« Fear of SocialismThe Power Elite Playbook, Controlled Conflict and Staged Incompetence, Part 20 »

In auto bailout, don't make workers pay the price for corporate greed

December 23rd, 2008

Mary Shaw

I don't usually see eye-to-eye with George W. Bush, but I am grateful that he took some steps last week to bail out the auto industry.

After all, how could we bail out the Wall Street elite without also making an effort to save the largest single segment of the U.S. manufacturing industry?

In other words, how can we bail out the white collar bankers without making a similar gesture to save the blue collar auto workers who have traditionally formed the foundation of the U.S. economy?

The price of inaction would have been devastating to our already devastated economy.

Nevertheless, the auto bailout seems to be a soap-box magnet for the anti-worker crowd.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has already had to make some concessions under the bailout. But apparently that is not enough. Some people just want an end to unions. Gotta keep the power away from the little people.

I keep hearing the right-wing propagandists complaining that members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union make more than $70 per hour (thereby somehow justifying their demise). But that allegation is deliberately misleading.

The truth is that the average UAW member makes about $30 per hour in wages, bonuses, overtime, and paid time off, with maybe another $15 in benefits.

So let's do the math:

$30 per hour x 40 hours per week = $1,200 per week.

$1,200 per week x 52 weeks = $62,400 per year.

Plus the usual benefits. Nothing special.

So the UAW members make a solid middle class living at $62,000 per year, for doing some good, hard work. What exactly is the problem with this?

Many of their critics are in positions that easily yield a much more lucrative hourly fee. So why do they want to deny the hard-working auto workers their own chance at the American dream?

That, of course, is a rhetorical question. It's clearly all just a political or ego-driven thing -- or both.

So the anti-worker folks keep calling for labor concessions to keep the industry going.

Never mind the fact that the workers' salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to what the CEOs have been raking in (not even counting their private jets).

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Along with the so-called "free trade" practices that have done so much to support our overseas competition in the auto industry and other major industries. And along with the fact that Detroit lags way behind Japan in designing and producing vehicles that could reduce our dependency of fossil fuels.

Those things are not the fault of the line worker. They are the result of corporate greed. Doing the right thing sometimes temporarily cuts down on corporate profits and CEO bonuses. So doing the right thing is unthinkable, of course.

That is what got us into this mess. Nevertheless, again they want the workers to pay the price for the sins of the backward-thinking corporate executives.

Labor is used to making concessions. The executives are not.

And look where that got us.

It is time to change that paradigm, if the industry is to be saved for the long run. I hope that the Obama administration will do so. You know, change we can believe in.

And it seems that we may have some hope in that regard.

Hilda Solis is Barack Obama's nominee for Labor Secretary. And she has a solid track record on the side of labor.

Unfortunately, the Obama-Biden-Solis administration remains powerless for another four weeks.

Hopefully the holiday season will be enough of a distraction to keep things from getting too out-of-hand in the meantime.

-###-

Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com

No feedback yet

Voices

Voices

  • By World BEYOND War A new report by the global peace group World BEYOND War finds that military bases used by foreign militaries are growing in number, as are public protests and advocacy against those bases. Of 1,247 foreign military bases in the…
  • By Sally Dugman I like the citizen arrest process, although never tried it out. It means that you go up to a wrongdoer and cart him or her off to jail if you don’t fear that your head will be blown off with a gun by the perpetrator in the process … Who…
  • By World BEYOND War The global peace organization World BEYOND War has announced the awardees for its fifth annual War Abolisher Awards: Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese. The awardees will accept their awards in an online event on July…
  • By Mark Powell They bomb children, rob the treasury, cover up Epstein's client list, and term it democracy—what they're running is a pathocracy, and it's happening today. American Pathocracy/Kleptocracy history and current news, untainted by Google,…
  • By Mark Aurelius “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another… “ It’s that time again, actually way past due, as the lists of grievances are even fatter…
  • Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic The 2018 Skripal Attack Case The current orchestrated Western policy of total Russophobia, directed by Collective West, can be recorded to start by the British Cabinet of Theresa May – the focal servant-dog to US global…
  • By Sally Dugman This proactive Palestinian Pulverizers of humans, D. Trump who is indirectly responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Palestinian people of all ages, has no standing to say something like this utterly stupid statement about Putin:…
  • Tracy Turner When the Republic Betrays, the Body Must Answer Protest is not a right—it is a judgment passed upon power. A corrupt state standing above law and beyond justice forfeits its legitimacy, and we, the people, are compelled to answer—not with…
  • Tracy Turner The Reclamation of the Republic When, in the Course of human events, it shall become absolutely necessary for the People to dissolve the political ties which have united them to a government that has betrayed its trust to obtain their…
  • Tracy Turner SMELE's (Slow-Motion-Extinction-Level-Events). Not yet common in academia, but it should be. I. Introduction: The Timebombs We Ignore "Not with a bang but a bureaucratic shrug, the world ends." - Revisionist reading of Eliot by the…
Censorship is not safety. It is authoritarianism in disguise. Bing is not just a search engine—it is an information gatekeeper. Click the red button to email MSN and Bing.com executives. This message challenges their censorship of ThePeoplesVoice.org and demands transparency, algorithmic fairness, and an end to suppression of free expression.
July 2025
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 << <   > >>
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    

  XML Feeds

Online manual generator
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted articles and information about environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. This news and information is displayed without profit for educational purposes, in accordance with, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Thepeoplesvoice.org is a non-advocacy internet web site, edited by non-affiliated U.S. citizens. editor
ozlu Sozler GereksizGercek Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi E-okul Veli Firma Rehberi