Bailout Hypocrisy: Banks Vs. Automakers
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Cars, Economy, Money, VideoWe freed up close to a trillion dollars for banks who employ mostly white collar workers, but we were unwilling to free up $25 billion for the blue collar autoworkers.
Joe Scarborough and company discuss…
I do think it’s shameful that the unions have gotten lambasted in the past few weeks as anti-capitalist boogeymen, but CEOs have remained virtually untouched. Sure, a few executives have been raked over the coals, but nothing close to the anti-worker rhetoric that has been coming out of the Republican party.
It’s as if it’s a bad thing that manual laborers want to collectively bargain and make sure they’re taken care of if they get hurt or make sure they have access to healthcare upon retirement when their bodies are showing the wear and tear of decades on an assembly line.
Personally, I think our priorities are seriously out of whack in this country if we genuinely think it’s better to have private jets and millions of dollars in stock options than a good job paying a fair wage with access to good healthcare and pension benefits.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 and is filed under Cars, Economy, Money, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 23rd, 2008 at 2:28 pm
If you went to a guy with a good job & fair wage with good health care and benefits, and said “Would you rather have millions of dollars in stock options and a private Jet?”, and the blue collar guy said, “Yes,” would his priorities really be out of whack? Just sayin. =P
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I opposed both bailouts, but I could at least see the rationale behind the bank bailout, i.e., that the effects on the entire economy would be disastrous. But the auto bailout? There was never a really good argument for why its role in the economy justified socializing the outcome of the industry’s mistakes without at least getting a reorganization out of it through Chapter 11.
To be honest, I don’t watch a whole lot of television news or listen much to the talking heads. But those people with whom I tend to agree never laid the finger solely on the unions (although the UAW’s leadership is uniquely corrupt by any standard, and it’s important to distinguish between the leadership and the workers), but instead at everyone involved in equal proportion.
All that said….one thing that does bug me is the way in which many liberals who (rightly) opposed other Bush Administration expansions of executive power are perfectly supportive of Bush’s end run around Congress on this issue.
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I believe that the country – and the economy – would be better served if ALL the unemployed CITIZENS in the United States were to be given a million dollar “personal” bailout instead of giving it to the RICH STOCKBROKERS AND BANKERS who played on the fears of this country. And, yes some of that money would be frivolously spent but not mine!
December 24th, 2008 at 12:53 am
This is a false dichotomy if ever there was one. The issue is not white collar vs. blue collar workers or assembly line operators vs. CEOs. There have been far more layoffs in the past six months in the financial services sector than in manufacturing generally, much less autos in particular. Citigroup alone is cutting about 75,000 jobs. Employers of all kinds of white collar workers are laying people off, cutting salaries and benefits, slashing bonuses, and even eliminating 401k matches. Most such employees have no union contracts to protect them, no generous defined benefit pensions, no gold-plated health care in retirement.
I certainly don’t begrudge UAW members all that. In fact I think they deserve it. In any case, their union contract, developed over decades, give it to them. But now, we taxpayers are being asked to fork over tens of billions of dollars, in part, to ensure that UAW members don’t lose what most Americans — white or blue collar — never had.
I support aid to the auot companies because I don’t to see any big dominoes fall when the economy is in the tank. That can’t help but hurt everyone. At the same time, the UAW leadership is simply going to have to give up a great deal as part of the rescue. Dealers are going to have to give up even more. Ditto bondholders. And sharholders may have to lose everything.
You have to keep in mind that to the extent that the UAW persuades Obama and the big Democratic majorites in Congress next month not to insist on major contract revisions, the rest of these constituencies — dealers, bondholders, stockholders — will climb on board and ride that train. In effect, the UAW and its “blue collar blues” provides the industry as a whole with its best public relations and Capitol Hill lobbying point in favor of the most generous bailout with the fewest possible strings.
If GM went bankrupt, that would be the end of the UAW contract, period. Anything more than that, and the auto workers are ahead.
I’s more than willing to pay taxes to prop up sectors of the economy to protect the whole. I’m not at all pleased if I have to pay taxes to keep this or that GM employee in the pink. Why should I? Just because he goes to work in blue jeans?