It took weeks of negotiation but all those concessions made in their new contract by the UAW? Forget it. Not enough. GM's new Obama-approved CEO wants to - go ahead, tell me you didn't see this coming - close more plants and cut more workers and get the workers who are left to give up even more than they already have.
General Motors Corp.'s new chief executive said Tuesday that more of the automaker's plants could close and bankruptcy is "more probable" as GM works to meet new, tougher requirements for government aid. In his first news conference as CEO, Fritz Henderson said he expects the company would "need to take further measures" beyond the five plants the company said it would shutter when it submitted a restructuring plan to the government last month.
He is doing this because Obama told him to.
President Barack Obama said Monday that GM's initial plans to become viable didn't go far enough. He gave the company 60 days to make more cuts and get more concessions from bondholders and unions or it won't get any more government help.
So all those auto workers made all those concessions to save their jobs for...two months. No contract is sacred when it's made with employees. Only executive contracts are sacred. Union contracts are confetti.
Between AIG and the auto makers, tax-pressed local govts have got the message: all those contracts we got with all those govt workers? Slice em and dice em, baby.
The depth of the recession and the use of taxpayer dollars to bail out companies have made it politically acceptable for overseers to tinker with employment agreements.
So federal and local governments are looking for ways to pare payouts, endangering the promises made before the financial storm to people like Wall Street traders, automobile workers and garbage collectors.
“We run roughshod over some contracts and not over others,” said David A. Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, about economic downturns. “Right now, employment contracts seem to be the type of contract that is viewed as eminently rewritable.”
The Treasury Department is seeking broad powers to seize troubled companies and rewrite contracts like the ones promising bonuses at the American International Group. Some A.I.G. employees, meanwhile, have been pressured by officials into repaying their bonuses to the giant insurance company rescued by the government.
Across the country, Vallejo, Calif., just got permission in bankruptcy court to tear up its contracts with firefighters and other workers. In Stockton, the city manager is studying whether to follow Vallejo’s lead.
In Michigan, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm just ordered the city of Pontiac put under emergency financial management, after it failed, among other things, to rein in the cost of police, fire and trash collection services.
I don't know if this is the ultimate revenge or the ultimate irony. Contracts get broken all the time - there has been for many many years a thriving legal community specializing in contract law - but like Reagan with Patco, now that Obama's preparing to screw the auto workers and the Congress has dared to put its paws on Wall Street bonuses, local officials with diving revenues want in on the act. "OK, we signed contracts with you guys but conditions have changed and you're going to have to take less."
Obama has been so busy shoveling $$$Billions$$$ into the banks that there's been no thought given to states and cities also starving for money. Normally a little Federal revenue-sharing would be up front and center - save those jobs!! - but now all anybody can think about is cutting those labor costs!! BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!!!
Contracts are for wusses.
So what exactly did we get for all that money flowing to corrupt and incompetent auto makers? As Carl Icahn explains in an NYT op-ed talking about the AIG bail-out, not much. We went after the wrong thing.
BARNEY FRANK, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, recently said that the government should sue American International Group to recover the $165 million in bonuses it paid to executives in its financial products division. “We own this company, in effect,” Mr. Frank said, referring to the government’s 80 percent stake. “As the owners of the company, we do not think we should be paying bonuses or should have paid bonuses to people who made mistakes, who were incompetent.”
Sadly, though, under American corporate law share ownership does not count for much. Mr. Frank might be surprised to learn that a lawsuit would have almost no chance of success in court, even for a majority shareholder like the government. A.I.G. would most likely argue that the oft-cited “business judgment” rule gives management wide latitude to set compensation without shareholder interference. What the government should have gotten was board representation in return for its large investment in A.I.G.
Now, barring political resolution (including a confiscatory tax or a voluntary surrender of bonus money), the government’s choices are limited to exercising the rights of a shareholder.
(emphasis added)
Who don't have any. The corporate rules are written that way as Barney should have discovered when he waded into the fight over shareholder control of CEO pay packages.
So the govt didn't get a power position for all that money and they have no intention of bailing any of us out. In fact from Obama on down they're figuring out ways of cutting our jobs and the pay of whoever's left.
So making more people even poorer is how they think they ought to get us out of this mess? Really? Then who pray tell, to echo Michael Moore, is going to buy all this shit?
Lemme get this straight: The boat's sinking so the owners decide to get rid of some weight by throwing the crew overboard rather than the cargo? That's rich folk thinking for real, ain't it?
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