UAW'S GETTLEFINGER -- NO WAGE CONCESSIONS FOR GM, CHRYSLER

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The Automotive News is reporting that "The UAW will sacrifice to help General Motors and Chrysler LLC get their federal loans, but doesn't expect to take lower wages, President Ron Gettelfinger said Wednesday night at the Automotive News World Congress.

"Speaking on the sidelines of the Automotive News World Congress, Gettelfinger said automaker executives have indicated publicly that wage concessions would not be required of the union as part of federal bailout provisions being demanded of General Motors and Chrysler LLC. 'We're not expecting lower wages,' he said."

Gettelfinger and his UAW comrades must have misunderstood the gist of the bailout hearings. Or more likely, they are banking on "payback" from the Obama administation.

Still, Gettelfinger's comments, if accurate, exhibit a staggering tone-deafness, if not reckless brinkmanship.

Gettelfinger is playing right into the hands of the anti-"Beg 3" crowd.

ONLY ONE-IN-FOUR CHANCE OF AVOIDING DETROIT 3 BANKRUPTCY

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In the wake of the legislative branch’s abject failure to hog-tie the United Auto Workers union and pass necessary bridge loans for the Detroit 3, the U.S. Treasury Department is busy working on a TARP-based interim Detroit 3 aid package.It’s shaping up to be a rehash of the plan that passed the U.S. House, including a “Car Czar” with the power to force bankruptcy.

In other words, “meet the new boss . . . same as the old boss.”

The emerging Bush plan does what the U.A.W.’s Ron Gettelfinger and his strike-happy cronies anticipated – it merely passes the ball to the union-beholden OBAMAcrats.

According to Bloomberg,

“The likeliest U.S. aid package will be loans and a so- called prepackaged bankruptcy to get the automakers through to 2009, Moody’s Investors Service said in a note today. There’s only a one-in-four probability the U.S. will bail out the automakers with no bankruptcy, analyst J. Bruce Clark said.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen – apparently no fan of using any TARP money to help the Detroit 3 weather the financial and regulatory hurricane created by previous federal policies and market tampering – uses the “long-term viability” code wording for coerced U.A.W. give-backs:

“The terms would be very critical, and we would have to assure ourselves that this was a step on the path to long-term viability.”

Of course an Obama-controlled Treasury Department would have virtually no force to make the U.A.W. accept across-the-board, market-based wages and benefits by early 2009, if ever. Yet under the emerging Bush plan, the Treasury Department would function as the de facto “Car Czar” and could (theoretically) force bankruptcy if the participating members of the Detroit 3 failed to demonstrate “long-term viability” by late March 2009.

In practical terms, however, the Bush plan would be a “toothless tiger.”

Why?

In short, because of Barack Obama and his fealty to organized labor.

Most certainly, Ron Gettelfinger and other union hacks would pressure the OBAMAcrats against forcing bankruptcy (pre-packaged or otherwise) without substantial guarantees of a wage and benefit premium for pre-existing U.A.W. members and/or swift passage of the anti-secret ballot “card check” legislation.

Sensing this, the politicians beholden to non-union Southern “invader” auto plant interests continue to campaign vigorously against any help for the Detroit 3.

One of the latest to join the Richard Shelby-ite “just say no” chorus is South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford: Sanford wrote President Bush yesterday to “not to consider the bank bailout fund for automakers because it would open the ‘floodgates’ for other troubled industries.”

“We are at a tipping point in moving from a market-based economy to a politically based economy,” Sanford said.

Sanford’s state is host to a B.M.W. “invader” assembly plant that was built with SUBSTANTIAL public aid:

In 1992 South Carolina ushered in the new wave of investment by foreign carmakers in the South by offering BMW a package that was ultimately worth an estimated $150 million. A decade later, the state put up an additional $80 million in infrastructure aid when BMW decided to expand its operations in the state.

Sanford and the Shelby-ites also wholly ignore the pervasive federal role in weakening the Detroit 3 through decades of wrong-headed anti-trust, trade, labor, energy, tax, and foreign policies and anti-market-based regulation. To suggest that the Detroit 3's problems are solely “market-based” is ludicrous, if not empty-headed. There has been no true “free market” in light vehicles for decades.

