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TechnoratiWorkers Say Obama Treated Autos Worse Than Wall Street
Autoworkers say Obama's 'tough love' more tough than love, they get worse treatment than banks
DETROIT -- Many assembly line autoworkers reacted with skepticism and anger Monday to the Obama administration's tough tactics, which stoked long-simmering feelings that the people who put the country on wheels get treated differently than the wizards of Wall Street.
"It's the age-old Wall Street vs. Main Street smackdown again," said Brian Fredline, president of UAW Local 602 at a plant near Lansing. "You have all kinds of funding available to banks that are apparently too big to fail, but they're also too big to be responsible."
"But when it comes to auto manufacturing and middle-class jobs and people that don't matter on Wall Street, there are certainly different standards that we have to meet -- higher standards -- than the financials. That is a double standard that exists and it's unfair," Fredline said.
Many workers -- not generally known for their affection toward executives -- even sympathized with Rick Wagoner, who was forced to step down as chief executive of General Motors Corp. He was by turns called a "sacrificial lamb," "scapegoat" and "fall guy."
"We knew someone was going to have to take the proverbial `bullet,' and it would have made it a lot easier to accept that had the CEOs of the banks also been required to give up their jobs," said Jim Graham, president of a union local in Lordstown, Ohio, where GM produces the Cobalt and Pontiac G5 fuel-efficient cars.
While CEO oustings haven't been widespread among the banking industry, the government did in September reserve the right to remove senior management at American International Group Inc. as part of its agreement to give the insurer $85 billion in emergency aid. AIG Chief Executive Robert Willumstad stepped down as part of that company's bailout package, and the government hand-picked his successor.
Also, banks don't have the union and legacy costs that the automakers do, which make their products more costly versus foreign rivals.
President Barack Obama said he was "absolutely committed" to the survival of a domestic auto industry that can compete internationally. He raised the possibility of controlled bankruptcy for one or both of the troubled automakers.
Obama said the administration will offer GM "adequate working capital" during the next 60 days to produce an acceptable reorganization plan. The government gave Chrysler LLC 30 days to overcome hurdles to a merger with Fiat SpA, the Italian automaker.
Many workers say the government hasn't dictated such terms to insurance giant AIG or the banks in which it's taken an ownership stake. Obama's actions come amid public outrage over bonuses paid to business leaders and AIG executives.
"To see the very people that drove this economy into the ground be rewarded through bonuses while receiving tax dollars is just galling," said Dan Maloney, a machine repairman at auto supplier Delphi Corp.'s plant in Rochester, N.Y., and a union local president. "In light of that, the administration is taking it out, I believe, on the automotive sector."
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm called Obama's moves "a bit of tough love," yet recognized a disconnect between the financial and auto industries.
"Yes, I do think that there has been a different look at those who manufacture than those who make money by flipping paper and I'm hopeful that the financial industry gets as tough a scrutiny as the auto industry has," she told reporters after an event Monday in Macomb Township, about 20 miles northeast of Detroit.
Despite Granholm's criticism and what many workers saw as the president's unduly harsh treatment, Obama's actions might not have a lasting effect on voters.
"It will be accepted, grudgingly perhaps, but accepted by anybody and everybody with a brain in their heads," said Bill Ballenger, editor of a Michigan political newsletter and a former Republican state lawmaker.
Still, Bill Rustem of Public Sector Consultants, a Lansing-based nonpartisan think tank, said Obama's actions carry some risk.
"I think this could have some impact four years from now if the state's economy doesn't begin to turn around," he said. Michigan's unemployment rate rose to 12 percent in February, marking the eighth straight monthly increase.
Workers watched Obama on large-screen TVs in the lobby bar of a hotel in Detroit's Renaissance Center, home to GM's headquarters. Several wearing GM badges declined to comment afterward, but one man whose fortunes are nearly as tied to GM as its employees expressed hope for the future of the company and industry.
"It's definitely a move in the right direction," said Tony Keros, who owns a restaurant and real estate development firm in the building. "Something has to happen."
