Obama's War on Labor

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By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 2 of 5 page(s)

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Replacing them was a two-tiered wage and benefit package with new skilled hires getting little more half the previous arrangement and for a new non-core category even less.

Much more was lost as well:

-- plant closures resulting in permanent job losses; for GM alone it meant 85% fewer production jobs than in 1990 over a period when high-paying manufacturing ones disappeared, offshored, or were replaced by machines;

-- for new hires, an ill-conceived 401k arrangement replacing employer-paid pensions with one dollar invested in company stock for each hour worked that turned out to be worthless two years later as the companies head for bankruptcy;

-- major health care concessions under a union-run VEBA (voluntary employee beneficiary association) putting UAW bosses in the healthcare business for potential big profits at the expense reduced worker benefits and companies relieved of their obligations after putting up an initially-funded amount;

-- employee buyouts, early retirements and other downsizing efforts to replace high-wage workers with cheaper new ones; and

-- Chrysler workers getting even less overall than their GM and Ford counterparts.

A final coup de grace is planned with disturbing implications for all workers - after decades of hard won gains. The UAW alone lost almost one million jobs from 1979 through 2007 (from 1.5 million to about 512,000). At yearend 2008, membership stood at 431,000, and tens of thousands more may now go given industry conditions and administration demands. In addition, more major concessions are coming through the back door - by a prepackaged bankruptcy or court-appointed judge to relieve Obama of responsibility.

If GM and/or Chrysler go down either way, prearrangers or the court will do the honors. The current union contract will be replaced by new demands, meaning 60 years of gains will be lost with the stroke of a pen, and no negotiations can mitigate them. It gets worse.

Whatever's decided will be a model for all industry. The idea isn't to end unions, just neutralize them, then leave workers out in the cold with poor wages, few if any benefits, self-funded only retirement plans if any, and other management-demanded concessions in a new dark age for labor heading it back to its earliest days when all gains gotten were hard won and few achieved until the mid-1930s under the Wagner Act.

Labor always struggled and learned the hard way that winning meant organizing, pressing their demands, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting management, and paying with their blood and lives to get results.

They were impressive - an eight-hour day, a living wage, generous increases, good benefits, and pensions because strong unions went head-to-head with management and won. It's world's different today with government in bed with business, Democrats as bad as Republicans, weak unions under corrupted bosses, millions of high-paying jobs already lost, and a global economic crisis stripping workers of all bargaining power and heading them for sweatshop serfdom under a leader even more anti-labor than his predecessor.

He appointed an auto task force (headed by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers) to be judge, jury and executioner, then let them (quietly) or a bankruptcy judge pull the switch to absolve him of responsibility, be able to declare victory, and apply the same terms across industry as every sector struggles to survive, the result of a Washington/Wall Street-created crisis.

Their scheme is to:

-- crush world economies;

-- recapitalize the IMF to entrap developing ones in perpetual debt bondage, neo-feudalism, a virtual dystopia;

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I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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