (which is still less than $120k per year, of course)

breaking down that $33.58:

first: legally required benefits like SS, medicare, unemployment, workmans' comp, etc.

second: other benefits; healthcare, pension, disability, etc.

third: payments to retired workers for pensions and healthcare.

note that third item: payments to RETIRED workers. even for a republican it's hard to claim that payments to thousands of folks who were working 20 years ago constitute pay to a much smaller number workers who are currently working. if you wanted to, you could calculate what the annual compensation for those retired workers was, including their current payments, but that's not what's being argued.

GM et al never said they were paying $73 an hour to current employees. They said, their total labor costs were $73 an hour currently worked. "The new cost includes laborers' wages of $29.78 per hour, plus benefits, pensions and the cost of providing health care to more than 432,000 GM retirees, GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said." http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081119/fact_check_autos_labor_costs.html?.v=1

when you exclude those payments to retirees from current wages and benefits, in fact the difference in total compensation between UAW workers and nonunion workers at Toyota or Honda in the south ends up being only a couple bucks an hour.

of course, to a diehard republican, it makes total sense to financially penalize current blue collar workers for payments to former employees, contracted to by the employer. whereas, of course, to cover the retirees' healthcare and pension from federal taxes, would be socialist redistribution of wealth, etc. etc. etc.

...the overpaid executives are. At the Big Three and other corporations. These sons of the Confederacy are so hateful they don't understand this.

They won't let the facts get in the way of their excessive vindictiveness.

It is simply a fact that higher labor costs put GM and Chrysler at a competitive disadvantage. That said, this is one of many problems. Simply put, current management has been terrible and needs to go. Bring in new talent with new ideas. On the other hand, Citi, AIG, and Morgan Stanley have a unique set of problems. One problem they do not have is excessive labor costs among the rank-and-file that prohibit them from competing successfully around the world. That’s why no one asked them to cut rank-and-file salaries in exchange for government handouts. Executive compensation is another subject entirely.

Completely agree and disagree simultaneously. Apart from management issues, and whether it's the Big 3 or financial companies, a simple fact remains: the rest of the developed, industrialized world has the health care and pension systems we lack. Of course our costs are higher. So, yes, GM and Chrysler are at a competitive disadvantage, but only because of the refusal by the trogloditic right to acknowledge the need for these things. Again, let me repeat, whether it's the Big 3, AIG, Citi or anyone else, the key point is the matter of national health and retirement benefits.

As for your last statement regarding cutting rank-and-file salaries, you're fooling yourself if you think this isn't an attack on labor unions. Of course it is.