A final (for now) comment on Romney’s virulent hostility toward the UAW (and organized labor in general, and union members)
Late Tuesday night, a Washington-based blogger for The Economist who covers U.S. politics posted a several-paragraph takedown of Romney’s op-ed published that morning in the Detroit News. I learned of the op-ed yesterday when I read a then-two—day-old entry about it by Matthew Yglesias (not a favorite of mine, but I’ll leave that subject for another post) on Slate’s Moneybox blog. The key paragraphs of the Economist post are:
The purpose of Mr Romney’s op-ed is to clarify his position on the auto bail-out ahead of Michigan’s primary on February 28th. And the piece rivals Cirque du Soleil in its display of contortions. Mr Romney seems loth to gush about the success of the bail-out, noting only the good news that “Chrysler and General Motors are still in business”. He certainly doesn’t mention that 2011 was the best year for America’s carmakers since the financial crisis, with each of the big three turning a solid profit. But he does imply that this achievement is a result of his own advice. “The course I recommended was eventually followed”, Mr Romney writes.
As with much of Mr Romney’s excessive rhetoric, there is some truth to this statement. Following the bail-outs, the president eventually forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy, a step Mr Romney thought should occur naturally. And the government oversaw painful restructurings at both companies, which were largely in line with Mr Romney’s broad suggestions. But the course Mr Romney recommended in 2008 began with the government stepping back, and it is unlikely things would’ve turned out so well had this happened.
Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position. “Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk”, we said. But “given the panic that gripped private purse-strings…it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended.” Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable. He conveniently ignores this bit of history in claiming to have been right all along.
But the next paragraph, the final one in the post, begins:
In other areas of his op-ed Mr Romney is more accurate. Unions did win some special favours in the bail-out deals, though they are not as egregious as the candidate claims. For example, a health fund for retired workers was unfairly favoured over secured bondholders at Chrysler.
Forgive me if I’m missing something here, but why, exactly, was it unfair for the Obama administration to force the favoring of a health fund for retired workers over secured bondholders at Chrysler in the government-funded restructuring of that company? Don’t bondholders take the risk of default when they purchase the bonds? Don’t investors risk losing all or part of their investment when they invest? Isn’t that an inherent part of capitalism?
And while it’s true that in bankruptcy proceedings, pension and other retirement-benefit agreements, including those negotiated in labor agreements, can be dissolved or significantly altered, why—considering that retirement benefits are given as deferred payment for the workers’ labor—is it unfair for a government that is funding a “managed” bankruptcy to favor a health fund for retired workers over bondholders?
This strikes me as at the very heart of what Mitt Romney is about: his bald preference for government policy that favors the wealthy over everyone else. Santorum probably will win the primary in Michigan and the primary in Ohio a week later. But what will put him over the top in these rustbelt states is not the social conservatives but instead blue-collar voters whose primary (and general-election) concern (yes, pun intended), is economic policy.
Years ago I was taught that ERISA guaranteed pensions and gave them the same bankruptcy standing as the IRS including the ability to pierce the limited liability sheild and go after officerdirectors assets. Was that just wrong or was there a major revising of the law? I’be been wondering this for a while as thepension finds seem to bagteements seem to be modified in bankruptcy deals.
Beverly
no reason for this to be the final word.
the bad guys repeat their lies and refine them until that’s all people can remember.
it wouldn’t hurt to repeat the truth at least as much.
To add a little balance, the UAW played a large role in making a mess of the Big 3, UAW leaders got elected by making impossible promises to the membership, and politicians of both parties regularly overlook union corruption and racism.
None of that defends Romney’s sideline quarterbacking.
In much of Michigan the UAW is not all that popular, especially with blue collar workers.
In any case none of this matters much because the GOP is going to insure Obama’s reelection.
and it is worth repeating
the whole art of the lie is to say nothing that is not strictly true while leading the mark to draw conclusions that are false, to his harm.
for example,
rusty believes the UAW was running General Motors all those years.
Hey how about a little more balance. Try acknowledging the role UAW leadership and members had in contributing to the recovery of the big 3. Whatever un-cited impossible promises the UAW made ( maybe they told the membership that GM would keep their pension and retirement healthcare benefit promises? The fools!) the fact remains that the UAW made significant contributions to keeping this industry afloat.
I think this is a clarfication not a disagreement. There are racist unions, but the UAW was an important part of the civil rights coalition. It could just be the result of the luxury of representing workers in a concentrated and the very profitable industry, but the UAW was long a crucial member of the progressive coalition with goals much broader than the economic interests of its members. Also, while I’d be amazed if every UAW official were honest, it is not one of the unions witha reputation for corruption.
Of course the real issue is managment. The union leaders have a short term orientation just like managment, in the union leaders case its the next election for the union leadership. They want to be reelected just like the government politicians (in fact they are politicians). So they do just like government politicians. But the managment between not being willing to take the short term pain to fix the issue, (again because the corp raiders would come in and kick them out), and their volume over profit model that occured in the lead up, are ultimatly responsible. Recall that we would have had national health care if the Car companies and the UAW had not pushed back in 1948. In fact the pattern for wages was essentially set in 1948 for the UAW.
A union leader has only one job get the most for his workers in the short term that he can, just like a government politician, for in the long term we are all dead. The folks that made the deals thru the 1970s were not around to see the results.
thanks Lyle
sadly, the way the human mind works is “i heard a story once about something bad a union did. Therefore All unions are bad forever about everything.”
I suppose the choice to save bonds or workers depends on how you view the workings of an economy or even if you consider an economy over a market.
Seems to me, if you are saving 2 business that are considered essential to your economy that happens to be in a major unemployment trend compared to piles of money from the nation’s favorite bank sitting in the private banks, assuring the labor force takes the least hair cut just seems like a “Duh!” moment.
Of course if you believe that money at the top is most important to stopping a falling economy, then why even bother saving the 2 companies?
My father was a journalist whose salary was negotiated by the Chicago Newspaper Guild, the newsroom staff’s union. As a reporter early in his career, he was a Guild member, and his salary was determined as part of the formal Guild contract. Later, as an editor, he could not remain a Guild member because his position was (inappropriately) considered “management,” but the Guild continued to informally negotiate his and similarly-situated editors’ salaries.
His newspaper, The Chicago Daily News, was an afternoon paper, a breed increasingly imperiled by the existence of TV evening news casts and by ever-more-difficult rush-hour traffic conditions that made timely delivery to the suburbs really hard. (Virtually all of them folded before the turn of the millennium.) I remember my parents explaining to me each time the Guild contract was up for renewal, and there was some talk of a strike, that the Guild would again have to mostly-cave on salary demands because the potential for the collapse of the paper was real. The sweetener for the Guild and for my father and other editor-managers-non-managers was an increase in pension benefits. (When the paper finally did close, my father was one of lucky few who was transferred to the paper’s sister publication, The Chicago Sun-Times, a morning paper; both papers were owned by the Marshall Field family at the time. He worked there until his retirement at age 65.)
My point is that I’m well familiar with the need for labor unions to take care to not kill the proverbial goose that lays the golden (or bronze, or some even-cheaper metal) egg. But what killed the Big Three automakers was not union bosses overplaying their hands; it was instead stunningly poor decisions by corporate management to remove quality as a component of their products, at a time when foreign auto companies were making it their hallmark, and to fill their lineups almost entirely with vehicles so fuel-inefficient that steep rises in oil prices could prove disastrous for the companies.
And when these decisions coupled with a collapsing economy and a consumer- and business-credit freeze necessitated a government bailout for two of the three companies and, indirectly because of the effect that GM and Chrysler liquidation would have had on the auto-industry’s U.S. suppliers, on the third company (Ford) as well, the UAW made the concessions necessary to enable the companies to remain intact through bankruptcy and emerge positioned to become profitable and regain substantial market share.
