So it seems the automakers' strategy of using their financial difficulties, difficulties brought on entirely by executive incompetence, to weaken the unions to the point of anemia is working just fine, thanks. GM will be laying off 21,000 more union workers (and NO management, I bet) while apparently going right ahead with the construction of its new plant in Brazil, and at Chrysler the UAW basically just traded its contract's pension provision for govt money for the company.
Neither the United Automobile Workers union nor the company released details of the tentative agreement, which would modify the union’s 2007 contract and reduce the amount of money Chrysler must pay into a new health fund for retirees.
So Chrysler gets more bail-out money on top of the $4B they've already pissed away, most likely in executive bonuses so they can keep all that extraordinary "talent" - you know, the same "talent" that put them in this hole in the first place - and union workers get to keep their jobs at yet more reduced pay & benefits as if they were the ones who wrecked the company.
A couple more rounds like this and they'll be down to making minimum wage with a health plan as useless as Wal-mart's employee health plan and not enough of a pension plan to be worth worrying about. At that point, why join a union at all?
In order to persuade the union to back the sale to Cerberus, Daimler agreed to pay $1 billion to Chrysler if the company’s pension plans were terminated in a subsequent bankruptcy filing. Details of the Treasury’s deal with Daimler were not available.
Last week, the union reached an agreement in principle with the administration and Chrysler that would protect workers’ pensions in the event of a bankruptcy filing and provide for a change in the financing of a health care trust set up in 2007.
(emphasis added)
But that requires a belief - trust, fer dawg's sake - in a management that lies like a rug and has for years and a govt that has shown the most eager willingness to save corporations at the expense of employees. If the pension money the company is today promising to put aside for the workers tomorrow suddenly becomes necessary to "save the company", they can count on the UAW to once again make a "concession" and hand that cash over for executive vacations to Las Vegas.
Because make no mistake about it, none of these pigs has learned a goddamn thing.
Workers at the largest financial institutions are on track to earn as much money this year as they did before the financial crisis began, because of the strong start of the year for bank profits.
Even as the industry’s compensation has been put in the spotlight for being so high at a time when many banks have received taxpayer help, six of the biggest banks set aside over $36 billion in the first quarter to pay their employees, according to a review of financial statements.
If that pace continues all year, the money set aside for compensation suggests that workers at many banks will see their pay — much of it in bonuses — recover from the lows of last year.
As Krugman says, what we're on track for is...more of the same.
Remember that the gilded Wall Street of 2007 was a fairly new phenomenon. From the 1930s until around 1980 banking was a staid, rather boring business that paid no better, on average, than other industries, yet kept the economy’s wheels turning.
So why did some bankers suddenly begin making vast fortunes? It was, we were told, a reward for their creativity — for financial innovation. At this point, however, it’s hard to think of any major recent financial innovations that actually aided society, as opposed to being new, improved ways to blow bubbles, evade regulations and implement de facto Ponzi schemes.
Consider a recent speech by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, in which he tried to defend financial innovation. His examples of “good” financial innovations were (1) credit cards — not exactly a new idea; (2) overdraft protection; and (3) subprime mortgages. (I am not making this up.) These were the things for which bankers got paid the big bucks?
There's absolutely no reason to think bankers are any different from every other pig at the trough. It's all going to be business as usual as long as they can make the money roll in. One way or another. If it has to be govt money rather than, you know, actual profits, who cares? The automakers, who couldn't have wrecked their companies more completely if they set out to do it on purpose (did they?), certainly have no intention of changing. They've been proving that for the past 30 years. They are proving it right now.
We are getting on an endless roll with very little in the way of payback for the enormous amount of $$$ we're giving them. We're essentially paying for GM's moving its operations into low-wage, low-tax, no environmental restrictions countries. We're paying for the lay-offs, we're paying for the destruction of the UAW in America. The jobs the union thinks it's saving are only being "saved" until they can be moved offshore to non-union countries where $3/hr is a LOT of money.
Not that they'll pay that much. They'll pay as little as they can get away with. Note: you will not - repeat NOT - see the price of the GM cars made so cheaply in Brazil go down here at home. But you will see GM's profits go up. Oh, yes.
Meanwhile, Chrysler takes a giant step toward having a $Billion$ in potential bonus bread as well as winning a significant weakening of the union.
Things seem to be going pretty well for companies that were in so much trouble such a short time ago, and almost none of that aid is going to, you know, the people who need it. The autoworkers have been completely buffaloed into thinking they have to take cuts to save their jobs even as the bankers and executives - who know better - share out the goodies among themselves. There are ZERO "pay cuts" in the banking industry. ZERO concessions. ZERO give-backs. Any cuts they might have been forced to take last year are going to be made up - in spades - this year or next.
When do you think the UAW will start to get repaid the money it has in effect donated to the automakers? Ever?
No, me neither.
Comments