Sanford and the Shelby-ites also ignore the critical importance of the Detroit 3 to America’s basic industrial capacity. They ignore the virtual impossibility of recreating any of the Detroit 3 in any reasonable period of time should they be liquidated. They ignore the virtual certainty of double-digit unemployment and a economic depression should the Detroit 3 fail.

Instead, Sanford and the Shelby-ites maneuver their political rhetoric not for level-headed, principled policy reasons, but for political and parochial gains. They are not looking out for our national interest. They are no better than the greedy pirates at the U.A.W. in developing a solution for a crisis of political creation.

The drums of Chapter 11 continue to sound. But the emerging question – assuming that the Bush Administration staves off the immediate, forced bankruptcy threat – is: Will the OBAMAcrats get tough with the U.A.W. and/or force the Detroit 3 into bankruptcy to address the wage and benefit disparity problem?

Don’t count on it.

SENATOR COBURN: COLLAPSE OF DETROIT RESCUE WAS THE U.A.W.'S FAULT

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Matt Drudge has linked to a report quoting Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) as saying:

“As far as the failure of last night, it solely lies on UAW,” . . . “All we asked was, ‘Just give us a date at which you will have competitive wage rates. We will put it in and that’s what you will have to meet.’ They would not move. They would not renegotiate their contract with GM as far as wage rates.”

The comments of Senator Coburn confirm the obvious. However, because Senator Coburn represents a state which no longer has meaningful ties to the Detroit 3 and which is not unduly influenced by the need for protection and local subsidy of foreign invader assembly plants, his views provide a more unbiased perspective on the Detroit 3 rescue package and what was actually possible if all of the stakeholders had been willing to do their parts.

Ron Gettelfinger's mob refused to meaningfully consider wage and benefit normalization on a realistic time table. Instead they sought to protect the feather beds of a few old-guard unionists until 2011.

This hidebound obstructionism is wholly divorced from the economic realities of the global light vehicle marketplace and doomed bipartisan legislative efforts to help Detroit cope with the World liquidity crisis.

THE WAITING GAME: STICKING A CORK[ER] IN IT.

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The Detroit 3 automakers are still waiting for President Bush to act on granting short-term relief from the crisis that Washington politicians mostly created.

Meanwhile President Bush ducked shoes thrown by the Egyptian press in Iraq (and undoubtedly everyone in the de facto OBAMAcrats propaganda ministry (a/k/a “newsrooms”) at the New York Times and NBC cheered).

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker continued to push for the “poison pill” condition of near-immediate pay and benefits equity between the Japanese invader auto plants and the Detroit 3 plants hostage by the concessions-weary United Auto Workers union.

Do-nothings such as Alabama Senator Richard "Tokyo Rose" Shelby still do the bidding of the government-subsidized Japanese invaders by standing against any intervention whatsoever to help the Detroit 3 cope with the Federal and state governments’ decades of bleeding the lifeblood out of the Detroit 3 with scores of bad policies, outright market tampering (e.g. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards) and $100,000,000,000.00+ in unfunded mandates.

U.A.W. boss Ron Gettelfinger and his henchmen, along with a small phalanx of fellow-traveling OBAMAcrat pundits on cable television, continued to defend their collective rejection of market-based wages and benefits for the Detroit 3.

In other words, General Motors and Chrysler are left twisting in the wind on nooses tied by Congress and the U.A.W.

And they are incurring millions in pre-bankruptcy planning expenses and legal fees during the delay.

Gettelfinger, who would be a finalist for the Heisman Trophy of Stupid if it were awarded, is attempting to wait out the clock on the Bush Administration and the current Congress. He’s "betting the farm” that Bush will write a $15,000,000,000.00 blank check before year’s end to stave off the imminent bankruptcies of both Chrysler and GM.

Gettelfinger seemingly believes that if the over-paid and increasingly unpopular U.A.W. can just make it to the “promised land” of Obama’s inauguration, then the glory days of strong-arm labor tactics will receive a sudden rebirth in America.

Why the delay? Why play the waiting game? Why the apparent gamble?

In the fantasy world of Ron Gettelfinger and the hard-core, anti-management union bosses, all of the Detroit 3's structural problems will evaporate when the OBAMAcrats banish the secret ballot labor election and require employers to allow labor goons to infect non-union companies with adversarial unions through a public sign-up sheet.