As for the UAW’s history of racism, I’m at a loss to understand its relevance here, since that history is in the relatively distant past, and since nothing in the results of the Obama administration’s favoring of union labor over secured bondholders had a racist effect, and since Romney’s pique about that policy choice is likely caused by something other than anger at the UAW’s racist past.
And whatever unhappiness white blue-collar auto workers have had about the UAW, it’s a safe bet, I suspect that these days all is forgiven.
My father was a journalist whose salary was negotiated by the Chicago Newspaper Guild, the newsroom staff’s union. As a reporter early in his career, he was a Guild member, and his salary was determined as part of the formal Guild contract. Later, as an editor, he could not remain a Guild member because his position was (inappropriately) considered “management,” but the Guild continued to informally negotiate his and similarly-situated editors’ salaries.
His newspaper, The Chicago Daily News, was an afternoon paper, a breed increasingly imperiled by the existence of TV evening news casts and by ever-more-difficult rush-hour traffic conditions that made timely delivery to the suburbs really hard. (Virtually all of them folded before the turn of the millennium.) I remember my parents explaining to me each time the Guild contract was up for renewal, and there was some talk of a strike, that the Guild would again have to mostly-cave on salary demands because the potential for the collapse of the paper was real. The sweetener for the Guild and for my father and other editor-managers-non-managers was an increase in pension benefits. (When the paper finally did close, my father was one of lucky few who was transferred to the paper’s sister publication, The Chicago Sun-Times, a morning paper; both papers were owned by the Marshall Field family at the time. He worked there until his retirement at age 65.)
My point is that I’m well familiar with the need for labor unions to take care to not kill the proverbial goose that lays the golden (or bronze, or some even-cheaper metal) egg. But what killed the Big Three automakers was not union bosses overplaying their hands; it was instead stunningly poor decisions by corporate management to remove quality as a component of their products, at a time when foreign auto companies were making it their hallmark, and to fill their lineups almost entirely with vehicles so fuel-inefficient that steep rises in oil prices could prove disastrous for the companies.
And when these decisions coupled with a collapsing economy and a consumer- and business-credit freeze necessitated a government bailout for two of the three companies and, indirectly because of the effect that GM and Chrysler liquidation would have had on the auto-industry’s U.S. suppliers, on the third company (Ford) as well, the UAW made the concessions necessary to enable the companies to remain intact through bankruptcy and emerge positioned to become profitable and regain substantial market share.
As for the UAW’s history of racism, I’m at a loss to understand its relevance here, since that history is in the relatively distant past, and since nothing in the results of the Obama administration’s favoring of union labor over secured bondholders had a racist effect, and since Romney’s pique about that policy choice is likely caused by something other than anger at the UAW’s racist past.
And whatever unhappiness white blue-collar auto workers have had about the UAW, it’s a safe bet, I suspect, that these days all is forgiven.
“Forgive me if I’m missing something here, but why, exactly, was it unfair for the Obama administration to force the favoring of a health fund for retired workers over secured bondholders at Chrysler in the government-funded restructuring of that company?”
It’s called “rule of law”.
I’m perfectly happy with the idea that pension funds, health care funbds, health care funds for retirees, should be privileged in bankruptcy. So, actually, is everyone who buys bonds.
Just as everyone who buys bonds is entirely happy if these desirable things like pensions and health care are not privileged in bankruptcy.
No one actually minds which way around this is. When you lend the company money (ie, buy a bond) you know what the situation is and you lend or don’t lend as you wish.
What has people screaming in anger is that the bonds were sold on one basis: no privilege. The bankruptcy was done, for political reasons, on the basis of privilege.
The rule of law was subverted. And no free society can long survive that happening.
Just to say it again. No one cares about the privilege. Only that the rules were changed mid-game.
time
somehow i don’t believe you. “the law” is subverted all the time, and i generally don’t hear the people who benefit howling about it.
i don’t know the law you cite, but it would seem to me to be a pretty bad law if it favors repaying those who knowingly took a risk with their money, over taking care of those people who had a contract for a certain level of compensation.