In Ohio, Graham agreed that Washington just might get it right -- if only because the stakes are too high to fail.
"They understand that there are literally millions of people who depend on the auto industry -- whether directly or indirectly -- and a ripple effect of eliminating a General Motors, Chrysler or Ford would be devastating to an economy that's already been devastated over the past eight years," he said.
Associated Press writers Ben Leubsdorf in Clinton Township, Tim Martin in Delta Township, Ben Dobbin in Rochester, N.Y., and Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland contributed to this report.
31 Comments so far
Show AllWagoner was not a "sacrificial lamb" he was CEO since 2000, he canceled the electric car and instead built bigger SUVs. He was paid millions will this company lost billions!!
I'm not really comfortable with the government firing people but the government is a big investor in GM and investors can ask form a leadership change.
Look at Wagoners results...it's obvious he wasn't getting the job done.
The UAW works for dinosaurs at Chrysler and GM. The CAW today said that labour costs 7% of the total.
The economy will not improve until financial services are restored. I suppose eventually the fire-sale of "legacy assets" will be seen to have been ineffective and some other method will have to be tried.
Why the UAW and labour generally are not in the streets demanding to close the insolvent banks I do not know. The longer it takes to get banks fixed the further the downturn and the longer the depression.
Probably because the unions figure it's already a done deal, and because they supported Obama/the Dems in the elections so they don't want to "alienate" the one they thought was going to be - and still may be - their champion. Obama knows the unions still need him on their side when that bill comes up for allowing people to vote unions into their workplace, so he's rammed through the big bucks for his Wall St. pals well before it.
The US does not need unions. It needs a livable enforced minimum wage, do the math-it takes 15.00 an hour to survive. 2400 a month minus 600 taxed=1800 a mo...let's enforce that for all people, not just seek good treatment for those who are more than "all people" by virtue of belonging to something special.
We're short on cash? Slash the War budget in half.
Ralph Nader had ROOMS of people working phones cold-calling people asking for money/donations. These workers who were paid next to nothing tried to organize and Ralph Nader locked them out! That would not have happened w/ a fair min wage.
Again-we need an enforced & fair min wage for ALL!-Not clubs for the lucky FEW.
There is a reason for labor unions, azjoe, which if run well and not corrupted from above, helps to even the wage landscape for workers vs. the owners of the means of production. If you are going to have a "livable enforced minimum wage", that requires the gov't to create and enforce it. Fine in concept, but we've seen how well the Federal Minimum Wage has fared all these long years. Not well, because it gets held hostage by the monied interests through political contributions & lobbying.
Labor unions can work outside of that, and go directly to the owners of the workplace.
Right On Seditious, Unions were a Salvation. Have helped millions of workers live a decent life instead of be slaves. My neighbor is at work though, a major union, as we speak at Safeway, a market in California. In this union for three years this single mother makes about twelve dollars an hour and works like a slave. After taxes she might take home 1600 a month. she is a slave.
Like democracy, communism and religion, unionionizing seems to me like a great idea that is perennially hi-jacked. Pursuing good ideas is never wrong though....
Would you say that $12./hr. is better than say the $7. or $8./hr. that she would otherwise get if not for her union? And how much can a supermarket employee be paid anyway as a function of the percentage of profits in that sector, as compared to higher-value, higher-skill jobs like those in production? You can't expect $28./hr. as a Safeway employee.
Your arguments are specious.
Obama has contempt for people who actually work & make products, but he sucks up to the shysters & Wall Street players. He betrays his anti-war supporters (who put him in the White House), and wants to wear a flak-jacket and hang out with generals. Not much hope & change, just Clinton redux.
This apparent double standard for blue collar and white collar businesses & their workers is nothing new. One need only read the newspapers printed during the Robber Baron era to see that.
It is quite incumbent upon auto workers that they stage some dramatic public actions to highlight this double standard quickly, or before they know it, they may very well join the ranks of ex-steel workers.
