WHAT IS A FAIR WAGE FOR AUTO WORKERS THESE DAYS?

AUTO COMPANY BAILOUTS WORKED WELL

 It is very popular these days to attack unions, The far, far right seems to imagine that unions interfere with their holy “free market” (something that doesn’t exist in any sort of pure form anyway) and the tea pot Republicans seem to believe that workers should just shut up and take whatever they are offered. The governor of South Carolina went on record as saying unions are not wanted and not needed in the state she is supposed to lead, but no one should assume she is speaking for everyone in the state. The governor, Nikki Haley, was swept into office in the tea party wave of 2010.   

I am sympathetic toward unions because I believe they help not only union members, but increase wages generally, especially within a city or region of the country. On a personal note, my father was a union member for many years, followed by my brother in the same union(Operating Engineers). Without  union wages, our family life growing up would have been far different.  Not all higher pay translates into better living, because of local  housing costs, etc., but I would argue that unions have had an overall good effect on our nation and the creation of a strong middle class. My  dad made more than the average lawyer in the US, and unions get major credit. He was not overpaid. The companies he worked for made billions and are still taking in money from his work and others who worked with him.

I still don't understand why the American car companies went so far  off the track from the 1960s through the '90s. Management has to take  huge blame, but the unions can't get off free. Detroit turned out piles of junk for decades (Dan Neil said the cars of the '70s were not  manufactured so much as extruded). Where was the pride of workmanship?  When, if ever, did the unions stand up and say, Enough!, we aren't making this junk any more? There were never any strikes over quality, although many workers were dedicated to the idea of quality, even if they didn’t think they could achieve it. The unions clearly contributed to the downfall, but don't give them most of the  blame.

I just don't believe that it was, or is, union wages and benefits that broke the car companies. They turned out an inferior production and no matter what they made,  they had buyers,  especially in the mid-west, who would never buy anything but Detroit, no matter what. They were fat, lazy and dumb. What should the hourly wage be for making junk cars? What should it be now that the quality is so  much higher?

The bonuses and pay of executives has gotten obscene. Sure, reward  them for doing a good job, but isn't a couple a million enough? They  aren't risking heir money, after all, they are risking other people's money and the jobs of others. When they retire, they usually have 50 to 100 million banked, if not more. 52 million for the head of Ford, Allan Mulally? Why not a billion? Give him the Statue of Liberty and one of the smaller states.

To me, compensation can be compared to a group of people sitting around a dinning table. Everyone at that table, representing the car companies, should be well fed and taken care of. Should the upper leadership even given 40 well cooked turkeys while the workers get a drumstick? Money on the scale of 100,000,000 dollars and up tends to lose its meaning, but no executive turns it down anyway. The unions in the old days sought contracts that bound the companies into deals that became unaffordable when things went south (literally south in some  cases, with foreign companies moving into the southern states).  It was, however the long resistance to paying workers decently that helped put the unions into the “do or die” mode in the first place.

No one knows what the true cost is of building a car, so it is  impossible to calculate what the workers should be paid. Many parts,  especially electronics, have gone way down in price. Making quality  today is cheaper than making trash 15 years ago. The workers should be rewarded handsomely, too, but the idea of recession and that they were  overpaid for so long represents a barrier. The workers did not make the Detroit disaster, but they participated in it.  Detroit has shown now that they know how to make quality vehicles. Winston Churchill said being shot at without result was an amazingly exhilarating experience. It is also astounding what the near death event in Detroit did to concentrate the minds of the executives who remained. 

Doug Terry, 2.7.12

How do you know if something is politics, pure and simple? If the Republicans had won the White House in 2008, they would have supported the car company bailout, especially Romney. They would have had to support it, in all likelihood, because not to have done so would have meant losing a million or more American jobs.  Now, they attack Obama endlessly for having done what almost any president would have done, even though the deal worked out all around.

The Republicans are building themselves a nice, comfortable trap. They have carped for three years that Obama’s programs weren’t successful, now they have to try to spin “not working” into, “not working good enough”. Mitch McConnell said not long ago, “Obama got everything he wanted and it didn’t  work.” Oops. He got many things he wanted and they are working. Spin that.

I understand the anger of many Americans about the car company bailouts. At the time, the economy was headed into a deep recession, layoffs and firings were rampant in the job market and Bush had just bailed out Wall Street with the 800+ billion dollar TARP program. It was a bad, dark time in this country. Why should the rich guys get government money while the public, in millions of cases, was being kicked out of their houses? To top it off, it was learned not too long afterward that the banks were forging papers and “certifying” that which could not be certified to push people out. The banks were lying and cheating, while Americans were hurting like never before since the Great Depression of the 1930s. (A settlement on robo signing (having machines sign papers) issue could be announced this week.)

Too many people were far too quick to mix in their anger at the general economic situation and their own hardship by blaming everything on the new president back in 2009. They haven’t stopped blaming him since then, perhaps doing mental gymnastics trying to prove they were right all along.  Many Americans were angry and confused, so it was easy to turn that confusion onto the first available source they could find, helped along by right wing radio and the propaganda conspiracy on the right known as Fox News. The public needed another target at which to direct their anger, but none was forthcoming, so Obama would have to do. Now, independents are turning Obama’s way. What looked not so good, the massive stimulus effort of 2009 and ‘10, doesn’t look so bad when the economy is clawing its way back.

2.7.12

BIKE TRAILS IN THE DC AREA

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