Bush The Union Buster
Posted by Bill Dupray
on Dec 20 2008 Filed under Politics.
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Looks like Bush has handed a last minute victory to Conservatives and Free Marketeers on his way out the door. The key provision of the $17 Billion bailout for the automakers is that union wages must be lowered to match the non-union wages of U.S.-based foreign car companies.
From the Washington Post.
But with the announcement of the federal loan deal yesterday, the union found itself being forced into concessions that some described as tantamount to surrender.
The $17.4 billion federal loan agreement does keep the domestic auto industry alive. But the terms of that loan also insist that the wages and benefits for union workers be lowered to “equal” the average of nonunion workers, specifically, those at the U.S. plants of Nissan, Toyota and Honda.
Those and other concessions would essentially erase the significant distinctions between union and nonunion auto workers, and the lack of such union worker advantages would render moot the union’s fundamental purpose, some industry analysts and labor experts said.
The fundamental purpose of the unions was anti-capitalist; forcing companies to ingest a parasite that would make them pay higher-than-market wages and render them unable to compete in the free market.
But alas, the Parasite Lobby returns to town next month, and they don’t like this deal one bit.
But it is far from clear whether the Obama administration will hold the companies and the unions to those requirements. Democrats immediately signaled some opposition to the toughest provisions.
At a news conference in Chicago yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama said that workers should not be the ones “taking all the hits” and that all stakeholders “are going to have to play a part in this process.”
But one of those stakeholder groups is the stockholders. Obama is going to force them to play a part? I think not. Stockholders vote with their feet. If they don’t like Barry and The Socialists’ plan, they will sell the stock, nobody will buy any new stock, and the government can run the car business into the ground. If you were considering investing in GM stock, would you be more inclined to do so if the unions had to accept market wages, or if the companies had to continue paying UAW contract wages, which are what brought the companies to their knees?
Liberal are economic morons.
Barney Frank, the poster boy for Republican mid-term gains in 2010, was also bleating about Bush’s wage equalization provision.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee overseeing much of the government financial rescue efforts, was far tougher.
“The president has added an unfair assault on working men and women, which could require them to accept a disproportionately large reduction in what is currently legally owed to them,” he said in a statement. “I am particularly opposed to the notion . . . that could give foreign auto companies in effect the ability to dictate wages for all American auto workers.”
Frank said that because those requirements were “unilaterally inserted” by Bush, the Obama administration “should take whatever steps are necessary to remove them.”
Barney Frank is opposed to market wages, which is what the foreign auto companies pay. Opposition to market wages is Socialism; pure and simple.
The Post closes with a satisfying and accurate statement of how the unions are responsible for this current mess.
The growth of the foreign-car plants in the United States placed increasing pressure on the domestic automakers and, in turn, the United Auto Workers. The foreign competitors, using nonunion labor, saved money in wages and used that advantage to gain ground on the U.S. automakers.
“When the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat,” [Professor Jonathan] Cutler said.
Amen.
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