Dec 13 2008
Republican war on labor
The following video is from MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, aired on Friday, December 12, 2008. Air America’s Thom Hartman (interviewed by David Shuster) explains why the Republicans have declared war on labor and are so vehemently opposed to any government assistance of the American automobile industry…
7 Responses to “Republican war on labor”
I completely agree. The republicans took advantage of the backlash of the free money to wall street and used it to turn against labor, the middle class, the working man, to try and break one of the last strong unions, by turning congress into a propoganda machine against labor, and a livable wage, so much misinformation sent out there from this, probably no one knows that Mitch McConnels wife is a very wealthy Chinese woman who owns many factories including chemical plants, Tennesse senator is in the pocket of the non union car plants in his state, as well as the Alabama senator, and did you know that those foreign plants were subsidized by tax dollars? I have personally lost all respect for all republicans. I am a democrat and if the democrats don’t come through, I will probably change to another party all together. The very word republican leaves this bitter taste in my mouth of the generation that associated the great depression with Herbert Hoover, who was arguably our worst president ever, well besides W.
There is a difference between a war on labor and recognizing the fact that a large part of the reason these plants are no longer competitive with foreign-owned plants is because of the Unions. In any plan to bailout any kind of business, long term viability should be one of the key factors.
If the Union is not willing to renegotiate their CBA and accept lower wages and especially less retirement benefits, these companies will NEVER be viable in the long term.
http://thezspot.today.com
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I’m glad Hartman gave Reagan and Reaganomics proper credit for turning our country toward the ditch it’s in now.
We’ve gone along like sheeple with the notion we could be a service economy, an information economy, could sell each other enough fast food and satellite dishes — anything but produce goods and services the world needs and wants to buy — and prosper like never before. The pea under the shell in this game that a majority of Americans couldn’t quite keep their eyes on is that a relative few wealthy and well-connected people and interests were cleaning up the whole time. They were making money on killing industries and jobs. They made money on money, and through lobbying had the deck stacked so that no matter who else would lose, they would win.
Unions, of course, represent an obstruction on their path to getting ever richer by gutting our economy and selling out everyone who’s not wealthy and well connected.
Shea is right to hold this against Republicans. DLC types, including Bill Clinton, deserve their share of the blame, too.
Now, we desperately need another revolution, one whose main thrust is to undo the one initiated by Reagan. Thank God Obama appears to understand that is what is required.
@Zach : Typical Republican reaction – blame it all on the laborers. None of the mess we are in is management’s fault, right? We find ourselves in the situation we are now in because the blue collar workers wanted to make a better life for themselves and their families. They worked their entire lives to earn a respectable retirement (which, by the way, they were promised but must now forfeit so the CEOs can have their multi-million dollar bonuses and golden parachutes). Yep, let’s blame the unions. In the meantime, let’s be sure the crooked bankers on Wall Street (big contributors to the Republican party, by the way) get their extra huge piece of the pie. Heaven knows they’ve earned it. Right?
And while we’re at it… why should foreign companies get to come in here and dictate the wages of American workers? Isn’t America supposed to be the land of opportunity and all that gobbley-gook? You want to talk about long term viability? Lay that at the feet of the managers for a change. They are the ones who get to take home the big fat paychecks and bonuses even though they are running the companies they manage into the ground. There’s your “long term viability.”
Zach, you need a reality check. There has been a large, well-funded, systematic effort to discredit and destroy unions in this country since the late 1970’s. A big part of it is a steady flow of disinformation, at least some of which you appear to have swallowed whole.
The UAW has already made very substantial concessions on pay, benefits and other things. If you watched the hearings on C-SPAN, you might’ve noticed that at least one of the auto CEO’s acknowledged that.
Why isn’t downsizing the executive suite part of the solution? Why isn’t part of the solution having the CEO volunteer to work for $1 a year until the crisis is resolved, the way Lee Iaccoca did for Chrysler in the early 1980’s?
Just as important, why isn’t the answer to militate for foreign automakers, in their respective countries and in ours, raise the level of pay and benefits for their workers, rather than force American auto workers to run a race to the bottom?
Last but not least, if you go to Factcheck.org, you’ll see a box on the main page explaining that U.S. autoworkers are not making $70 and hour, or any of the other over-the-top amounts Republicans have been claiming.
Look around and you’ll also learn some foreign-manufacturer auto workers are making more than some GM workers, and that some Toyota plants are unionized. Why aren’t those workers’ plants in an emergency? In part, it’s because every other auto manufacturing country has already stepped in with financial assistance to keep their auto industries going until the credit mess is straighthened out. Only in the U.S. is this being cheapskated, and the reason is because a bunch of Republicans, especially southern senators with foreign-make auto plants in their states, want to leverage the crisis for union-busting purposes.
S.W.-
In case you missed it, the CEOs of all THREE of the companies were going to work for $1 a year next year while the crisis was resolved.
They are not making $70/hour. But they are costing $70 an hour, between their benefits, the benefits of those that are no longer even working, etc., etc. Union contracts are expensive.
That doesn’t even take into account the loss of productivity due to a company being forced to value seniority over performance.
I don’t think that the Union is the only reason these companies are having problems, but to deny that it is a factor is absurd.
http://thezspot.today.com
http://gamingtips.today.com
Zach, I watched the hearings on C-SPAN, when each CEO was asked if they would work for $1 as Iacocca did. They all declined. A few days later, I heard on CNN radio news that the Chrysler CEO said he would. If the others agreed to that, I did miss it. I’ll take your word for it and salute the CEO’s for stepping up.
Regarding the Big Three’s retiree costs, the retired workers earned their pensions. None of them went to work for decades with the comfy assurance of a golden parachute. They worked and they paid into their retirement pension plans under terms of contracts arrived at in fair bargaining. Those workers don’t deserve to be abandoned. Taxpayers don’t deserve to be saddled with all the cost of their pensions, either.
The flip side of valuing performance over seniority is valuing experience over rookies who are lean, hungry and willing to work for whatever, just so they get a job — IOW, race to the bottom with age discrimination thrown in for bad measure.
The whole performance-over-seniority thing assumes workers go along indefinitely without performance evaluations. That doesn’t square with what I’ve seen and experienced in workplaces, either in the public or private sector.
I’d be willing to acknowledge the UAW as a serious problem if, over the past 20 years, it had dug in its heels and refused to work with the companies to get through rough patches. That hasn’t been the case, and isn’t the case in the current situation.