If that is not what the law does, then i have to expect it was a law written by and for bondholders, and THAT is what subverts “rule of law.”
i wonder if rusty knows what those impossible promises were, and how much they added to the cost of a car, and how many people bought cheaper cars because Detroit cars were too expensive?
tim,
somehow i don’t believe you. “the law” is subverted all the time, and i generally don’t hear the people who benefit howling about it.
i don’t know the law you cite, but it would seem to me to be a pretty bad law if it favors repaying those who knowingly took a risk with their money, over taking care of those people who had a contract for a certain level of compensation.
If that is not what the law does, then i have to expect it was a law written by and for bondholders, and THAT is what subverts “rule of law.”
People are screaming in anger? Oh, my. Guess those people wouldn’t be screaming if the government hadn’t bailed out the two companies, and the companies were liquidated. Would there have been anything left for the bondholders? Not according to what I read. But the workers and retirees would have been hurt further, and the companies, their suppliers, and Ford too, no longer would exist. So sad that the Obama administration didn’t adhere to your—er, people’s—sense of fairness.
I have no expertise in bankruptcy law, but I have no idea what law you have in mind, tim, that requires privileging bondholders over union-negotiated benefits that were negotiated on, to use your words, one basis—no privilege—in a managed bankruptcy or restructuring.
No laws were broken, no rules were changed, and the bankruptcy court approved the restructuring terms.
rusty seems not to mind whipping the same dead horse hoping to bring it back to its feet and running. Just two days ago hetried the same bullshit concerning the UAW’s role in the collapse of GM. I guess Ford was negotiating with some other union. I guess that the German auto makers don’t have to contend with union negotiations. I know that rusty is so full of crap that his eyes are brown. i’ll duplicate my reply to his first reference to the UAW as the culprit in GM’s demise.
“Necessary, yes. Overly protective of the UAW, of course.”
Nice bank shot, right into the eye of labor. Covered over by use of the collective UAW, but essentially labor none the less. Let’s see a bankruptcy of a large corporation for what it often, and in this case, is. Workers, amongst other stake holders, had contracts with a corporation. The corporatition went through a legal metamorphis and emerged as though newly created. As a result workers were told to work for less. Work? Yes, but for less.
And so America continues its backwards march to labor income insufficiency. The southeast has few unions. The midwest wants to eviscerate what unions they still have. Some how its labor that’s the felonious looter of the golden past and is expected to give back what they are told their fathers took too much of. Deceipt and deception continue to reign supreme. No one was ever paid too much for their labor. Many have been over paid for their ideas and lack of managerial accumen. Lest we forget the median income, the middle score with 50% below that level, as reported by SSA, “By definition, 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage, which is estimated to be $26,363.55 for 2010.”
It’s a good thing that I don’t live in a place that encourages gun totting and that I’m not inclined to walk around armed, because if I hear one more person complain about union wages, or any labor wages for that matter, I would probably shoot the ass hole and consider it a net gain in the name of vermin extermination.
2 days ago, 1:11:59 PM
And let’s not forget that GM just announced that it can no longer fund the defined benefits plan of the workers hired prior to 1991. Their retirement fund remains, but will not be continued. They have the dubious privilege to now take part in the 401K, (gurantee a mutual fund manger’s retirement) plan.
Beverly
What Tim and Rusty are attempting to do is play the came of repeating a less than accurate idea often enough that it may at some future time be seen to be true. This is an old ideological gambit. I think it was developed and perfected by a man named Nixon in the ’70s. When the truth is inconvenient just make shit up. Most people won’t know that that is what you are up to. Tim seems to believe that when an entity has competing contractual obligations it is some thrid party’s right to deterfmine ehich obligation has primary legal status. The words you’re looking for in your effort to understand Tim, and rusty for that matter, are bull shit.
If I understand tim correctly, what he’s saying is that when an entity has competing contractual obligations, and one of those obligations is to bondholders, the obligations to the bondholders must, by law, be privileged above all else because that’s what they were promised. But since that’s not the law, then any such promise was fraud. Of course, no such promise was made to these bondholders. They were secured creditors; that’s all.
