- The Dictator announced his relief-package for the Big
Three yesterday: The media is calling it "a Christmas-gift."
This is a LOAN-agreement: Gift's do not come wrapped in razor wire.
This too-little-too-late proposal is meant to bring an end to the problem
of having to pay anyone, for whatever they do on-the-job in the United
States.
-
-
- This is the last link in the chain that will complete
the Total Redistribution of Wealth in American society. And too many still,
will not connect the dots.
-
-
- The problem that organized labor created for the corporatocracy
has been a thorn in the side of 'business,' since the days of the New Deal.
Now its payback time and anyone that looks can almost see the saliva dripping
from this 'proposal' that is in reality, an ultimatum. Some of the details
behind the headlines surfaced yesterday in a report from Greg Shotwell,
a union activist that spent thirty-years working for GM.
-
- "The danger of this that I see is that, you know,
in the '90s, when the auto companies were making billions of dollars, they
were taking profits out of North America and investing them overseas in
Europe, South America and Asia. So there's been a huge transfer of assets
overseas. Now, those assets would remain protected in bankruptcy. So what,
in effect, they've done is undermined the manufacturing base in the United
States so that they could become a major importer to the United States.
You see, they already have fuel-efficient-small fuel-efficient cars that
they're making in Europe and in Asia and in South America. They're ready
for import. And they would like to be like Toyota. Yes, Toyota has plants
in the United States, but Toyota imports about 46 percent of all the cars
it sells in the United States. That's what General Motors is setting itself
up to do, and they're going to use this capitalist disaster to help them
wipe out the dealerships and close the plants. And Congress is just going
to help them strong-arm the unions into giving up any job security or gains.
-
- Also, you're right about the bankruptcy. And this is
one of their goals, is to wipe out the legacy costs. You know, the people
who earned a pension and earned healthcare and retirement in the past,
they would take that away. To me, it's like a thirty-year mortgage. I paid
my mortgage every week, and I paid it off. Now that house is mine. Now
they want to say, well, we're going to take it back.
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- JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, obviously, there are those who continue
to say that the labor costs in the auto industry, especially in the Big
Three, are way out of whack. And could you talk, for those who are not
familiar with, how this misrepresentation of what the labor costs really
are of today's workforce among the Big Three has been created?
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- GREGG SHOTWELL: Well, there's a good reason that the
plants, the transplants in the South, have not been organized, and that's
mainly because they make as much or more money as organized workers. And
that was a strategy that the Japanese plants did on purpose, because they
didn't want the plants organized. So they pay as much.
-
- The real difference is in what they owe the retirees,
what they call the legacy costs. Now, you'll hear in the media, they'll
say GM workers get $73 an hour, and Toyota workers only get $45 an hour.
They arrive at that $73 an hour by tacking on the cost of all the retirees
onto the active worker. This is fraudulent bookkeeping. This is essentially
a Ponzi scheme, wherein the old investors are paid off by the new investors.
In other words, the older investors, the retirees, their pay-their pension
and healthcare-comes from the new investors, the workers. I heard Keith
Olbermann compare it to saying the average wage in America, and then you
would add on everybody who's collecting Social Security or pensions. It's
really preposterous.
-
- On top of that, I want to emphasize this. I earned my
pension while I was working, not [inaudible] somebody else. The guy working
today isn't earning my pension. I already earned that. General Motors should
have taken that money, set it aside, put it in a trust. If they didn't
do that, then they've committed a malfeasance. That's their responsibility.
Also, when I was working, they charged the customer more money based on
the fact, based on their excuse that "we have to pay more for this
worker because of healthcare and pension and his retirement, so we have
to charge the customer more." Whether that was 1980 or 1990, they
raised those prices. What did they do with that money? They apparently
didn't put it in a trust. But they did-and this is a fact-they've invested
largely overseas. General Motors and Ford, they have more plants overseas
than they have in the United States. They're ready to become major importers
to the United States and dump all their responsibilities to the people
who made those profits." (1)
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- In many ways this mirrors what was done by government
with Social Security. The money paid in by the employees was not put into
interest bearing trust accounts where it could have grown over time
instead it was spent as fast as it came in and the public received
only federal drawers filled with IOU's instead of the money that was supposedly
being held in Trust for retiree's. In the case of the Big Three, they used
the money paid (by their employees) into their employee-retirement-accounts
to open up all those other plants overseas-that are now about to make possible
the elimination of the work force whose money actually made this takedown
possible. That is what this takedown is all about; to open the US market
to imported GM, Chrysler and Ford products, and rid themselves of their
obligations to deliver on the commitments they made to their employees
over many decades. Their workers played the game by one set of rules, and
now after the game has been completed the rules are being changed (again)
so that those that sacrificed will be left with nothing. But there's Congress
and there's much more:
-
- "Congress acts like they had no responsibility.
