I got an e-mail this morning. In the e-mail was an awesome story about a car dealership in Dearborn and their anger over Senator Shelby's anti-autoworker and anti-Detroit comments. But, that anger caused action and that's the real story! From the Detroit Free Press:

The dealership is running TV and radio ads that feature clips of Shelby making anti-Detroit Three comments.

"We're wasting our time trying to keep them alive," he is shown saying in one ad.

Co-owner Paul Stanford strikes back, asking: "I wonder if the good senator would tell us how much Japanese car companies who make cars in his state gave to his campaign?"

It's politicized content that mainline advertisers usually avoid. Stanford acknowledges the ads might be a little over the top, but added: "We're being vocal because I'm tired of being slapped around by politicians. Sen. Shelby is saying, 'The hell with the Big Three.' I think that's tragic, I really do."

Stanford, who runs the Michigan Avenue dealership with his brother, Gary, said he can't believe America's public officials are willing to let the domestic auto industry die. Not only because of the jobs and the industry's history of helping win World War II, but also for the manufacturing might the companies could provide in case of another national emergency.

Even the ad agency that created the ads seems to have felt equally as angry at Shelby:

The ads are the work of the Sussman Sikes agency in Southfield. Owner Alan Sussman, who describes himself as "the last angry man in America," said in the 1940s and 1950s, Shelby's anti-Detroit rhetoric would have been considered treason.

"What's wrong with an autoworker making $100,000?" Sussman asked. "This is America."

Speaking of the Stanfords, Sussman said: "It's not easy to stand up like they did. It took real cojones."

Oh, and BTW, seems to actually be working, sales are up for the month of March. Way to go! And Mr. Sussman, I don't see anything wrong with $100k salaries for autoworkers, it's the right wingers who do. They seem to think that if you aren't college educated and work and assembly line, there's something wrong with you. My dad's a tool and die maker, I can't imagine any of the anti-union anti-worker a-holes doing what my dad does on a daily basis, and doing it at 65 no less!!

Thanks Dearborn and also the Stanford brothers. Took some real balls to do what you did, nice to see someone has a pair!!

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Last night I watched Countdown with Keith Olberman, he was on vacation, so I listened and watched this brilliant woman say this:

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It's 51 seconds in when this brilliant woman starts talking about the CEO's of the
financial sector and their jets (yeah, multiple, 9 at Bank of America alone) and salaries and bonuses. And then she hits the nail on the head, here, let me transcribe:

What this says about the Bush Administration Bailout, priceless. Mr. Bush is not forcing any of them to give up their planes, but his auto bailout would force union workers make no more than those at non union shops like Toyota, arguing that high union wages hurt the car makers. Well yesterday we learned that Toyota has had it's first operating loss ever despite the fact that Toyota pays its workers exactly what it already does.

It's not a surprise that Bush and his Senate cronies hate working men and women and LOVE (with a big sweaty heart) the big money folks at Bank of America, Citi, AIG, etc... The goal for these amoral pinheads is to drive wages down, but how does this help communities? It doesn't.

So, I wanted to know what happened in 1980 with Lee Iacocca and the Chrysler bailout. That's when I found an interesting piece on the World Socialist Web Site referencing the Chrysler merger with Daimler

But why have the auto moguls allowed such conditions to develop? Any why should the workers suffer the consequences?

There are other questions that demand answers. What about the billions in company assets that have been squandered to pay Chrysler's top executives and boost the price of Chrysler shares for the benefit of wealthy investors on Wall Street? No small aspect of the current crisis is the fact that Chrysler's 30 top executives milked the company for $395.8 million in cash and stocks when the merger with Daimler Benz was completed. Chrysler Chairman Robert Eaton alone received a pay-out of $69.9 million, plus the option to cash in his 2.3 million shares of DaimlerChrysler stock.

The same executives negotiated, as a condition of the merger, $96.9 million in severance packages in the event they were fired or otherwise removed. Several of the executives took advantage of these “golden parachutes” and bolted from the company before the current crisis hit.

Moreover, in the first six months of 1997, the same year Chrysler workers were forced to wage a bitter 27-day strike for job security at the Mound Round Engine plant in Detroit—a facility now slated for closure—company officials were spending $997 million to buy back stock, under pressure from big stockholders such as billionaire speculator Kirk Kerkorian, who demanded that company assets be used to drive up the value of their personal portfolios. Vast sums of money which could have been reinvested for product development, improved health and safety, or other productive purposes were instead used to satisfy the greed of rich investors.