If I understand tim correctly, what he’s saying is that when an entity has competing contractual obligations, and one of those obligations is to bondholders, the obligations to the bondholders must, by law, be privileged above all else because that’s what the bondholders were promised. But since that’s not the law, then any such promise was fraud. Of course, no such promise was made to these bondholders. They were secured creditors; that’s all.
Robert:
The UAW was a part of the march on Washington in the late sixties and joined with the Memphis Sanitation Workers having bussed down from Detroit to Memphis. Reuther joined King on the march to Washington.
And add to that that all aspects of a retirement package are in fact, if not in contract, a form of deferred compensation. Is employee earned compensation, even if deferred, ahead of bond holder’s when the bills come due?
Maybe time has come for the courts to recognize the legitimate claims of workers as superior to the claims of lenders. Lenders are put on notice that their investment is potentially subject to loss. Interest rates are set on the basis of the perception of that potential. Employees expect to be paid their compensation whether due in the present or in the future. In fact employers have often used the promise of an enhanced future payment for present day work in order to reduce current payment for that work. How does such a deferment constitute an abrogation of an employee’s legitimate claim for compensation contractually agreed to?
Exactly, Robert. So well put.
Exactly, Robert and run. So well put.
“Maybe time has come for the courts to recognize the legitimate claims of workers as superior to the claims of lenders.”
Not these courts. United set a disastrous precedent when they won the right to screw their employees out of $3B in pension contributions owed them. Funny how their financial distress didn’t stop them from merging with continental a few years later.
With that decision established and the UAL retirees now dependent on the broke PBGC they will recieve a small fraction of the retirement they legitimately earned. And the next CEO/CFO who wants to stiff his retirees has a ready script in place.
“Sorry, we’re broke. You trusted us, too bad losers… “
I recall listening to a UA worker tell of the 3 times they/union had taken a cut in pay to help the company. Each time the workers specified a greater percentage of the now lower pay to be put in their pension. United went to court after the third renegotiation and won. Not having to fund the pension and winning meant that the corp was allowed to contract for labor at X rate that in the end became a lower Y rate do to the fact of not funding the pension.
So much for the legal concept of “contracts”.
Of course, the general public that is long removed from the model of “pensions” believes it is extra money thanks to our corp aligned MSM, a gift so to speak from the company and thus have not been so much concerned regarding this form of labor theft.
Why is Julius Caesar the bad guy and Pompey the Great the good guy in traditional Roman historiography? Ditto for the Gracchi Brothers vs the Older and Younger Cato? And who the hell are the Gracchi and WTF does this have to do with bondholders vs the UAW?
Well lots. First you have to understand that the academic disciplines of History and Economics are relatively new. That is in Britainthere were no such things as Professors of History or Economics before the 1880s or thereabouts and the formal study of what we know as History was largely limited to biography and diplomatic, military, dynastic and religious developments. Which in practice meant the actions of the scions of royalty and the aristocracy who filled all important roles in spheres of action not particularly differentiated to start with. And the gradual development of what we migh recognize as ‘scientific’ history and economics in the 18th century was firmly in the hands of and in the interest of that same class. And not coincidentally was hostile to nascent ideas of democracy that started bubbling up in the 17th and 18th centuries. That is for the ruling class, and their clients, including the educational establishment (such as it was), ‘democracy’ was literally a dirty word and an existential danger to Established Order. And considering the outcomes of the French Revolution (e.g. The guillotine) you can’t say they were wrong, after all their necks were literally on the line.
Roman Historiography was developed mostly by Germans during the age of Revolution and Reaction and mostly by clients of Reactionaries. Who perforce examined classical antiquity through that lens. And from that focal point Cicero was a hero and Caesar a zero, and ditto for the Catos vs the Gracchi. Cicero and the Catos were unswerving supporters of traditional aristocratic order, while Caesar and the Gracchi were seen as at least sympathetic to democracy. Which didn’t mean what we think today, both Julius Caesar and the Gracchi were drawn from the very top tier of an almost unimaginably exclusive class, basically the 0.001% of their day. But in relative terms the Thomas Paines of their day.