Gettelfinger apparently believes that the Japanese invader assembly plants will suddenly become unionized when all U.A.W. muscle has to do is hector and intimidate a mere majority of “scab” workers into signing a union card in public. Then the U.A.W. will be empowered to run the same sorts of “pattern bargaining” hijacks against Toyota, Honda and Nissan that have proven so costly against the Detroit 3 for the past 60+ years.

Gettelfinger also may be planning to off-load a significant portion of the Union’s “VEBA” obligations onto the Feds, as everyone associated with parasitic “organized” labor dreams for nationalization of health care and “reform” of the pension system. If the costs of the U.A.W.’s platnum-plated benefit plans are spread across industry, then the Detroit 3 wouldn’t be so disadvantaged in comparison to their invader competitors (conveniently forgetting about the growing disparity in production costs between American versus off-shore plants that are outside the extortion of U.S. labor unions).

Gettelfinger also expects the OBAMAcrats to gut NAFTA and reign in so-called free trade under the pretexts of U.S. environmental and labor standards.

Accordingly, Gettelfinger and his looters (and the scores of OBAMAcrats who are beholden to them) understand that the dead-on-arrival Corker plan is “kryptonite.” The argument goes “if unionized workers can’t get more pay and better benefits than ‘scabs,’ why would anyone ever join a union again.”

Of course the inherent stupidity of relying on that argument in the current environment is obvious:

It increases public skepticism and disdain for unions.

It implies that unionization is really nothing more than shaking down employers for more than prevailing market levels of wages and benefits.

It assumes that even if “OBAMA Claus” stuffs the AFL-CIO/Teamsters stocking with the anti-secret ballot “Card Check” legislation, the U.A.W. will still somehow fail to unionize the invader assembly plants.

It ignores all of the other functions that unions allegedly perform for their members.

More importantly, it focuses the American electorate on U.A.W. greed and hubris at the rotten heart of the Detroit 3's problems. Such tone-deaf U.A.W. rhetoric and head-in-the-sand selfishness is killing off more consumer interest in union-made Detroit 3 products than perhaps even a bankruptcy filing would.

If Gettelfinger really had any faith in the grand schemes of organized labor being adopted after Obama occupies the White House, then he’d take the Corker gamble for the sake of public relations, knowing that unionized invader plants would soon become a part of the U.A.W. fold and anticipating a new round of “pattern bargaining” with the Japanese.

On the other hand, the Japanese have been known to shutter plants rather than give in to union arm-twisting (see e.g. Bridgestone-Firestone). So perhaps Gettelfinger doesn’t really believe Obama will deliver enough “change” to suit the U.A.W.

Thus, the U.A.W. is ironically banking on a weakened president that they’ve consistently opposed and whom they vehemently hate to “push the ball” into 2009.

Lame duck President Bush, for his part, seems to be playing along with Gettelfinger’s gamble:

"An abrupt bankruptcy for autos could be devastating for the economy," Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One during an unannounced trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're now in the process of working with the stakeholders on a way forward. We're not quite ready to announce that yet."

Senator Corker, however, mistakenly expects President Bush to be more resolute.

“Corker urged the White House to seek similar concessions from the auto companies and their unions in return for the money. ‘Of course, the benefit they have - they don't have to negotiate. They can say this money is available but it's only available under these conditions,’ he said in a broadcast interview.”

Given the minimal time and the razor-thin G.O.P. strength in the legislative branch, Corker’s position is a pipe dream.

Unless President Bush is prepared for the extraordinary step of using his powers under the Taft-Hartley Act (which would be immediately undone once Obama reaches office), Corker’s “cram down” plan simply will not work outside of Chapter 11. Gettelfinger's bunch undoubtedly knows that. In bankruptcy, of course, a politically-insulated judge would be the barber poised to give the U.A.W. its “haircut.”

Clearly, none of the alternatives are attractive. Letting GM and Chrysler fail – actually to be sacrificed on altar of partisan politics – and pushing the U.S.A. into a depression is unconscionable. But giving Gettelfinger and the anti-free market U.A.W. a free pass is noxious.

President Bush will probably blink in the U.A.W.- G.O.P. staring contest. "'I think it's very likely the White House will do what it said it's going to do, not allow the auto industry to collapse,' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., among several auto state lawmakers optimistic about the funding."

