The CEOs of the big 3 and the UAW head called before congress? What a joke.
I watched more of it then any fun loving person should.

Chris Dodd said, out loud, that we should, us, the taxpayer, should be paying workers in idle plants not to work.

Chew that over bailout supporters. He wants to pay union workers to sit in an idle plant all day and not work.

At 130000!

Let’s hope GM goes bankrupt under Obama instead of under Bush.

If GM can just pay their bills for 10 more weeks, I’d love to see them go belly up and have the Democrats held responsible.

Or the Democrats could vote to keep them in business by bailing them out.

But they would have to keep doing this every 6 or 12 months because their cost structure is so uncompetitive, as your post indicates.

In light of the fact that the Big 3 won’t be here much longer (hopefully), and the fact that Obama is going to bankrupt the Coal industry, I guess it’s reasonable to believe that there will be no need to push for Card Check.

Rather than calling for a change in Big 3 management, it would be better to call for cleaning house in the UAW management.

Those guys get paid ridiculous amaounts of money not to work.

The last UAW contract provided for GM to offload retiree health benefits into a separate entity.

It sounds like this won’t take full effect until 2010. I think we need to know what GM’s labor economics look like if they offload these retiree health costs to the union.

If it would make a meaningful enough reduction in labor costs such that they would be reasonably competitive with Japanese car manufacturing in the US, maybe there is a rationale to provide financing to bridge GM until 2010.

I am as against this bailout as it’s possible to be and I hate the unions as much as the next guy. I do wonder though if your claim that the average union worker makes three times as much as the typical American worker is true, at least if ‘typical’ means ‘average’ which I think is the implication. I have a feeling that you’re comparing “salary plus benefits” for the UAW worker against just “salary” for the typical American worker. I can’t imagine that the average American worker makes less than $42,000 if you include his benefits. It doesn’t seem possible. Do you have a cite?

-exits

I’m not sure your statement that this is three times the average american worker is right if we consider wages and benefits for both sides. The US median household income is right around $50,000 but that does not include benefits. Maybe you are thinking of some other measure though.

At minimum the comparison should be to other industrial/construction workers. I simply can’t imagine the loaded wage/benefit being only $25/hr. If it is, it’s no wonder they all voted Democrat. We’re lucky they’re not in the hills with AK47s.

see Jon Cohn here. the actual wage a worker makes is closer to $28 an hour, and the $70 figure counts retiree benefits calculated into the pay of current workers. there’s no actual auto worker making $70 an hour. and as shaggydog says the latest agreement will offload a lot of retiree costs.

Cohn’s reporting on this worth reading no matter where you stand. it’s important to get the actual numbers.