TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Hernando Today

The Big Three And Us

ADVERTISEMENT

By FRANCES EARL, Call to Patriots

Hernando Today

Published: December 3, 2008

Let's start off by confronting all the lies! An article in The New York Times recently reported the average salary of an auto worker as $78 per hour. Herein is how that figure was arrived at: The writer of this article added together the salaries of current workers, their projected 30-year pension amounts and their health benefits. He then added together the pensions being received by retirees and their health care benefits.
Next he added all of this to achieve a total amount for current and retired employees. Here's where he went Republican-style wrong! He divided only the number of current workers into the total amount and, thus, achieved a totally wrong hourly wage average. If you added my current income, my neighbor's and Donald Trump's together and divided by two, would you get an accurate figure? No way, Jose!
A lot of sacrifices, both from labor and management, will have to be made to save one of our country's most vital industries. Labor has already made concessions that our corrupted media has failed to put into print. The number of folks working for the Big Three has already been cut by as much as half. There were 466,000 GM hourly workers in 1978 and 112,000 in 2006. The United Automobile Workers (UAW) agreed in 2005 and 2007 to no raises for the next four years and starting pay for new workers was cut by 50 percent to $14 to $16 per hour. Benefits were slashed as well. Makes the average wage for existing workers $28 per hour, not $78.
So, does $28 per hour seem high to those of my readers making far less? Of course it does, but has anyone out there heard about the CEOs of these companies making million-dollar salaries as reward for their failure to effectively lead the industry, offering to take a reduction of any kind in their outrageously out-of-line pay scale and benefit packages? Of course not, evidenced by the corporate jets (yes, that's plural) they arrogantly arrived in when last they sat at the table in Congress.
Where the heck did this unreal pay scale come from anyway? This is the creation of an elite, sinfully rich ruling class that the Bush administration has worked so hard to create!
Allowing the Big Three to go to Chapter 11 bankruptcy will impact all of us in such an overwhelming way that it may very well push this country into a Depression, not just a recession. It will impact other manufacturers, dealers, suppliers, insurance companies and a huge number of other businesses that would seem not to be related to the auto industry.
In one way or another, the auto industry supports one of every 10 jobs in our country. The auto part supply industry is the No. 1 industrial employer in seven states and a top five employer in 12 others. Failure of the Big Three will impact every single American. We can refuse to face reality, as we have done for eight long years, or we can insist that Congress act to reshape the industry.
While all this is going on, what is our illustrious President Bush working on now? He is pushing the Labor Department to enact a "new rule" that will make it harder to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job. Business groups, of course, are strongly supporting this move — after all, workers have become disposable; someone else is waiting to take their jobs if they become ill.
Example of "compassionate conservatism?" A former neighbor of mine recently passed away after a long and painful fight against Parkinson's disease. He had doctor after doctor confirm that this was caused by his work as a welder on the assembly line in the auto industry. The Big Three, with their bank of lawyers, successfully beat down a desperately ill man with nothing approaching their financial prowess and so my friend was denied any monetary award, money that may have helped him get the extra medical care he needed to survive. He lost motor function steadily although his brain stayed intact so that he well knew what was happening to him. Now, Bush and his minions are moving to expose all workers to disease and death as a final tribute to their "compassionate conservatism!"
We are not robots; we are human beings! Further deregulation being pushed by the Bush mob includes auto safety (that's you, me and our kids) and the environment. It is no easy trick for a new president to revoke or alter final regulations put in place by a predecessor. According to the Supreme Court, they would need to solicit public comment and work up a "reasoned analysis" as if it were issuing a new rule.

Frances Earl, former vice chairwoman of the Hernando County Democratic Executive Committee, may be contacted at fearl@tampabay.rr.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT