Posted by
Rich from Paso on Monday, November 17, 2008 12:08:19 AM
In the continuing drama of America's slide into socialism, the last epsiode is the Big Three automakers have asked the Federal government if they can stick their snouts into the crash trough of "bailout" money. The automakers are asking for about $50 billion in bailout money and it appears that the remaining Republicans in the Senate will stand up and say no. I say "Great! Finally, they decided to stand up for capitalism.".
The Big Three hemorage cash like someone missing an arm. Reports have the automakers losing $5 billion a month just to turn the lights on. Why is this? First of all, the automakers have signed their souls away in Faustian deals with the United Auto Workers union. For short-term labor peace, GM in particular agreed to the creation of "Job Banks" where underemployed autoworkers who no longer have function on the floor actually earning their paychecks get to go screw off in the break room for eight hours a day and recieve a full paycheck for their lack of productivity. I'm certain that GM would love nothing more than to fire these fifth wheels, but since they sold their souls to the UAW, they can't. At "Carpe Diem" blog, located at (
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/should-we-really-bail-out-7320-per-hour.htmlwher), Professor Mark Perry has a table that shows the automakers are paying around $73.00 an hour for labor. And again, some of those workers are a part of the Job Bank. The UAW came out earlier in the weekend and said that they will not give any concessions to help the Big Three.
Well, I say to hell with them all. Unions are an obsolete parasite on the body of our economy. Sure, unions were an important part of bringing some humane treatment of workers. Around the turn of the 20th Century, unions stopped child labor, chamopioned the 40-hour work week and lobbyied for reforms like OSHA. But now, unions exist for their own purposes at the expense of the rank-and-file. I was told a story on Friday where a die hard memeber of the Firefighter's Union was denied access to the union headquarters cafeteria while making a visit because the cafeteria was only for those that worked in the building even though he paid his dues for ten years. Additionally, whenever a union shop goes on strike, the union charges a fee for the unions service. The rank-and-file are advised to strike by the union and then the union charges a fee for their services. I have seen strikes by the Aircraft workers union. In 1989, they went on strike against Boeing for six months. They had their members and their families on $100 a week strike checks for that duration. That means that a family of four was trying to make ends meet on $400 a month. Why were they on strike? Because Boeing was offering huge bonuses and not an hourly wage increase. I came to learn that union dues are a function of their hourly salary and no dues are paid out of bonuses. So the union put families on a $400 a month stipend so they could get theirs. Another story is the strike in 1997 by the Teamsters against UPS. Why did they strike? UPS was offering to provide a $2 billion health and dental benefit to their employees only. The Teamsters ordered a strike because that $2 billion was not going to the Teamsters brethren.
The unions must be broken. Along with high business taxes, unions are a major part of why American businesses flee oversees. They don't want to make the faustian deals with the unions. American businesses are smart enough to know that they are a business not a social welfare program. Who can fault them for taking their businesses overseas when you have a bunch of parasites in Washington and a bunch of parasites in the unions that are out to destroy you?
Unions are obsolete and need to go away like the dodo bird. There is nothing that the unions do today that couldn't be solved with binding arbitration. Let us not forget that our newly elected President Barack Obama will sign the moment it hits his desk the "Freedom to Work" Act which will end union secret ballots and solidfy unions as the sole source of labor in America. Over the past 20 years, union membership has been steadily declining for the very reasons outlined above. Add to the equation that many other people see unions as obsolete and of course those on the socialist left will need to legislate union membership.
But the unions are not alone in this deal. The Big Three automakers need to survive on their own merits or go out of business. Who mourned for McDonnald Douglas when they were bought out by Boeing in 1997? I didn't hear any cries of sorrow when AMOCO was forced to merge with British Petroleum. Where was the gnashing of teeth when Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed in 1995? What about Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Pontiac all merging to form General Motors? Or Lincoln, Mercury and Ford? Or Dodge, Plymouth and Chrysler? They all merged because whole was greater than the sum of the parts... or at least until now. Now we have inefficient and horribly mismanaged corporations that are barely eeking by and want you and I, the American taxpayer, to subsidize their inefficient and mismanaged existance with our hard worked for dollars. It appears that there is no one that is free of America's addiction to welfare, not even the American auto industry. I believe we could hook a generator to Henry Ford and capture all the energy he is generating as he spins in his grave.
And let us also not forget that Congress wants an ownership stake in any business they buy into with our money as a part of the "bailout". The socialist left are working right out of the Communist Manifest. Think I'm crazy? Plank 5 of the Communist Mannifesto states, and I quote, "5.Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." This is where Congress becomes the lender of first resort. Plank 8 states, "8.Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture" This plank talks about the universal unionization of the American workforce. This has to stop now. The rule should be if your business cannot survive on its own, it either goes bankrupt or it gets bought out by a business that can survive on its own. Either way, we need to stop filling the trough with more and more taxpayer earnings. America will not survive if we keep allowing our elected officials to keep mortgaging our futures with more and more debt spending and they must stop "bailing out" business after business with welfare payments and no strings. If we don't stop this, the light at the end of the tunnel will turn out to be a freight train of crushing debt and fiscal insolvency.