don't hold your breath.

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No.....hold your breath!

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Please tell me people aren't actually that naive as to believe that GM can simply open a new plant without the Union. You have heard of labour laws? Once a Union is certified as representing the employees of a company it is nearly impossible to get rid of them. GM is stuck with their Union. Fortunately like most parasites the Union is dependent on the host not dying so they are willing to make concessions.

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@Judy Zik: Unfortunately, concessions from the UAW are often too little, too late. They have agreed to suspend the job banks only *after* GM has borrowed billions in taxpayers' dollars to stave off bankruptcy. And even when it is clear the host is close to bleeding to death, the parasites have still refused to grant other necessary concessions.

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/

In other words, the wages and benefits of current UAW workers remain uncompetitively high right now, and for the foreseeable future, while the Big 3 continues to suffer, and the American taxpayers continue to be robbed.

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Where most of the money is coming from is unemployment. Why doesn't someone tell the full truth for once.

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@Jim: And where does the unemployment money come from? That's right, the American taxpayers.

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Big Rocket: don't worry about Jim, he thinks it all grows on the gubb-ment free money tree.

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You have no concept how the unemployment insurance system works.
As a business owner I pay into the program which is fully funded by companies, corporations etc. Just like an insurance policy. It does not come out of states general fund.
It's real simple. Not one penny comes from you for people in the job bank, not one penny comes from you for unemployment insurance.
So they rid themselves of the job bank, that's a good thing.
And if there's no unemployment insurance laid off workers from virtualy every job description and every possible field now have to collect welfare and food stamps.
That will effect you.

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@caddy-v: Thank you for your overview of how unemployment benefits work in theory. In the real world, where the number of unemployed workers continues to grow monthly, at least one state has seen its budget for unemployment benefits run out, and it is now forced to borrow money from a federal fund (read: taxpayers' dollars) to continue the unemployment benefits. Now, how long will it be until other states such as Michigan run into the same problem, with taxpayers asked to pay up as usual?

I also differ in your assessment that taxpayers have not been burdened by the UAW's job bank. The job bank put the Big 3 at a severe cost disadvantage, which led to the mess GM and Chrysler are currently in, which resulted in billions of dollars in federal bailouts / loans (read: more taxpayers' dollars).

Link:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/26/state/n154624S56.DTL

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caddy-v: "You have no concept how the unemployment insurance system works.
...It's real simple. Not one penny comes from you for people in the job bank, not one penny comes from you for unemployment insurance."

I'll try not to be too hard on you,because what you describe is how it _should_ work. But the reality of it is the govt (fed + state) are involved in so many shell games with piles of money, that every trust fund is at risk. And when that happens, it's -surprise!- taxpayers who bail it out.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/24/eveningnews/main4751368.shtml

1/24/09 "Four States' Jobless Benefit Funds Already Underwater; 14 More At Risk":

"Since Jan. 1, that flood of jobless claims has forced New York and four other states-South Carolina, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan - to borrow money from the federal government to pay benefits. Fourteen more states are at major risk of breaking the unemployment bank in the next year.
...
If states don't pay back the loans by Sept. 30, they'll have to start paying interest. In New York's case, that could mean $100 million in interest payments by 2010."

Where do you think the money for all the new applicants went? Whose collective pockets do you think that $100 million in interest payments is coming out of?

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And while we see unprecedented numbers of companies going bankrupt and just plain going out of business, yes, money from the Fed will have to be injested into the system. In my working career I have seen higher unemployment rates, but have never seen jobs and small companies disapear at such a fast rate.
While every winter I have to lay off some ten to twenty percent of my workforce due entirely to weather, (concrete and home building), this is the first winter that all 31 employees are on layoff because there is no work, and most likely only half or less will be hired back this spring. I'm small change in the business world. But just imagine how it will effect the system if the D3 and all their suppliers go under.
And yet to come, though they deny it now, massive layoffs from the transplants, ie. Toyota, Nissan, and Honda.
Another problem burdening the unemployment system is the enormous numbers of "illegal aliens" claiming benefits. One of my laid off employee's that's a legal immigrant, claims that on his first visit to the unemployment office well over half of the claimants in the line could'nt speak a word of English and had no SS card.
The unemployment system was set up to work up to recession unemployment levels, not near depression levels. But, the Lord Obama has that solved. Print more money.
Big Rocket, the jobs bank is only a small part of the problem. This may surprise you, but GM was in a position to regain it's strength and return to profitability, Ford was in the process of re-defining itself and Chrysler was still licking it's wounds from all the damage Daimler inflicted on them when this economic disaster struck. What's funny is ALL auto manufacturers domestic and import have reported almost identical sales losses and it's just the domestics that get the bad press.
If you want to blame someone for the collapse of just about everything American, put the blame where it squarely belongs. The banking system. And who is the chairman of it? Barney Frank.

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@caddy-v: There's being in bad shape, and then there's being in really bad shape. It would be fair to say that the Domestic Big 3 are in substantially worse shape, in terms of financial solvency, than the Japanese Big 3. It is well documented the Domestics, for many decades, have been spending far more on labor costs (not just take-home wages, but benefits, job banks, etc) than the Japanese. It logically follows the UAW, through higher labor costs, has contributed to the un-competitiveness of the Domestics, leading to them being worse off than the Japanese. The housing bubble and the credit bubble might have caused more damage to the Big 3 than the UAW did, but that does not change the fact the UAW has been damaging the Big 3 for decades, and deserves much blame (just as the housing bubble does, as you pointed out).

And here is what FactCheck.org had to say about the economic turmoil.

FactCheck.org:
There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation.

Quoted article at:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

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Why cant the UAW members fend for themselves like all the rest of us We find another job not set on our butt and spend tax payer money

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@Jim: Back when the dot-com bust dragged the economy down into a recession, I was laid off even though I was not in the tech industry. What did I do about it? I found a new job within 2 to 3 weeks, so I didn't even bother to collect a single dollar of unemployment benefits. And, as it turned out, the new job paid a higher salary after I did the cost-of-living adjustments. This was real job security in the real world, being able to find a better job quickly even when the economy was rough. This kind of real job security comes from many years of college education, and building valuable skills by working hard at your job. Repeat: It is all about education, hard work, and job skills. It is not about how long you walk a picket line or how loud you chant union slogans. Welcome to the real world.

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