>>"It will be accepted, grudgingly perhaps, but accepted by anybody and everybody with a brain in their heads," said Bill Ballenger, editor of a Michigan political newsletter and a former Republican state lawmaker.<<
What Mr. Ballenger doesn't seem to realize is that everybody HAS a brain in their heads and that is how they see the inconsistency in the treatment of Detroit. Yes, they continued to create and sell autos nobody wanted or needed. But, at least they didn't bring the world to the brink of meltdown by their stupid actions.
Being fired would be hardly enough punishment for the banksters whose greed and arrogance got us into this mess. Being fired would hardly be enough for the politicians who continue to pretend that they can throw money at the problem and we will be back to our happy mad consumerist ways.
UAW productivity was/is extremely efficient --------- that was/is their job, to produce quickly and well. As much money as they are able to negotiate is exactly their fair share.
Banksters more than completely failed, their remittances should be less than nothing.
I don't know how many of these are trolls deliberately trying to divide workers or just liberal elitists who never humped the assembly line. It's amazing how many accept the invidious and devisive memes about overpaid autoworkers. Clearly they priviledge brain work over body work, keyboard calouses over dirty fingernails. Look, I worked for Chrysler 31 years, about 23 on the line and other years as a union rep. In the end I had an office job and now I teach college part time, so I know both sides, and believe me, I earned by autoworker's pay. For a hint at what it's like to work the line, see www.autoplant.info.
Now it is folks like you who are threatened with dissolution of the company, its pension obligations, jobs and health plans. Do you have any idea if retirees in the UAW are organized and plan to contest so they, who worked every single day, do not have to become impoverished in their old age in order to pay for the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the Fulds and other golden parasites?
Joe
"Wizards of Wall Street"? More like the Wizards of OZ on Wall Street. You pull back the curtain and find it's a fraud.
Forget what Obama says, it's what he does that speaks loudest, Wall Street 10 Trillion in loans and guarantees, auto industry 20 Billion in loans. Any questions? I didn't think so !
I'm sure that if GM goes under with "restructuring", soon after we'll see a few scraps being tossed to those who would be put out of work - like some kind of post-employment aid or insurance extensions. Obama's admin must know what this looks like to the middle-class, so they'll do their best to spin the ugliness of it all. But it won't be enough when those formerly good jobs get replaced with low-paying servitude.
I'm convinced that "recessions" are generated on a regular basis for just such a purpose - to have an excuse to wipe out thousands of workers and/or to lower wages and benefits, or to shut down an operation and offshore the work piecemeal.
My hope is that one day, the people of this nation who've taken the brunt will find their gumption again and rise up.
Obama is committed to saving the auto industry. He axed Wagoner who has done more to hurt the workers than the Republicans.
He is offering incentives for energy efficient cars.
The joining of Chrysler & Fiat he is insisting on will produce smaller more fuel efficient cars.
Right On Obama.
I never was lucky enough to be in a union. Especially the UAW, a "know someone to get in" union, I've driven a semi to Detroit plenty of times for 30 cents a mile though, and at that time the UAW workers were sure rich by my standards! And a more "closed shop" never existed. They looked down on and excluded folks for a long time.
Maybe their righteous indignation should be directed inward. For decades Detroit produced garbage. Absolute junk as they demanded higher and higher wages and they lost the market to Japan.
Bicycles.
The Teamsters aren't a 'closed shop', you'd have no trouble joining. I don't think that's the real issue tough, you're just a scab and a bitter one at that.
If you think a non-union worker is a "scab," you're woefully ignorant of what the word means. I suggest you spend a few minutes Googling before you make even more of a public fool of yourself.
Did the workers have a choice in what cars the management designed and sold each year? Did workers lobby Congress to keep mpg ratings from being more efficient, or to block alt-energy vehicles? I don't think so. They just assembled what they were told to build, and the profit margins and marketing was decided by the bean-counters.
You sound as if you're having a bit of schedenfreud (joy in the misery of others), as if the UAW workers deserve this because you didn't have as good of a wage contract for your trucking job.
But let's put the blame where it lies, not on the workers.
Hello Seditious.
