I mentioned in last evening's Discurso that Senate Republicons had scuttled the bill Dems and the Bush regime had hammered together in an effort to preserve roughly 3,000,000 jobs in a time of worsening economic crisis. Tonight, the Rethugs attempted to put the final bullet in the Big Three's brains:
From the NYT:
"The Senate on Thursday night abandoned efforts to fashion a government rescue of the American automobile industry, as Senate Republicans refused to support a bill endorsed by the White House and Congressional Democrats.
The failure to reach agreement on Capitol Hill raised a specter of financial collapse for General Motors and Chrysler, which say they may not be able to survive through this month.
After Senate Republicans balked at supporting a $14 billion auto rescue plan approved by the House on Wednesday, negotiators worked late into Thursday evening to broker a deal, but deadlocked over Republican demands for steep cuts in pay and benefits by the United Automobile Workers union in 2009."
Apparently, the plan they were negotiating already required the car companies to reduce their debt by 2/3 between now and March 31, and to bring their workers' pay into line with their foreign competitors. (This in addition to what had already been agreed to -- major restructuring plans, etc.) The sticking point, apparently, was that Senate Republicans insisted that the workers' pay reach parity with foreign competitors in 2009, while Democrats, the UAW, and the car companies wanted the process of bringing wages down to be completed by 2011.
So the Senate Republicans were willing to let a million jobs, give or take, go down because they wanted the UAW to make massive wage concessions, over and above those it has already made, within one year as opposed to three years. That shouldn't be a dealbreaker, except to people who don't want a deal to start with.
Get used to a lot more of the same. This is, after all, the party of "cut your nose off to spite your face." These fuckwits have no idea how to govern responsibly.
Which is why I'm so pleased that this little grandstand may just blow up in their faces:
The proposal to loan $14 billion to Detroit's struggling automakers collapsed late Thursday night but the Big Three may get some money anyway.
Bush officials warned wavering GOP senators that if they didn't support the legislation, the White House will likely be forced to tap the Wall Street bailout to lend them money, two Republican congressional officials told CNN earlier...
...One of the sources said the a White House official made clear to a GOP Senator that would be the worst option, because the loan could go to the auto companies with few or no requirements along with it.
If so, then it looks like Jane was right about Reid's bluff. Let's hope so. Oddly, while the "worst" option from a Republican point of view, since it won't screw over a union, it is the best option from a Democratic point of view. That knife Senate Republicans were trying to cut the union's with, may come back to slice a chunk off them.
Ha ha ha ha fuck you, morons.
Special bonus: The more stunts like this they pull, the more likely it is even their adoring public will turn against them. After all, people with no jobs and no prospects tend to turn to the Dems for help. So, while it would be better for the country if these fucktards would grow the fuck up and start doing what's really best for their constituents rather than relying on a lot of smoke and mirrors, I'll take the consolation prize of watching them administer the death of a thousand cuts to their own selves.
8 comments:
I think their reasoning (if you could call it that) is that union members are already 'dimmocrat' and they'll rally their base by killing the unions.
There are still plenty of right-wing idiots who don't vote. If either side got really motivated, the game could swing again. (shudder)
Apparently, the plan they were negotiating already required the car companies to reduce their debt by 2/3 between now and March 31, and to bring their workers' pay into line with their foreign competitors. (This in addition to what had already been agreed to -- major restructuring plans, etc.) The sticking point, apparently, was that Senate Republicans insisted that the workers' pay reach parity with foreign competitors in 2009, while Democrats, the UAW, and the car companies wanted the process of bringing wages down to be completed by 2011.
So the Senate Republicans were willing to let a million jobs, give or take, go down because they wanted the UAW to make massive wage concessions, over and above those it has already made, within one year as opposed to three years. That shouldn't be a dealbreaker, except to people who don't want a deal to start with.
There are a whole lot of Americans who are going to be making much deeper 'wage concessions' in 2009 via layoffs. I think asking over-paid, low-skilled manufacturing labor to reduce their salary in-line with the companies that are actually making money is fairly reasonable. This is especially true in light of the fact that they will still be the highest paid low-skilled workers in the country (world?) Their choice was clear: take less money or walk the plank. It looks like greed won.
If I was a low-skilled worker with nothing but a GED or high school diploma and 15 years of putting Bolt A into Hole B I'd be pretty thankful for salary in line with Honda or Toyota instead of other low-skilled manufacturing jobs which pay significantly less.
Y'know Mike, I think you are right that greed won, but not necessarily that of the autoworkers.
We have a Mitsubishi auto-assembly plant in our town, and I know a few autoworkers. Their job doesn't sound all that simple to me.
We have two Ford plants here. From what I here 90% of the jobs could be staffed by 8th graders.
I'll just quote Jane Hamsher on the subject, since she wrote this before I did:
"Funny, none of these bastards demanded wage and benefit cuts for Wall Street workers in the $700 billion bank bailout."
For some reason, no one seems to think that the people who have the power to make congressmen pay with their jobs for messing with them should pay any price. It's just the little people who have to pay a price.
Overpaid? Don't make me laugh. The difference in pay between Detroit's executives and their foreign counterparts is astronomical.
I've heard that any college graduate with adequate people skills could do what they do. I think I heard it the same place you heard about the eighth graders working the assembly line.
And here's one of the many other things you haven't considered, Mike. Those "overpaid" auto workers help make your pay higher. Other companies have to compete with Detroit for the skilled workers, technicians, engineers, managers, and accountants that they employ. That means your wages are higher. As unions have lost ground in the workplace, we've lost ground in the economy. All the real growth in wages has happened in the upper 10 percent of the work force. The rest of us have been losing ground.
So yuck it up. I'm sure you'll be really pleased in twenty years to discover you aren't earning any more than you were now. Unless, of course, you become one of the new useful idiots who get their own newspaper columns, because they can write what those executives want the rest of us to read. It looks like that's what you're aiming for.
Sure as shit no one else is going to be able to pay for such things.
Cujo, while the class-warfare rhetoric sounds nice to liberal ears, it's not really practical.
Yes, executives are grossly overpaid and they should be losing pay along with the low-skilled workers who are getting ridiculous salaries. Most of them should ideally be fired because they obviously don't know how to run a company. But that's only part of the problem...
And inflated auto worker salaries have zero impact on my business. We don't pay our low-skilled workers inflated salaries just because Detroit has to. We give them a fair wage for the work they do and their value to the company.
If we look at pay realistically it is based primarily on two factors: the profit their work generates and the ease of replacing them. If your work is profitable, that gets you maybe halfway there. If you are irreplaceable as well, now you're making real money. Unfortunately for most autoworkers they are easily replaceable, so they only meet half the equation...yet their salaries haven't reflected that.
Mike, you don't have a clue even when you're whacked with a clue stick. The more the auto industry, and others, pay for their workers, the more you have to pay for similarly skilled ones. Since you actually have no idea how much skill it takes to be an auto worker, you might as well be comparing your workers to lab animals or particle physicists.
What's more, if those workers are anywhere near you, it's more likely that they can afford your services if they're paid better. That may not make much difference in your business, but it does in quite a few.
My company does market studies all the time to help make decisions on pay upgrades. We do this because we aren't union but we pay fair. When we do those market studies we base them on similar positions in other companies. Call center verses call center, fork lift driver verses fork lift driver, etc. While we employ people of the same skill level as your average auto worker we don't do manufacturing, so their pay has zero effect on our employees.
In Louisville we have two Ford plants. So I know plenty of auto workers. Most of them will tell you it's the easiest job they've ever have. Yes, there are skilled jobs out there, like machinist and press operators, but most are not that hard.
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