If Congress-you see, we're the only country in the world that subsidizes
outsourcing of our jobs. Other countries subsidize research and development,
and they erect trade barriers to protect their basic industries. What we
did was-we do not subsidize research and development, and we subsidize
outsourcing. Those are other things that need to be changed.
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- JUAN GONZALEZ: Gregg Shotwell, one of the things that
you raise in some of the articles you've written is that there's a lot
of attention placed on, again, labor costs, but that the actual production
workers for the Big Three, their salaries represent about ten percent of
the cost of a car, while the money spent for supervisors and management
represents 20 percent of the cost of a car. But we rarely get any attention
on that aspect of the compensation.
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- GREGG SHOTWELL: No. You know, the media and Congress
really look at UAW wages, and this just shows their bias. But, you know,
these facts I got from the book Fat and Mean by [David] Gordon. And he
points out that the United States actually has, you know, like three or
four times as many supervisors and monitors as Germany or Japan, that we
waste a lot more money on management.
-
- But, you know, the actual labor costs-you know, this
is another aspect, I think, that people don't understand. I understand
why, but-our productivity really should justify a raise. And when I say
that, in 1992-you know, they say that-they justify all this, because we're
losing market share. Well, the market has gotten bigger. The pie is bigger.
But General Motors is selling as many cars. And the notion that they don't
like-people don't like GM cars belies the fact that they've sold more cars
than Toyota. In 1992, GM had 34 percent of the US market. This is from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And they produced 4.4 million cars. Now,
at that time, GM's hourly employment was 265,000. In 2005, the market share
had fallen about eight percent, but they had produced the same level of
cars, 4.5 million, with 111,000 workers. With 154,000 workers less, they
produced the same amount of cars. They lost market share, but they still
produced the same number of cars. Their productivity has doubled. So this
would-in normal times, when your productivity goes up, that means you deserve
an annual improvement factor, a raise.
-
- We've experienced just the opposite. The only reason
that autoworkers make what seems to be a higher wage than non-union workers
is that we have a cost-of-living adjustment. We won that back in 1970.
But we often do not get any raise at all. And in the best years, we only
get a three percent raise. But it's the cost of living that we have that
is the difference between union and non-union." (1)
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- In a nutshell: Business and the Big Three seized this
opportunity to finally put an end to their "labor-problems" by
dissolving their plants in the US, so that they could shirk their legal-obligations
to the unions, to their dealerships, and to the communities that depend
upon what their employees and their suppliers provided toward the health
and welfare of millions of people in the US. At the same time the Big Three
will finally be able to freely use the import markets without having the
labor costs to slow them down ~ because to the Corporatopcry nothing
else matters!
-
- Had the congress and the government not chosen to go
along with this idea, none of this could be happening now. Just look at
the official spin being put on everything from calling this a Christmas
Gift, to blaming the workers for the problem, while omitting the real costs
of manufacturing that are inflated by the fact that American workers do
not have the same health protections that many of our foreign competitors
provide for their workers.
-
- The real point at issue here is the continued existence
of the entire American manufacturing base, all the way down to light industry-all
of which will be directly impacted by the decisions reached over the outcome
of the Big Three negotiations. In reality, this shakedown is little more
than a total surrender of the working people to the ownership class in
this society. This "deal" will complete the Redistribution of
Wealth in the United States, and the number of people that will suffer
from this contrived surrender is almost incalculable.
-
- One more small point to watch for is that forty-three
of the fifty States in the US are now in need of some kind of BAILOUT.
The current dollar amount for that is about $100 billion, and growing every
day. Please remember that part of every bailout is a "federal-ownership-stake"
in whatever is supposedly receiving these monetary "gifts."