Actually, I think the dynamic ignorance, the will not to know in Detroit was all pervasive. Seems odd to me that it is all about pride in workmanship, we're #1, no one does it as good as us....until producing gas guzzling garbage bankrupts you, then it is all about management!
I remember union workers from National Steel and Ship Building where I pulled cable to the UAW being groups you had to know someone to join. Obviously-they paid great, benefits, there were 1000 people for every job.
I'm puke sick of three generations of UAW workers, a family, all with their stupid Letterman jackets, inbred and insipid, crying how unfair it is on FOX that they won't each make $50.00 an hour for assembling HUMMERS anymore.
Sorry the Hummer makers are crying in their Stroh's...oh they are so abused. They better pray they are "rescued" because I don't think most of them could make it in the real word. It's tough. You RESCUE YOURSELF or you got no Stroh's to cry like a baby in.
Horseshit. Ask GM and the buying public why they invented Hummers and other gas-guzzlers for the workers to produce. What, were the UAW's supposed to go on strike because they didn't want to produce cars that at one time were actually selling like pancakes?
Makes a lot of sense, azjoe. :rolleyes:
The reason Detroit stayed with land yachts for so long is because they have a higher profit margin than smaller cars. You can charge more for a 5000 lb. car with all the options than a basic 2000 lb. car, by sheer fact of using more material per unit and hence higher profit on that extra material. Add to that Detroit being in bed with the oil companies since Henry Ford and you have your answer.
Even the highest paid UAW's don't make anything near $50./hr. And if there were anything close to 1000 people for every one of those jobs, then they must have some way to decide who gets them. Simply looking at ones resume' doesn't always tell the tale. "Knowing someone" happens in almost every walk of life to get jobs, not just unions. That's reality.
Yes, it WAS and IS the management that made the vast majority of lousy business decisions. That isn't the job of UAW workers, now is it? They do the nuts n' bolts, not the vehicle designing and forecasts, financial dealings, marketing, and other industry-defining decisions. Period.
You need to get off your delusional right-wing merry-go-round of lies and obfuscation.
Shucks be nice Seditious. I'm in much agreement with you. I just humbly submit the workers who made up the vast majority of the corporation, could have foreseen and averted bankruptcy and failure.
If the Unions are so viable, as a whole, why did they not have a pro-active role in thinking, in direction, no crystal ball was needed.
If an Aircraft carriier with 5,000 sailors aboard was headed for visible rocky shoals at 20 knots in broad daylight, might the crew speak up? Or might they say, the Captain Knows Best?
Our opinions differ, but I respect yours quite a bit.
I'm trying to be reasonable and realistic here.
To use your analogy, the rank & file sailors don't have a say in what orders are given by the captain and officers of the ship. They are to carry out the orders, unless of course they decide to mutiny.
Tell me how it would be that the UAW workers could have gone about averting what the controlling management did not. Exactly how would that have been carried out? For instance: could the workers alone have fired the management for incompetence, or would that have been the share-holder's or Board of Director's function?
Stop blaming the workers, azjoe.
I wonder how many union employees now regret their vote for Obama? And how many will go right back and vote for him again - like abused spouses?
Seems to me that Lucy yanked the ball away again, just like always.
As the financial sector became an ever larger part of the US economy and manufacturing became an ever smaller part during the past thirty years, financial industry pirates were able to skim ever more money until each of them was making more money each year than their counterparts who work in manufacturing (and actually produced something)will make in a lifetime.
Consequently, financial industry pirates have been donating more money to politicians each year than manufacturing industry workers will donate in a lifetime.
Hence the favorable treatment snobama and other politicians lavish upon the financial industry.
I agree with you Seditious. As a matter of fact, my question goes even further. How many of you will continue to pretend that the Demopublicans and the Republicrats are committed to governing in your best interests? How many of you will go to the polls in 2010 and 2012 and think that things will change?
I noticed how the UAW basically bent over and took one for the team, in order to save the auto companies. I also noticed the conspicuous absence of bending over from the paper flippers on Wall Street. I've also noticed how, as the hammer falls, President Snobama seems to continue to side with the financial alchemists and not the workers. All I have to say is that, if you all cannot see that Hope and Change™ has turned out to be nothing more than a marketing symbol, you deserve exactly what's coming.