It was a bit eerie how they called it. Eerie.

That would be the moment that I got to read the Washington Post piece on the UAW push back on the Bush Administration Auto Bride Loan package (you know, the one where he micromanages UNION WORKER WAGES):

In agreeing to provide federal assistance to General Motors and Chrysler, the White House demanded the firms cut worker compensation to the levels paid at the U.S. divisions of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. But Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, said earlier this week that he would seek to remove the wage-reduction provision of the loan, calling it "an undue tax on the workers" who have already made "major" sacrifices for the benefit of the auto industry.

Gettelfinger said that what is being asked of the autoworkers -- who agreed to concessions in 2003, 2005 and 2007 -- is "unrealistic." He has said he wants to work with President-elect Barack Obama to remove the wage provision.

UAW workers have been making sacrifices for years to keep the automakers successful. And they have been. What is happening right now, has nothing to do with what unionized workers make. It has to do with the financial crisis brought to us by an administration that doesn't want to regulate and hasn't regulated finance companies. If there's been real enforcement, real regulation, real investigations, perhaps we wouldn't be where we are now. And what's more, we wouldn't be hearing about Madoff and investors who are no killing themselves.

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So, I have to ask now, with Adults back in charge of our government, can we finally help the middle class? Can we enforce regulations, and monitor the financial sector? Can we rebuild our country from the inside out? I'm really just tired of all the bad news. Really, just too tired of all the bad news.

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Unions keep wages high. They do it through negotiations and collective bargaining. When in the same labor pool, non-union shops have to compete at the same level and that means they have to offer comparable wages, benefits and whatever else the unions have been able to negotiate.

So, it's no surprise that Southern Senators who aren't fans of the concept of solidarity (or that companies only pay you what you force them to pay you). Since most were born with a silver foot in their mouth or other similar area, it's no surprise that they'd like to keep wages low, because they've never really had to work for a living, they've simply acquired their wealth or had it handed to them, which is why there's a double standard when it comes to manufacturing wages and financial sector wages, and I'm not talking about the teller at the window (which often carries a surcharge as well as that damn ATM). Bruce Raynor at the LA Times today had a nice op-ed about this double standard and he put in some numbers to boot!

When one compares how the auto industry and the financial sector are being treated by Congress, the double standard is staggering. In the financial sector, employee compensation makes up a huge percentage of costs. According to the New York state comptroller, it accounted for more than 60% of 2007 revenues for the seven largest financial firms in New York.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, employee compensation made up 71% of total operating expenses in 2007. In the auto industry, by contrast, autoworker compensation makes up less than 10% of the cost of manufacturing a car. Hundreds of billions were given to the financial-services industry with barely a question about compensation; the auto bailout, however, was sunk on this issue alone.

Bruce is president of UNITE-HERE and clearly, knows his stuff. What I especially liked about his info is this little ditty:

These concessions go some distance toward leveling the playing field (retiree costs are still a factor for the Big Three). But what the foreign car companies want is to level -- which is to say, wipe out -- the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three's UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota's per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.

However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to "tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry." Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota's $30-an-hour wage.

If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.

Now, how do I get my hands on that damn report? Cause I'd like to make a copy of it and the idiotic response of Shelby's staffers about American Axle (just scroll down and see the video yourself) and remind them of what kinds of jobs they SHOULD want in their states. BTW, it's the $30 an hour kind not the $12.64 kind. I know, math just isn't something that Corker or Shelby are really all that strong at, but keeping their heads in their asses seems to be.

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And I don't say such things lightly.

But then I got to hear his bizarre anti-worker and anti-union rant on NPR and well, read this comment from another listener...pretty well sums it up:

Nellie
I was deeply disturbed at Sen. DeMint's comments about the Unions being the whole problem facing the auto industry. The Unions do not determine what vehicles are to be built or engineering of vehicles, management does. They assemble the vehicles they are directed to assemble. No one seems to think there is anything wrong with CEOs negotiating the best salary and benefits package they can, but somehow its wrong for the workers to do so. Remember, without the workers, the Union members, there would be no product to sell. Further, no one seems to remeber that Toyota, Honda and other foreign auto cos., got a free pass when they negotiated manufacturing their vehicles in the U.S. They were not required to deal with the Unions. Therefore, there is no level playing field. The NPR staff needs to educate itself about Unions and the roll of Unions in the history of this country so they can challenge such outrageous statements from the likes of Sen. DeMint. Unions were prominenet in the most prosperous times of our country. Because of Unions, there are weekends, laws requiring a safe workplace and other standards we all take for granted now. An attack on Unions is an attack on the common working woman and man of this country

And did anyone else notice that not only is this guy an idiot, he also had several moments where it seemed difficult for him to form his thoughts? Is he more than just an idiot, is he also a blithering idiot?