But this still leaves us a long way from Walter Reuther and the UAW. Though maybe not that far from ‘class traitor’ FDR.
Okay to the point. Classical Economics in both it’s applied and academic forms came to be in basically the same time and places as Roman Historiography and despite its appeals to science, which were shared by the founders of the academic discipline of History, were equally infused with class viewpoints that in retrospect are indistinguishable from bias. And more specifically bias in favor or property and property owners.
Caesar and the Gracchi were perceived to be, and perhaps in a sense were, hostile to concentrations of landed property in the hands of their own class, and for motives that may have varied advocated for some form of redistribution (though they were no more socialists or God help us communists than Obama is). As such they got treated roughly by 18th and early 19th historians with effects in the historiography still visible today. And BTW also seen in Greek Historiography where Thucydides is privileged to Herodotus as a historian and Sparta to Athens as societies by folk that Victor Davis Hansen, ‘demagogues bad, traditionalists good’.
I suggest that the view through this particular lens favoring aristocratic order and attendant property rights runs so deep through academic economics and it’s practical applications that it is literally imvisible, instead it has shifted the visual field.
Which gives us Romney. And perhaps Worstall. Once you organize your entire world view and historical judgement in ways that cognitively privilege property rights over […]
Liberals have a severe blind spot, the inability to admit that unions have been much less than perfect. The possibility that unions leaders made short-term deals to get re-elected while knowing the long term consequences were negative is simply beyond liberal comprehension.
The UAW has a checkered history on civil rights, but actually a much better history than say the AFL-CIO building trades where racism and nepotism were institutions until recently, and are still not done eliminated. I was well into my 50s before I saw a black guy on the seat of a bulldozer. I have never met a black master electrician, although I know some are out there.
I have met exactly one minority pipefitter in my entire life. His father-in-law, a senior fitter, after nearly shooting him for marrying his lilly white daughter, decided he needed to be able to support her. Angel recently retired after getting his son-in-law a card in the fitters. So it goes. (Angel’s grandchildren are just as adorable as my grandchildren, and we all like fishing.)
The UAW has a history of vehicle sabotage, goon violence, racism, protecting alcohol and drug abuse inside of plants, and etc. The UAW is not universally popular in Michigan or Ohio. The UAW did much good work, but it was not all good work.
I get amused when people who have never been within five miles of an assembly or parts plant know all about the UAW. People who never heard of the VEBA until last week are experts. Chuckle, chuckle.
And management is any different, it has only an orientation to the next quarter or year. Or at most until they retire. Why should union leaders have a longer view of the world than managment? For example the build them for parking lots strategy of the late 2000s that contributed strongly to the downfall, by forcing rebates and the like? I think perhaps we can say that most humans have a short term orientation, because in the long term we are dead. Its like the folks who commented on some of the bubble mortages that they hoped they had retired by the time the chickens come home to roost.
Rusty
maybe i am not a liberal, but the severe blind spot here appears to be yours.
us liberals and honorary liberals actually have the ability to admit that unions have been less than perfect. just like most human institutions. but we also recognize the need for them. so the much less than perfect bosses don’t squeeze the workers back to a condition of slavery.
as for racism, your “lilly white daughter” is a racist remark.
I have never liked unions but admit that their positives, in the workplace and in our political system, outweigh their negatives. I cannot come up with alternative ways to fulfill their positive functions and I don’t see others doing it. So my attitude towards unions is similar to what Churchill said about democracy as a form of government–the worst except for all the others. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen what happens to employees and the middle class when unions become weaker and weaker and imho it’s not a pretty sight.
“The possibility that unions leaders made short-term deals to get re-elected while knowing the long term consequences were negative is simply beyond liberal comprehension.”