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- If government continues to wait the amount needed by
the States will soon reach unmanageable proportions-but more important
if the individual States take this money-they stand to lose their state
sovereignty (their official independence from the federal government).
This would mark the end of the United States, because the States themselves
would no longer be voluntary members of the so-called Union. Instead (in
a worst case scenario) they would become simple serfdoms within a federally-fascist
bureaucracy with no rights and no actual part to play in the governance
of this nation.
-
- But since the Congress has already given up its duties
regarding checks & balances, not-to-mention oversight how much
difference could it make that there will be just one-less place to demand
answers from? Now we're just an Outlaw-stronghold among the community of
nations in the world, because we do not care.
-
- kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net
-
- 1) US Auto Giants, Workers Face Uncertain Future http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/19/us_auto_giants_workers_face_uncertain
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-
-
- Here's a list of some of the recipients so far - of this
government's generosity;
- contrast these against the paltry amount of the "gift"
to the Big Three & the
- millions of us that depend upon those jobs remaining
here in the US.
-
- Wells Fargo & Company San Francisco CA $25,000,000,000
- JPMorgan Chase & Co. New York NY $25,000,000,000
- Citigroup Inc. New York NY $25,000,000,000
- Bank of America Corporation Charlotte NC $15,000,000,000
- The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. New York NY $10,000,000,000
- Morgan Stanley New York NY $10,000,000,000
- Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. New York NY $10,000,000,000
- U.S. Bancorp Minneapolis MN $6,599,000,000
- Capital One Financial Corporation McLean VA $3,555,199,000
- SunTrust Banks, Inc. Atlanta GA $3,500,000,000
- Regions Financial Corp. Birmingham AL $3,500,000,000
- BB&T Corp. Winston-Salem NC $3,133,640,000
- Bank of New York Mellon Corporation New York NY $3,000,000,000
- KeyCorp Cleveland OH $2,500,000,000
- Comerica Inc. Dallas TX $2,250,000,000
- State Street Corporation Boston MA $2,000,000,000
- Marshall & Ilsley Corporation Milwaukee WI $1,715,000,000
- Northern Trust Corporation Chicago IL $1,576,000,000
- Zions Bancorporation Salt Lake City UT $1,400,000,000
- Huntington Bancshares Columbus OH $1,398,071,000
- Popular, Inc. San Juan PR $935,000,000
- First Horizon National Corporation Memphis TN $866,540,000
- Associated Banc-Corp Green Bay WI $525,000,000
- Webster Financial Corporation Waterbury CT $400,000,000
- City National Corporation Beverly Hills CA $400,000,000
- TCF Financial Corporation Wayzata MN $361,172,000
- South Financial Group, Inc. Greenville SC $347,000,000
- Wilmington Trust Corporation Wilmington DE $330,000,000
- East West Bancorp Pasadena CA $306,546,000
- Sterling Financial Corporation Spokane WA $303,000,000
- Valley National Bancorp Wayne NJ $300,000,000
- Susquehanna Bancshares, Inc Lititz PA $300,000,000
- Citizens Republic Bancorp, Inc. Flint MI $300,000,000
- UCBH Holdings, Inc. San Francisco CA $298,737,000
- Cathay General Bancorp Los Angeles CA $258,000,000
- SVB Financial Group Santa Clara CA $235,000,000
- Trustmark Corporation Jackson MS $215,000,000
- Umpqua Holdings Corp. Portland OR $214,181,000
- Washington Federal Inc. Seattle WA $200,000,000
- MB Financial Inc. Chicago IL $196,000,000
- First Midwest Bancorp, Inc. Itasca IL $193,000,000
- First Niagara Financial Group Lockport NY $184,011,000
- Pacific Capital Bancorp Santa Barbara CA $180,634,000
- United Community Banks, Inc. Blairsville GA $180,000,000
- Boston Private Financial Holdings, Inc. Boston MA $154,000,000
