Not-So-Happy Holidays: unions and the auto bailout

We Americans have watched our government shell out billions of dollars to keep massive investment banks and insurance companies afloat after their irresponsible actions created the economic crisis in which we now find ourselves. Yet Senate Republicans appeared willing to let America’s manufacturing sector die if union workers wouldn’t agree to cut their own wages and benefits. You know, the things for which unions were formed to fight in the first place.

Politico reported on a memo circulated among Republicans that called upon them to, “stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.”

The United Auto Workers union, in addition to maintaining wages and benefits for its members, serves to set wages for the rest of the country. If UAW wages are forced downward by Republican union-busting in the form of denial of funds, who’s to say that wages at the non-union auto plants (in states like Alabama, where senators Dick Shelby and Jeff Sessions base their opposition to the bailout) will remain high?

Fortunately, the Bush administration appears willing to shell out money from the $700 billion authorized for banks to keep GM and Chrysler functioning. But will it be too late?

The companies have already announced plans to shutter factories throughout all of North America (yes, that includes Canada and Mexico) for the entire month of January, cutting thousands of jobs. Congratulations, Dick and Jeff, you’re responsible for screwing the economies of three countries!

Bush had mentioned a “managed” bankruptcy as one of the possible options for the auto companies since Congress failed to act. But no matter how you sugarcoat it, bankruptcy would nullify the contracts the UAW has with the auto companies, and force them to renegotiate their pay scale and benefits. Does anyone doubt that in this economy, with their employers on the brink of collapse, they’d be forced to take a massive cut?

But Friday morning, Bush announced a $13.4 billion loan to the auto companies from the TARP funds—better known as the $700 billion bailout. The loans are for a three-year period, but will have to be paid back immediately if the companies do not show themselves to be “viable” by March 31.

Lucky for the auto companies, there’ll be a new president by then.

Bush said, “Government has a responsibility to safeguard the broader health and stability of our economy. If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers.”

I don’t know about you, but I have to smirk at least a bit each time a Republican has to admit that the free market doesn’t always do the right thing. I also giggle each time Bush has to use the word “responsibility.”

While we’ve been watching the Republic Windows and Doors protest, the kind of successful workers’ action we haven’t seen in years, some of us have been reminded of what solidarity actually means. Politicians from Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich stood up for the workers, and workers around the country demonstrated outside of Bank of America offices and threatened boycotts until the bank gave in and paid the workers their compensation.

Yet the UAW appears to get nothing but scorn from America.

Don’t Americans like things like the weekend, health insurance, safety regulations? Isn’t the American Dream supposed to be having a good job, being able to take care of your family, and still having time on the weekend to spend with the kids?

We’ve been conned for too long into identifying with some mysterious “shareholder” instead of the worker on the line. We worry about tax increases for people who make over $250,000 a year when that’s only about 2% of Americans. We seem to miss the point that when these companies are required to cut jobs to maintain viability, those jobs they cut are taxpayers, too. They paid into the bailout fund as much as any of us.

Our wishful identification is creating these crises. We are more worried about the victims of Bernie Madoff, people who have and make millions, then we are about the union auto workers, who get snide remarks as they lose their jobs, pensions, and benefits—things they’ve often worked their whole lives to gain. Not in some sleek corner office. It’s not sexy, perhaps, to work on an assembly line. But it pays the bills—average $28 an hour—and with good health care, it provides a good life.

If we’re so worried about being cost-competitive, there’s one easy place to start. If we took health care off the backs of the businesses both large and small, and made it the job of the government—single-payer universal heath care—it would benefit both business and labor. Small businesses (like the one I used to run) could retain good employees without worrying that they’d quit to work at Starbucks because they’d get better health insurance, and large factories, like those run by the auto companies, would be able to remain “competitive” with plants in Canada and other countries where health care is a right, not a privilege.

We think public schools are a great idea. Why not public health?

Most of all, though, I’d like to see this crisis—and pockets of hope like the success of the Republic protest in Chicago—remind us that we can do a lot better when we work together than when we work against each other. That cooperation leads to benefits for all, while competition leaves the loser in the dirt.