Sure we are all morons.

I believe we had a poll here on auto blog and by 3% people vote FOR the bailout...on an automotive website.

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Because a chance to reform the union contracts is something only a moron would want to do, obviously.

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No doubt people will suffer if the Big 3 go down, but someone will take their place eventually. It's the price of capitalism is it not?

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Union contracts have already been reformed. Apparently the media outside Michigan doesn't want the public to know that.

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@Mitchttj: The will of the people is how a democracy is supposed to work. If you consider majority will to be moronic and dismiss it out of hand, there are plenty of totalitarian regimes still out there in other parts of the world.

@happy_penguin: Union contracts have been reformed for future workers, but current workers would still enjoy pretty much the same level of unaffordable wages and benefits. The savings won't kick in until a sizeable number of current workers are replaced by new workers, which is too little, too late.

Autoblog, Dec 12, 2008: "Gettelfinger claims the UAW was willing to make its wages and benefits competitive with those earned by non-union workers at transplant factories, but felt it must be done over time through the attrition of older, higher-paid workers and the hiring of new workers at a lower wage with less benefits."
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/12/uaw-points-blame-for-bailout-failure-back-at-senate-republicans/

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The senate's version only required UAW to make concession to bring their wages and benefits to be competitive with their competitors.
Who would determine what's competitive? The car czar, to be appointed later by President Obama, or his Labor Secretary, who, we'd logically assume to be labor friendly. UAW turned that down. They are essentially holding a gun to their own head, asking us the taxpayers for $, or they'll pull the trigger.

For comparison, consider the bondholders, the entities that loaned GM the billions it's now indebted to, they would swap out their outstanding debt for equities. They would be faced with a 70% loss in their loan portfolio value, and will only recover if GM stock recovers....so, they have every incentives to ensure GM's success. The current shareowners will see their stakes heavily diluted by this swap, and will also be even only if GM were to achieve long term success. Everyone took a haircut, but UAW was the sole entity who decided to extort.

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As I understood it, the reason the UAW wouldn't agree to the concession is because there was a refusal to define the concession. Does anybody have numbers? The UAW had already AGREED to wage concessions:

"The tentative agreement reached with Corker also called for the proposed auto czar to ensure that wages and benefits paid to active UAW employees at domestic automakers would be competitive with compensation paid to workers at foreign-owned transplant factories.

"It's unfortunate that Sen. Corker was unable to persuade his colleagues to accept the agreement we negotiated, which included substantial additional sacrifices by our members," said Gettelfinger.

The stumbling block was a demand by the GOP caucus that UAW workers and retirees had to be treated differently from all other stakeholders, instead of requiring all parties to come to the table.

"This demand is not only unfair, it is unworkable," said Gettelfinger. "Modifying wages and benefits alone cannot solve the structural and financial problems faced by the domestic auto industry." "

http://www.uaw.org/auto/12_12_08auto1.cfm

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@Happy:
I unintentionally left out the part where the deadline for all stakeholders is set for Mar'09 I believe. UAW wouldn't agree to the Mar'09 deadline for concession to kick in, and wanted to wait until 2011. This is obviously incongruent with the need for the cash money, now.

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"@happy_penguin: Union contracts have been reformed for future workers, but current workers would still enjoy pretty much the same level of unaffordable wages and benefits"

Those "future workers" started working in the plants last year. In addition to that, the fabled broom pusher who makes $150,000/year was replaced as well. All of those services were cut even further by contracting the work. They too are in the plants now.

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@happy_penguin: In that case, what is the ratio of current (unaffordable) workers versus new (competitive) workers at a typical Big 3 manufacturing facility? How many more years will it take for the *average* Big 3 UAW worker to be cost competitive compared to non-union American workers at Toyota? With GM and Chrysler allegedly just months or weeks away from financial collapse, can these two companies afford to wait these many years for the workforce to slowly level out in labor cost? If you can honestly answer these questions, you will begin to understand the magnitude of the disadvantage imposed on the Big 3 by union labor.

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If a person doesn't want his tax money to be "loaned" to a failing company, that makes her/him "fat and lazy"?!!

If the people are supposed to "support" a particular industry then why not make that into a law? Such as: At least 50% of all automobiles sold in the U.S. must be produced by U.S. companies. That way all those companies will be permanently "supported".

I am not saying that a bailout should not happen. The impact of the failure of GM and Chrysler on the U.S. economy would be devastating. But this decision should not be made lightly. And the rationale for the bailout should not be that all 3 U.S auto companies must be saved at all costs.

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I'm amazed at how everyone is so quick to reject how the U.S. became the biggest economy in the world, and how every other world power had to adopt those same values to keep up. Now we should regress back to the slave-based economy that kept every country that's adopted it in the past in a constant depression.

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Fat and lazy Americans? Does the fat and lazy UAW deserve some of the blame for their current situation. There is much blame to go around. But putting the blame on Americans who believe that the government has no right "wasting" money on a financially failed operation is down right moronic. Why don't you stop being fat and lazy, get off your fat and lazy ass and research the facts before you make stupid posts like this one.

You may not realize that Chapter 11 was designed to save, yes save, the "Big 3". It is not like the Big 3 cannot build a product that consumers would buy. Their problems are of a financial nature(and that includes it's contracts with the UAW). If they did not have the ability to stay competitive on the retail front, then a bankruptcy judge would not allow Chapter 11. At that point, their fate would have been already sealed. Chapter 11 was created to keep the railroad companies from tearing up their tracks and selling them for scrap when they could not meet their debt's. To all those invested, it made more sense for the railroads to be allowed to restructure their debts and reorganize. And that is the case today with the domestic manufacturures.

BTW...do you fly? Because if you do, over 90% of current airlines have filed for Chapter 11 at one time or another. Those airlines who could not satistfy the bankruptcy courts that they had a solid plan were allowed to dissolve.

The only reason bankruptcy is not an option for the UAW, the loons on the left in our legislative branch and the upper mismanagement of the "Not So Big" is that they would lose the power to dictate their compensation, the amount of power they exude over the companies and more importantly, bankruptcy courts have a funny way of "sniffing" out the corruption within the three above listed entities and "snuffing" it out.

Lastly, who has built more manufacturing facilties in the United States in the past ten to twenty years...foriegn or domestic manfactureres? The biggest issue with our populace today is their inability to research and speak from a view that includes facts. Fortunately, 55% of Americans polled may have done their research and come up with the better answer..."No bailout!" It should be said that the same percentage was and is against any form of bailout, including Wall Street.

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Which, of course, means they could get raises.

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They already make equivalent wages to non-union auto workers. It’s only when you include legacy costs do you get the difference in salaries between the average non-union worker and union worker.

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Someone's a little jealous that their white-collar job has no protections or work rules to keep the corporation from abusing them.

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