- Provident Bancshares Corp. Baltimore MD $151,500,000
- National Penn Bancshares, Inc. Boyertown PA $150,000,000
- Western Alliance Bancorporation Las Vegas NV $140,000,000
- CVB Financial Corp Ontario CA $130,000,000
- Sterling Bancshares, Inc. Houston TX $125,198,000
- Banner Corporation Walla Walla WA $124,000,000
- Signature Bank New York NY $120,000,000
- Taylor Capital Group Rosemont IL $104,823,000
- Old National Bancorp Evansville IN $100,000,000
- Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc. Nashville TN $95,000,000
- Iberiabank Corporation Lafayette LA $90,000,000
- Midwest Banc Holdings, Inc. Melrose Park IL $84,784,000
- Sandy Spring Bancorp, Inc. Olney MD $83,094,000
- Columbia Banking System, Inc. Tacoma WA $76,898,000
- TowneBank Portsmouth VA $76,458,000
- Wesbanco Bank Inc. Wheeling WV $75,000,000
- Bank of the Ozarks, Inc. Little Rock AR $75,000,000
- Independent Bank Corporation Ionia MI $72,000,000
- Virginia Commerce Bancorp Arlington VA $71,000,000
- Southwest Bancorp, Inc. Stillwater OK $70,000,000
- Superior Bancorp Inc. Birmingham AL $69,000,000
- Nara Bancorp, Inc. Los Angeles CA $67,000,000
- First Financial Holdings Inc. Charleston SC $65,000,000
- Wilshire Bancorp, Inc. Los Angeles CA $62,158,000
- Great Southern Bancorp Springfield MO $58,000,000
- Center Financial Corporation Los Angeles CA $55,000,000
- NewBridge Bancorp Greensboro NC $52,372,000
- Ameris Bancorp Moultrie GA $52,000,000
- The Bancorp, Inc. Wilmington DE $45,220,000
- Southern Community Financial Corp. Winston-Salem NC $42,750,000
- First Community Bankshares Inc. Bluefield VA $41,500,000
- Capital Bank Corporation Raliegh NC $41,279,000
- Heritage Commerce Corp. San Jose CA $40,000,000
- Cascade Financial Corporation Everett WA $38,970,000
- Eagle Bancorp, Inc. Bethesda MD $38,235,000
- TIB Financial Corp Naples FL $37,000,000
- First Defiance Financial Corp. Defiance OH $37,000,000
- State Bancorp, Inc. Jericho NY $36,842,000
- Porter Bancorp Inc. Louisville KY $35,000,000
- Encore Bancshares Inc. Houston TX $34,000,000
- Bank of North Carolina Thomasville NC $31,260,000
- Bank of Marin Bancorp Novato CA $28,000,000
- Centerstate Banks of Florida Inc. Davenport FL $27,875,000
- LNB Bancorp Inc. Lorain OH $25,223,000
- HF Financial Corp. Sioux Falls SD $25,000,000
- Heritage Financial Corporation Olympia WA $24,000,000
- Severn Bancorp, Inc. Annapolis MD $23,393,000
- Blue Valley Ban Corp Overland Park KS $21,750,000
- Indiana Community Bancorp Columbus IN $21,500,000
- Unity Bancorp, Inc. Clinton NJ $20,649,000
- Citizens South Banking Corporation Gastonia NC $20,500,000
- First PacTrust Bancorp, Inc. Chula Vista CA $19,300,000
- HopFed Bancorp Hopkinsville KY $18,400,000
- Bank of Commerce Holdings Redding CA $17,000,000
- 1st FS Corporation Hendersonville NC $16,369,000
- Valley Financial Corporation Roanoke VA $16,019,000
- LSB Corporation North Andover MA $15,000,000
- Oak Valley Bancorp Oakdale CA $13,500,000
- First Community Corporation Lexington SC $11,350,000
- First Litchfield Financial Corporation Litchfield CT
$10,000,000
- Central Bancorp, Inc. Somerville MA $10,000,000
- Coastal Banking Company, Inc. Fernandina Beach FL $9,950,000
- Southern Missouri Bancorp, Inc. Poplar Bluff MO $9,550,000
- Broadway Financial Corporation Los Angeles CA $9,000,000
- Central Federal Corporation Fairlawn OH $7,225,000
- Old Line Bancshares, Inc. Bowie MD $7,000,000
- Fidelity Bancorp, Inc. Pittsburgh PA $7,000,000
- Pacific International Bancorp Seattle WA $6,500,000
- FPB Bancorp, Inc. Port St. Lucie FL $5,800,000
- Northeast Bancorp Lewiston ME $4,227,000
- Manhattan Bancorp El Segundo CA $1,700,000
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- <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28316652/>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28316652/
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