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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
but if reliability of product were the criteria for keeping the workers' jobs, saving the autoworkers would be waaaaaaay ahead of saving the financial workers. the only industry whose products crash more than the financial industry is consumer digital electronics.
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!!
hahaha. like you could trust republicans even after you bought them.
"In October 1980, PATCO [Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization] met with candidate Reagan and explained their issues and concerns to him. He wrote them a letter agreeing to support them and address their concerns if elected. Subsequently, PATCO was one of the very few labor unions that endorsed his candidacy (the others being the Teamsters and the Air Line Pilots Association)." http://www.massnurses.org/labor/education/2006/sept/patco.htm
"Two days after PATCO's illegal Aug. 3, 1981, walkout over pay scales, benefits and working conditions, an angry President ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to fire 11,345 strikers and hire replacements. Only about 500 PATCO members were rehired; the rest are permanently blackballed."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962487,00.html
Uh oh we screwed up... Who should we blame?
HTWW: "I'm with Barney Frank on this one: No one asked the rank-and-file employees of Citigroup or AIG or Morgan-Stanley to cut their salaries in exchange for government handouts. Assembly-line workers at GM and Chrysler, on the other hand, must tighten their belts."
The fundamental question regarding a GM and Chrysler bailout is whether the funds will enable a restructuring that can transform US automakers into competitive and profitable companies in a global marketplace. 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.
This is a national security issue. During WWI and WWII every manufacturing facility in the United States was converted to wartime use. Just how would the United States of America respond to a security crisis without the manufacturing facilities and knowledge to build mechanized units? Should we buy them from our enemies? And do Republicans honestly think our enemies would sell us the equipment necessary to defeat them?
Are Republicans seriously willing to liquidate a national asset that could be critical for survival in the event of an all-out war? Shall we shut down our steel industry too?
Are they *insane*?
It would be interesting to total all the types and forms of subsidies given to foreign automakers to get them to build their plants in the South.
Free land, eminent domain seizures, low rate loans, reduced or completely forgiven taxes, road construction necessitated by plant construction, energy generation and transmission systems, and I am sure a closer look would reveal a myriad of other types of corporate welfare.
Typical, use simplistic rants or BS to fool the rubes and focus their uninformed beliefs on an enemy, the Unions.
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.
...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.
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.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