Rusty,
How can you not see the bias in that remark. Unions don’t make unilateral agreements. It is almost always a management preference to pay in the future for the labor that is producing today. Union leaders don’t get elected more quickly or more assuedly for future benefits in place of current pay. Unions accept such offers from management in an effort to reach a contractual agreement. And how is it that anyoone would know that corporations would renege on those contractual agreements by under funding the benefits package? And who is it that fore saw the total collapse of the American auto industry. A collapse that had to do with competition over quality and fuel efficiency, neither of which were concerns of the American auto industry executive corps until it was a bit too late.
Give it a rest rusty. This is not a liberal vs conservative issue. This has nothing to do with Dems vs Repubs. This is our facts vs your fiction.
When are we going to stop beating up on workers whose unions are better bargainers than management? For heaven’s sake, if a company goes starts doing badly, why in the hell blame unions when management is responsible for running the company? Talk about a bunch of whiners! “Oooooh! Those bad union bosses were mean to us!” Meanwhile, they paid a huge army of guys in gray flannel suits a fortune every year to sit around and bitch about the unions!
Come on, people. Even in SSA, we knew the difference between management problems and union problems. There are crazy people in every organization. SSA had some crazy-a**-thought-they-were-lady-killers-mess with their time sheet-just plain dumb-managers. It also had some mean-as-a-junk-yard-dog-dumb-as-dirt-just-plain-lying- misogynistic and/or manhating-neo-fascist union reps. When it came time to count up the numbers, the union sure wasn’t in the room. So, if you’re trying to tell me that poor, mistreated management in GM and Chrysler had nothing to do with the collapse of said organizations, I feel perfectly free to tell you to go fly a kite.
Think for a minute of the beautiful American cars of the 60’s and even early 70’s. Now, compare them to today’s itty-bitty-uncomfortable-can’t-see-out-the-rear-window-sardine-tin-clausrophobia-inducing-so-called-cars they put on the road today. Think of the terrific advances in automotive engineering that have been put into production in other countries we couldn’t have because “it cost too much” to do it here?
And consider the cubic tons of hydrocarbons pumped into the atmosphere, rant-rave-rant-holler-and-shout about the stupidity of the managers in Detroit who managed to turn car-loving, red-blooded Americans into devoted followers of the Nissans, Toyotas, Suzuki’s, Hondas and Korean cars of today. I have a big, comfortable, terrific handling, carry plywood flat, minivan with decent mileage–FROM HONDA! The Ford van I had drove like a truck, had perpetual automatic choke problems, wouldn’t stop to save my life and wouldn’t hold a piece of plywood flat if ITS miserable life depended on it. Oh, about 8 mpg, too, on the freeway with a tailwind.
Tell me who we should be mad at? Management or the union? Whaddaya think? And, forgive the rant. If I could handle an insane union rep, me with my humanities degree from a liberal arts college, anyone who wants to can. Sez NancyO
I remember thinking about the Gracchi brothers when RFK was assassinated and joined his brother John and MLK in a long line of democratic leaders who ended up dead for their trouble. Caesar wrote better than Cicero when it came to clarity of expression. Lot of good it did him. NancyO
“…workers whose unions are better bargainers than management?”
The question misses something essential: The union leadership knew they would ultimately have to answer to their constituents. A failure to bargain fairly, effectively and in good faith offered at least the possibility of replacement at the ballot box. As we have seen repeated multiple times in multiple industries, the managers probably didn’t share that concern. If they made an unworkable or even ruinous bargain, they were free to “Resign to pursue other interests” (A popular phrase applied in my organization) and wreak havac somewhere else. Usually at a significant increase in pay depending on the circumstances…
And from another perspective
the local paper likes to run stories from time to time that show former state workers retired and living in luxury on the coast of France, implying that the unions forced the state to provide champagne retirement benefits.
thing is though, those retired workers were not represented by the union. they were management, and they got the big retirements because they got the big pay. and they got the big jobs because they had big friends.
meanwhile OUR union reps were so anxious to get promotions that they managed to see every issue through the eyes of management.
but, you know, it was unions that brought this country to its knees. everyone knows that.
