Our own Harold Meyerson has a particularly insightful column in the Post today about the United Autoworkers. There's a lot of good history there, but the contemporary relevance comes from these notes about bailout objectors who go after the union for "killing" the deal:
Over the past several weeks, it has become clear that the Republican right hates the UAW so much that it would prefer to plunge the nation into a depression rather than craft a bridge loan that doesn't single out the auto industry's unionized workers for punishment. (As manufacturing consultant Michael Wessel pointed out, no Republican demanded that Big Three executives have their pay permanently reduced to the relatively spartan levels of Japanese auto executives' pay.) Today, setting the terms of that loan has become the final task of the Bush presidency, which puts the auto workers in the unenviable position of depending, if not on the kindness of strangers, then on the impartiality of the most partisan president of modern times.
Republicans complain that labor costs at the Big Three are out of line with those at the non-union transplant factories in the South, factories that Southern governors have subsidized with billions of taxpayer dollars. But the UAW has already agreed to concessions bringing its members' wages to near-Southern levels, and labor costs already comprise less than 10 percent of the cost of a new car. (On Wall Street, employee compensation at the seven largest financial firms in 2007 constituted 60 percent of the firms' expenses, yet reducing overall employee compensation wasn't an issue in the financial bailout.)
Looking at the facts, it rapidly becomes clear that worker compensation is not the excuse for killing the Big Three bailout conservatives would like it to be; in fact, it's barely relevant compared to, say, health care costs. Nor is free market ideology much of an excuse: this piece from the Washington Independent has been floating around but deserves plenty of attention. The southern senators who led the fight against helping the automakers have an auto industry of their own, consisting of foreign companies who are heavily subsidized by the states their factories are based in. No complaints about those government hand-outs, I note.
Which isn't to say there aren't any good arguments against the bailout; obviously rescuing a dying industry based on promises that it would turn itself around isn't the most appealing plan in the world. But simply ignoring the much stronger response -- that our current economic situation demands actions that prop up the economy, particularly by re-purposing a huge industry that employs many workers, rather than hastening its fall -- in favor of disingenuous attacks on laborers and vain stands on non-existent principle are at best foolish, and at their worst dangerous.
-- Tim Fernholz