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The video comes to us by way of the Dailybeast who gets it from MSNBC last week.

What I find interesting, is that Citi, AIG and others didn't really have to present any plans for their bailouts and AIG continues to pay out bonuses and has extravagant trips even after they get a bailout.

So, I'm a little confused how a company like Citi can say they went a little too far in lending and that got them into trouble, but the Auto Industry can't say hey, there's a serious market down turn caused by the mess from the financial sector and we need help. Hell, you can even hear what Citi thinks caused their mess, again, from the Dailybeast:



The current financial mess this country is in comes in part from lending to borrowers who couldn't pay, popular know by underwriters as Liar Loans. These are loans with no required documentation. So, we have a freeze in the credit markets, it's harder to get loans for houses and cars and this hurts companies like Citi (companies that actually helped cause the problems) and they get a bailout, but the Auto-Industry can't even get a loan? Somehow, I think this has more to do with Union-Bashing than anything and the comments from President-Elect Obama are very disappointing to me. Very, very disappointing.

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First off, here's the Post article to which Dean Baker refers and now, here's what Dean had to say today:

By Dean Baker

We all know how hard it is to get by on tens of millions of dollars a year. That is why the Washington Post was near hysterical in its support of the Wall Street bailout earlier this month. They argued that if we didn't give $700 billion to the banks right away that all hell would break loose.

Those who wanted to put conditions that ensured that the money didn't go into the pockets of shareholders or top executives, or even that the bailout was done the right way through direct injections of capital (as it eventually was) were denounced as reactionary Neanderthals. So, the bailout went through and the Wall Street executives are now getting tens of millions in compensation, courtesy of average taxpayers.

Now the occasion comes to bailout the auto industry and the Post goes ballistic the other way.

After all, the average autoworker makes $56,650 a year. That's almost as much as Robert Rubin makes in a day. Who do these autoworkers think they are?

There are serious issues that should be asked about any bailout of Detroit, but it is a bit obscene to see a paper that in both its editorial and news pages was an active supporter of handing tens of billions of dollars to rich Wall Street bankers suddenly turn around and get hysterical about the idea of helping workers making $57,000 a year. And remember, none of these autoworkers are responsible for wrecking the economy.

The class bias at the Post is so thick that most people should know to treat this one as a leftover from the comics section. But it is still pretty disgusting to see people who make six figure salaries and who anxiously promote policies to help people who make seven and eight figure salaries, get outraged over a policy designed to help people earning $57,000 a year.

Personally, gotta agree with Mr. Baker, and it was really these two paragraphs that really made the case:

Well, we can think of several objections. First, there is the question of whether the U.S. government should be picking winners and losers in a business such as this. It's one thing to bail out the financial sector, whose product -- credit -- is essentially fungible and on which all other businesses depend. Automobiles, however, are not interchangeable, and Congress can't substitute its specific technological and aesthetic preferences for those of the market. What if we lend Detroit $25 billion and still nobody buys its cars?


Second, this bailout taxes the less well-off to protect the relatively privileged. The average individual General Motors production worker, whose job would be saved by the bailout, makes $56,650 per year, according to the Center for Automotive Research, and that doesn't count better-paid, white-collar types. Meanwhile, half of all households-- which typically include more than one earner -- make less than $50,000 per year. Where's the justice in that?

Think about it for just one minute.

Okay, so then let's try again, the Post is ACTUALLY saying here that it's okay to bailout credit and insurance companies whose executives' greed brought down those same companies and destroyed the economy, but it's not okay to LOAN money to the Auto industry because their workers, union workers, make more than $50k on AVERAGE. that's not the median salary, that's the average. Apparently, to the Post, it's still okay to reward Investors over helping WORKERS. And yeah, that's really what this comes down to in the end. The Post is really suggesting that "fungible" industries like finance are essential, but jobs that pay well are simply not needed.

Nice job Post Editorial Board. Nice job.

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