EMAIL SIGN UP!
Progressive Community
The press releases posted here have been submitted by
America's Progressive Community
For further information or to comment on this press release, please contact the organization directly.
Most Popular This Week
Today's Top News
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)
|
Auto Unions “Saved the Industry by Making Concessions”
WASHINGTON - February 27 - AL BENCHICH, ajbenchich at me.com
Retired president of UAW local 909 and a retired GM worker in Michigan of 36 years, Benchich said today: “The public airwaves are filled with straight on reporting of what these people [the Republican presidential candidates] are saying with hardly any critique of their statements. [Mitt] Romney especially is pretending that unions were the big beneficiaries of the ‘auto bailout’. But it wasn’t a bailout like the big banks got a bailout, it was a loan that’s being paid back. I don’t see Romney and company calling the bankers the villains for their actual bailouts.
“There’s some discussion of restoring the middle class — and it ignores how vibrant unions were critical to having a large middle class. And now, with the denigration of unions, we’ve seen the degeneration of the middle class.
“What happened with the loans to the auto industry is that the unions saved the industry by making concessions. One of the biggest concessions was agreeing that new workers — including the ones everyone is now toting — are only at about $14 an hour. Now, for a family of four, that’s only a little above poverty level. That’s not middle class.
“The union agreed to phase out the older workers with good wages and have new workers at a lower tier and I think that was a big mistake. What we should have pushed for was converting the industry to be more forward-looking — making wind turbines, solar panels and high speed rail.”
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
1 Comment so far
Show AllGM, like all publicly traded companies on our stock exchanges, use Accounting Control Frauds, regularly, to enhance their positions and those of their oligarchic controllers, whether it be for competitive industry positioning, whether it be for compensation enhancements, or even for whether the industry, as a whole, wishes to change it's business model, say by destroying the Labor Unions that occupy it.
In other words, GM, and frankly the entire US Auto Industry "owners" of said industry, systematically decided to take down the powerful auto industry unions in one fell swoop. This is Shock Doctrine 101, and yes, it was organized by the banksters/WS, AND with the complete complicity of the US gov't (incoming O Admin.)
Also, consequently, GM was actually never in any financial danger, just like the banks have never been, as taxpayer money was patently guaranteed, when the Unions made their concessions. The Unions were made to believe that it was they who "saved the industry." This is simply not true and dangerously false. It was brinksmanship on the part of our fascist collusive gov't/private enterprise oligarchs to "break" the collective bargaining power of the US auto Labor Unions.
And, our Democrat President willingly, willfully, and due diligently did EXACTLY that to his supposedly OWN BASE. One should very much question WHO IS the Democrats base exactly, just from this very malicious act to US Auto Labor Unions alone.