"I noticed how the UAW basically bent over and took one for the team, in order to save the auto companies."
Well, what else would you suggest? That its members drive their employers into bankruptcy and themselves into the unemployment line? Seriously, what's your alternative here?
That is not the only alternative. The alternative is to reconstitute the auto companies to produce a good product that people want to buy, to re-tool to produce mass transit, to keep unions, to have national health so that we are in the current century globally. That would take a lot of money too, but at least you get something durable and sound.
Right now the billions are going up in smoke for a temporary marketing fix. If it doesn't work, and it probably cannot, the companies would be shut down, abrogate all the union contracts and re-open under new names without any status or power for the employees. Union Busting is the goal of the current plan.
Joe
In my previous comment, I was parroting the line that the UAW stepped up and was willing to renegotiate their contract with the auto companies. Actually, UAW sold their members out and didn't bend over so much as they cooked the auto companies a candlelight dinner, got dressed in something skimpy and invited the management to screw them.
My alternative would have been for the UAW to fight and fight hard. UAW could have mounted a campaign so big that workers throughout the U.S. would have been willing to back them. If the UAW leadership had simply questioned Snobama's allocation of help and resources to the banks and questioned it loudly, the Prez wouldn't have had the cojones to come down on the car companies so hard while giving his banker buddies get a pass. The UAW deserves what ire that's coming its way.
By the way, your comment that it was the workers driving the company into bankruptcy smacks of right-wing propaganda. We all know that the so-called 'Big 3' have been poorly managed for decades. What new and innovative products have they showcased since the early seventies for example? Hell, while Japanese car companies, even during the 'Lost Decade', invested profits into innovation and retention of their employees, the Big 3 paid out insane dividends and focused on strictly short-term growth. That's what brought them to the brink of bankruptcy.
It's disgusting how much hatred in this country exists for people who actually produce something while the bastards that do nothing but shuffle papers around and get paid are praised through the roof.
What some of the vitriol against the UAW workers from other worker is missing the facts and the implications of the situation. First, its a total lie that these workers make 50 or 70 dollars an hour. The top pay is at $28/hr and the rest is the cost of the benefits per unit hour as well as all the infrastructural mechanism thats built into employing a worker for an hour - including gas and electric, etc... In fact, the UAW mis-leadership has force-fed massive cuts into most rank and filers wage and benefits - And here's the kicker - there is actually a huge percentage of autoworkers that fall in under the lower tier of the two-tier contracts that make about 15 bucks an hour or less, with a lot less benefits.
They've been taking give back after give back - decades after the UAW was responsible for setting the standard that lifted many industrial workers jobs.The 50 or 70 bucks an hour is a figure manufactured by big business interest who seek to divide workers and misdirect the blame for the massive human suffering that is capitalism. The implication of the attacks on the UAW is as an example for whats ahead for the rest of the organized workforce, or whats left of it.
The only alternative that allows workers to maintain union wages and conditions as well as genuine transformation into a green manufacturing industry is whole sale public ownership. Not public ownership under the control of a pro-big business government but under democratic workers control. Committees for management to be elected directly out of the workforce, from other unions and workers organizations that will seek to genuinely run it in society's interest - not so it can be turned around to make a profit after chiseling out all the muscle and bone of the workers. Experts would fall under the control of these democratic committees to whom they give proposals for what needs to be carried out, but with decision ultimately falling on them. THIS IS SOCIALISM - NOT THE MASSIVE GIVE AWAYS TO WALL STREET. NOT CONTROL BY A PRO-BUSINESS GOVERNMENT, NOT THE SIMPLE INCREASE IN SPENDING OR GOV'T PROGRAMS - BUT REAL DEMOCRATIC CONTROL BY THE WORKING CLASS - WHICH IS THE VAST MAJORITY IN THIS COUNTRY AND THE WORLD. THE CAPITALIST RULING CLASS HAS FAILED IN ITS STEWARDSHIP OF SOCIETY.