Help for U.S. Automakers Is a Good Deal for Everyone
Help for U.S. Automakers Is a Good Deal for Everyone
by Donna Jablonski, Nov 14, 2008
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/11/14/help-for-us-automakers-is-a-good-deal-for-everyone/
The U.S. auto industry “cannot succeed in today’s unstable economic environment without immediate help from the federal government. And the costs of failure are unacceptable,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a Washington Post op-ed today.
If even one U.S. automaker fails, he warned, it would cost the entire country millions of lost jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in lost sales and revenue.
The auto industry crisis, exacerbated by stalled consumer spending and lack of credit, affects much more than the Big Three automakers and the 240,000 people who work for them, Gettelfinger said. It also endangers thousands of car dealerships, small and medium-size businesses that provide parts and services to the auto giants and more than a million retirees and dependents who receive pension and health care benefits from Chrysler, Ford and General Motors.
According to Gettelfinger:
If these companies are unable to meet their obligations, the human toll on retirees and their families will be devastating. It’s also possible that the failure of these companies could impose severe costs on the federal pension guaranty program and public health care programs.
Gettelfinger also took exception to “Detroit-bashing.”
It is not the actions of our members that have caused the crisis in today’s auto industry; the crisis is being driven by economic factors that have nothing to do with labor costs or factory performance. To the contrary, our contracts have put our employers in a position to compete. The reality of today’s auto industry is that union-made vehicles are winning quality awards and that union-represented factory workers are winning productivity awards.
Recent auto industry labor negotiations are reducing or eliminating cost differences between union and nonunion car makers, Gettelfinger said.
The various demands for cuts in the wages and benefits of active and retired autoworkers as a condition of federal assistance are curious—and extremely unbalanced. To my knowledge, no one has proposed cutting the compensation of everyday active or retired bankers, bond traders and office or building personnel who work at AIG, Bear Stearns or the numerous banks that have received billions in federal aid. Why is it only autoworkers who are singled out for this dubious honor?
Gettelfinger said bipartisan efforts under way in Congress to aid U.S. automakers are “a good deal for U.S. taxpayers—because the alternative is lost jobs, closed businesses and shattered communities, which would impose severe human and economic costs on all of us for many years to come.”