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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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?
The CEO of Ford gets paid $24,000 per hour. This is justified because of the skill" he brings to running the company.
The average auto worker makes $27 per hour.
And Republicans want to crash the economy because of the outrageous salaries paid to. . .
. . . the average worker.
This is why Rove is wrong: The Republicans are not on the road to recovery. They are on their way to obsolescence
Fantastic point about healthcare and pension costs substantially adding to Big 3 labor costs. I wonder though. If its really true that nationalized healthcare would significantly lower costs (and enhance profitability), they would have supported it decades ago. Frankly i need to know more about the Big 3 position in natonalized healthcare over the years. That would be interesting.
Regarding whether these events are an "attack" on the UAW? ...certainly from some. Not all. Go back to my key point -higher labor costs put US automakers at a competitive disadvantage. If we are to have a auto industry - i think we should - it must be competitive globally. We can't compete with labor costs that are significantly in excess of global competition. If Obama healthcare reform actually enables this, green light go!
The UAW has some nice pay and benefits (although not so extremely nice as you might think. The NYT had a good article in Wednesday's business section that breaks down the automaker's labor costs) and one might argue that they are a bit cushy, or not. But leave us never forget that the reason for the union and its protective attitude towards its members is the screw job that management at the automakers were giving the workers (without the benefit of KY jelly) before the union.
Now, IMSHO, it takes a lota damn gall for a fat cat Senator who has the cushiest retirement plan on the planet that, unlike the autoworkers who had to literally fight for everything they've got while all he had to do was vote himself the pension, to criticize the autoworkers.
And the pension plan isn't the only thing that Congress has voted for itself that isn't available to the rest of us schmucks. Nor does it address all the things that Congress has exempted itself from that we all have to comply with. And that is how we create a ruling class.
Whatever your job is, if the wage you earn is not sustainable by the company or the industry it's in, then sitting on your fat ass and screaming about how unfair it all is, is besides the point. I'd like to assert that my job is worth a quarter mil a year. I demand that it is. But it's not. And there's not one single company on the planet who will pay me that. Now if through some strange confluence of events I managed to wrangle that concession from my company and low and behold, after a few years they couldn't afford it, the rational response would be to renegotiate that. Because more than zero is a higher number than zero.
For every attempt management makes at breaking the union, the union is playing an equally dangerous game of attempting to extract as much cash as possible out of the company before it goes broke. See no one is really interested in the long run viability, no one. Not the unions OR management. No one.
I believe the most dangerous man in the world is one who is unemployed. As a kid we heard "Idle hands breed mischief." During the time when our politicians were assembling NAFTA I remember seeing an unemployed older man jump from a bridge in Pittsburgh. That is the ideal situation for the CEO's and politicians who believe our economic under-class work force is of no inconsequential and expendable. We know the U.S. is a leader in road rage and work place violence and shootouts in our schools. The estimated three, or so, millions who will be jobless will not disappear into the night and let us hope they will not resort to violence. So far, our leaders have not assembled a plan to deal with any such outcome. Perhaps we may see something emerge such as communism or fascism which will not solve anything but most revolutions seldom do.
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