Then it becomes Obama’s problem.

THE G.O.P. LOADED THE GUN BUT THE U.A.W. PULLED THE TRIGGER

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The “Car Czar” loan bill is dead. And the official General Motors death watch begins.

Why did this have to happen?

Perhaps because Alabama Senator Richard Shelby and the United Auto Workers’ Ron Gettelfinger are in a pitched contest for the title “Dumbest Man in America.”

Advantage: Gettelfinger.

The U.S. Senate defeated the last legislative hope to save the Detroit 3 from the crisis that the Federal government mostly created because (a) Shelby’s Republicans wouldn’t agree to a short-term fix without a “short bus” full of “poison pills” (if at all) and (b) Gettelfinger’s myopic U.A.W. took the bait by refusing to concede to market-based wages and benefits before 2011.

The U.A.W.’s intractability on “givebacks” stoked the “Shelby-can’ts” argument that the Detroit 3 lack long-term viability like a steam engine on liquid oxygen.

Clearly, the U.A.W. would rather play “chicken” with a federal bankruptcy judge than do anything to help G.M. survive its 101st year.

The U.A.W.’s refusal to see reality has probably doomed thousands of American jobs and has put the U.S. economy on the brink of depression. But perhaps Gettelfinger’s troops would rather lose their jobs than take “common-sense” pay and benefit cuts that would bring the Detroit 3's costs in line with the Japanese invaders plants.

The U.A.W. failed to support their “pattern contract” level of benefits in the marketplace by failing to unionize the Japanese invader plants.

The U.A.W. failed to help the Detroit 3 become competitive when many believed that “Team Japan” was gaining the upper hand in a not-so-free trade world.

The U.A.W. resisted efforts to make the Detroit 3 plants run more like the Japanese invader plants and resisted reasonable restructuring proposals

The U.A.W. failed to make the case for buying American to the general public, allowing the Consumer Reports “appliance motoring” mentality to take hold and causing the loss of an entire generation of consumers to Japan.

The U.A.W. failed to rally a skeptical, “bailout weary” electorate to the essential defense of America’s most basic industry. Unlike banks – which take a pot of cash and a handful of elite M.B.A.- types trained in banking to replace – a complex, industrial colossus such as General Motors requires years and a massive, almost cost-prohibitive undertaking to replicate. And while Congress threw $700,000,000,000.00 to “save” the financial industry, The U.A.W. failed to persuade the political system to invest a paltry TWO PERCENT OF AS MUCH to help the Detroit 3 cope with the worst credit and sales crisis since the Great Depression.

Now the U.A.W. has failed to understand that in a “war” against the government-subsidized, predatory Japanese invaders, sacrifices are necessary. Instead they basically chose to “strike” any hope for keeping the Detroit 3 intact and alive to fight on when economic conditions improved.

To be sure, GM made plenty of other mistakes: Killing off brand autonomy . . . weak small car offerings in the 1970s and early 1980s . . . too much “badge engineering” . . . too many fleet sales . . . not enough “fight” in the entry-level and youth markets . . . not enough “continuous improvement” . . . accountant-driven cost cutting and delays in product cycles . . . not realizing soon enough the public relations benefits of the money-losing EV-1 and hybrid electrics . . . not continuing to boost efficiency even as fuel costs abated in the 1990s . . . sacrificing leadership in styling, design and technology on the altar of conservative quarterly returns . . . promoting too many bean counters and not enough “car guys” . . . not adapting well enough to the huge regulatory burdens assessed by Congress and the states.

It’s a death by a thousand cuts – some of them self-inflicted. Most of them caused by meddling Federal policies.

But GM's biggest mistake was in believing that the U.A.W. and Congress would come to their collective senses when it counted most.

Now only George W. Bush has the last clear chance to avoid the burning down of the American auto industry in Chapter 11.

Will he act in time?

THE CHURCH OF THE SUV . . . AND WILL WAGONER BE THE SCAPEGOAT?

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Pressure for Congress to act in time to save General Motors is apparently reaching heavenly heights. Detroit's Greater Grace Temple -- better known as the site for the funeral of civil rights icon Rosa Parks -- held a prayer meeting for the Detroit 3 on Pearl Harbor Day.