From today’s NY Times: “Fearing a Minimum Wage Increase Will Be Bad for Business”
The fear is that full time, 35 hrs/week, will go up from less than $13,000 annually to slightly under $15,000 annually. That’s full time labor at physically demanding jobs. No retirement plan here other than social security. No health plan, just disability insurance. No, these workers are not skilled workers. Nor are they represented by a union. And less than $13,000 per year for full time physical labor is the result. The complaint over the increase?
“Should the minimum wage be raised this year, Mr. Cestaro cannot charge a store like Sears any more because he is under a long-term contract. “Sears could care less what the minimum wage is,” he said, “because I’m obligated to them until 2015.”
Is this a serious debate? The median individual income for people who actually have an income is around $26,000 per year. Who’s being over paid? How do we even have the audacity to argue about sub poverty wages for full time work?
Bruce, Nancy,
Violent revolutions occur, and atrocities of numbers killed happen, because history tells us that the winner is the one left standing. And the insurrectionists know too well that the powers behind the throne are the first to start doing the killing.
Caesar vs Cicero as writers.
My highest formal degree was an M.A. in Comparative Literature where my two languages of concentration were Medieval Welsh and Latin.
And in studying Latin Grammar it is made clear from the very first day that Ciceronian Latin is BY DEFINITION the highest and most grammatical form of the language while Caesar is presented as somehow being quite plebian (literally). Oddly though many generations of Latin students past and present were introduced to Latin via Caesar’s Gallic Wars while any study of Cicero’s Letters and Orations held back for mostly Upper Division classes. Moreover if you work your way through an advanced Latin Grammar you end up with a huge range of Case usages, with the Dative of this and the Ablative of that and the Genitive of the other all overlapping in so confusing a way that you begin to suspect the Classical Grammarians from antiquity right through the triumphs of German based Historical Philology ended up inventing rules to justify particular Ciceronian and other elite usages. I mean God forbid that Cicero ever got sloppy, oh no he was just using the Dative of Advantage! (as far as I know made up). That there are few if any other instances of that particular Dative anywhere else not seeming to bother anyone.
You see the same thing in modern politics where no comment by Palin or Bachmann or Lil’ Ricky, however wrong and inane when measured in normal understanding, can always be rescued via some strained interpretation. “No I wasn’t talking about the ACTUAL location of the Battles of Concord and Lexington! Oh my no! Only to the State where they were APPRECIATED” (Unlike the godless unpatriotic Commies of Taxachusetts). Okay. Or “Well in a meta sense Paul Rvere’s Ride by helping keep Colonial weapons from being seized by Red Coats was REALLY about whooping and hollering and ringing bells to warn them to keep their hands OFF!.
You could call the entire process ‘Potemkin Grammar’ (in respect to Cicero and Tacitus, an even more difficult writer) or ‘Potemkin Rhetoric’ in relation to Sarah, Michelle and Rick. They don’t lie or even get things wrong in their heads. Nope at worst they misspoke and mostly you pointy headed liberal comp-symps are just deliberately distorting the clear meanings of these geniuses.
But while this Emperors New Clothes thing is reasonably visible to observers of politics in live time, it becomes obscured to the point of invisibility in your canonical Econ 101 or Intro to Classical History 4A textbook. Ricardo Good! Caesar Bad! Who ate you going to believe? Your lying eyes or five generations of Professors?
Which is only made worse because in most cases you better have really good damn reason for rejecting Authority. Because while those PhDs and their teachers to the fourth generation might be WRONG, they tend to be awfully INFORMED and WELL READ. Proceed at your own risk.
Authority. Wait. You mean like Cartman?? Oh, economics must be easier than I thought! NancyO
Maybe Mr Cestaro needs to go out of business. Be replaced by someone who can make a profit while paying a living wage.
As for that long term contract thing.. isn’t business about risk? risk that conditions will change over the course of a long term contract?
i will add, however, that i think there are people nearby who don’t seem to think anyone who doesn’t have a college degree, or need one, should be paid a living wage.