"'We have never seen as midnight an hour as we face this week,' the Rev. Charles Ellis told several thousand congregants at a rousing service at Detroit's Greater Grace Temple. 'This week, lives are hanging above an abyss of uncertainty as both houses of Congress decide whether to extend a helping hand.'"

"Local car dealerships donated three hybrid SUVs to be displayed during the service, one from each of the Big Three. A Ford Escape, Chevy Tahoe from GM and a Chrysler Aspen were parked just in front of the choir and behind the pulpit."

Some undoubtedly saw a bit of symbolism in that the stage which once held Rosa Parks' casket now holds what some may see as three emblems of the death of Detroit.

More than invoking Divine intervention, the Greater Grace Temple photo-op was likely intended to remind the OBAMAcrats to the centrality of auto workers to the left-center voter coalition that boosted Obama into power.

So far, the OBAMAcrats have produced nothing but tedious lectures, CEO humiliations and a homework assignment. Efforts at a broad solution apparently have stalled.

The developing Congressional aid plan merely seems to be an interim measure calculated to push the Detroit 3 credit crisis into Obama's first term. And the cost for the interim financing may just be the job of General Motors' CEO Rick Wagoner.

Wagoner's GM is approaching its sales and financial crisis with unexpected candor.


"'While we're still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you,'" according to a new mea culpa advertisment from GM.

"At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs became lackluster."

"We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on the core U.S. market."

"We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs." [Which, given Federal policy and market demand, was a necessity for survival]

All of this self-flagellation is probably not enough to save Wagoner's job. As the only one of the "insiders" left helming a Detroit 3 company, the OBAMAcrats and skeptical Republicans will likely have to make an example of him as "evidence" that Detroit has "repented" from its profligate ways.

Of course the politicians will not require the same level of "sacrifice" from Ron Gettelfinger or anyone in leadership at the U.A.W.

Maybe Wagoner's a praying man . . . .

Perhaps unintentionally, the prayers at Greater Grace Temple were offered on the 67th anniversary of the "Day that will live in infamy" -- Japan's premeditiated and heinous slaughter on American soil at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Ironically, the imported cars of the Japanese invaders (despite all of the overinflated claims of their inherent superiority) are not selling now either.

Of course, buying a Japanese import under the current economic climate sends a profoundly insensitive, selfish and -- frankly -- anti-American statement to everyone who sees that new paper license plate flapping in the breeze. And an anti-Christian one, considering that the percentage of Japanese who claim to be Christians hovers in the low single digits.

Certainly, most car and light truck buyers don't think much about nationalism or religion when buying a motor vehicle. But the congregants at Greater Grace Temple and scores of other churches that will be hard-hit if one or more of the Detroit 3 fails certainly do.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee continues his not-so-subtle war against any assistance whatsoever for the Detroit 3. On Huckabee's Fox News program, he repeatedly pointed out that "Main Street" was not going to get the same kind of "help" as GM, Ford and Chrysler. Along with Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, Huckabee has become a leading mouthpiece for the "let'em fail" crowd.

Of course, Huckabee -- for all his virtues -- is merely pandering to the "Club For Growth" wing of the G.O.P. on this one. He fails to recognize that decades of Washington's policies "broke" the Detroit 3. He fails to notice that the Detroit 3 are abnormally vulnerable to this credit crisis because the playing field is tilted away from the Detroit 3 by government policy. He cannot see that the Detroit 3 have been intentionally bled to near-death from thousands of cuts produced by government hatchets. He apparently cannot see the impact that a failure of the Detroit 3 would have on the greater U.S. economy and American society as a whole.

Instead, he's as myopic as one of those broke seminary students that he used to be --one of the self-centered ones that will buy the cheapest available car from "godless Japan" instead of supporting the jobs of more of his fellow American brothers and sisters, many of which are tithe-paying, devout Christians.

Another irony is that Governor Huckabee -- unashamedly a praying Christian and former minister -- may be praying at cross purposes to those devote folks at the "Church of the SUV" in Detroit. Of course, such irony is virtually always present in contested political battles (and even shooting wars).

It would seem that the Greater Grace Temple "prayer force" has its work cut out for it. But then, according to the bible, "Nothing is impossible with God."

Just tell that to Rick Wagoner and thousands of other soon-to-be-pink-slipped auto workers.