Union Chief: Support the Bailout — Umm, Strike That
EmailABC News’ Rick Klein Reports: A bailout by any other name would smell far sweeter.
At least, that is, if you’re UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, who must have been a bit bleary-eyed when he arrived at Reagan National Airport for his testimony in Washington Thursday morning.
Asked by ABC’s Vija Udenans what he hoped to accomplish in Washington, Gettelfinger said:
“Well, we’re going to go in and give our testimony again, and we need this emergency bailout — or excuse me, let me back this thing all up. I wanna say, I’ve heard bailout so much . . . Umm, let me say, first of all, we’re pleased to be here…"
Also on the clip — Sam Donaldson, David Chalian, and Rick Klein handicap the politics of the auto … recovery package, on Thursday’s Politics Live, on ABC NewsNOW.
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lets pay laid off autoworkers $31.00 an hour for not working. Let them ALL go bankrupt. put some of these CEO’s in JAIL
Posted by: Bail out me | December 4, 2008, 4:07 pm 4:07 pm
No, no and HELL NO!!!
Posted by: please! | December 4, 2008, 4:09 pm 4:09 pm
I must admit, the “job bank” is the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard for a failing company, those people would have been doing something, even if it was sweeping the parking lots and cleaning the toilets. $30 an hour for NOTHING, no wonder they’re failing.
Posted by: JR | December 4, 2008, 4:25 pm 4:25 pm
I agree that the Big 3 have really fouled themselves up, but there is more to this than just that fact. The credit market is stuck in park. People can’t get loans to buy cars, even if they want to.
I just turned in my lease because I was unemployed. I live in MI, so I know what’s going on here. Literally until today, I was laid off from a professional job (degree required) and had been looking for 8 1/2 months. Thank God, I found something and I’m grateful. It’s for 1/2 my salary which wasn’t high to begin with, but it’s a job and has benefits. Even if I had been employed, the likelyhood of getting financing would have been slim to none.
When I took my car to the dealer, he flat out said that I would have been lucky to get financing, period. He can’t sell a car unless the person is paying cash right now. That was 2 1/2 weeks ago.
So not all the blame for this situation is on the Big 3. They were hurting before, and maybe they would have gone under anyway, but the credit market has made any recovery they may have been starting next to impossible. They share the majority of the blame, but they also are just as much a victim of what has happened in the last couple of months as every other company that relies on consumers’ ability to spend or get financed.
I’m lucky, I was able to have a close friend help me purchase a very cheap, very old, used car so that my job hunt wasn’t limited to where public transportation or walking could take me. My savings were exhausted and I had hoped I wouldn’t be out so long. I’ll keep this job for a while and let the job market get a little healthier, but I can’t stay here forever. It’s better than unemployment and I like my future co-workers, but I’ll still be hurting financially until something better shows up. Many of the jobs I had applied for are now being offered as internships, that’s how bad it is and it’s no wonder that the Big 3 aren’t able to keep themselves afloat in the meantime.
Posted by: Hoping for a better Future | December 4, 2008, 4:36 pm 4:36 pm
i have been teaching for 36 years and worked a second fulltime job for 20 years. having paid social security, but because i have a teacher’s retirement system account, i will lose 2/3′s of my ss retirement benefits that i paid for…i find it hard to feel bad for ceo’s who earn 220,000,000 when leaving home depot.
Posted by: ron | December 4, 2008, 4:42 pm 4:42 pm
UNIONS protect the lazy and the guilty. Just look at the players unions in MLB and NFL. They just cause headaches, red tape, and nightmarish paper work to throw off the system.
They abuse their power and what they were originally intended for.
I can’t believe the benefits these auto workers got for standing around and watching a robot do the work…maybe turn a wrench here or there.
At first I felt bad for the workers, but now that I see they have it better than me EVEN IF THEY ARE LAID OFF!?!?! They can go without for a while too. Maybe finally get a job where they have to work for a wage.
Posted by: Independent Fighter | December 4, 2008, 4:46 pm 4:46 pm
When gas prices were high, the Big 3 didn’t have hybrids to sell (well, not many), because they were hellbent on SUV’s as their main product. It’s just an indicator of how short-sighted the American car companies are at the moment.
Then, you have three or four brand names under one major company, all of which are selling basically the same cars. They water down the market and compete against themselves.
Top it off with overpaid executives (Honda’s CEO makes less than 1/10th what GM’s does I think) and outdated unions, and you get a recipe for disaster. Honda just opened a non-union plant in Indiana. Folks there make more per hour than I do, and I’m middle management at a major company. Just goes to show you, the unions should be a thing of the past.
Never mind planning for the future and being ready to meet any demand, like the Japanese companies do. The US automakers have dug their own graves by being slow to change, not planning for market demands and basically having their heads stuck in the sand.
Posted by: HeidiL | December 4, 2008, 4:52 pm 4:52 pm
I think HeidiL just said it all.
Posted by: Daisy | December 4, 2008, 5:18 pm 5:18 pm
Nobody here seems to recognize the fact that Americans bought, drove and wrapped their arms around the big SUV’s on the road. The union brothers and sisters who built these vehicles aren’t to blame. Also people don’t realize that while in the “jobs bank” the union membership performs community service for 40 hours a week for their pay. They are serving soup in Salvation Army kitchens, etc. Also to say that they “stand around and watch robots do the work” is utterly idiotic. This person who made this comment is so far removed from reality it is pathetic. Managing a cell of over 30 huge robotic welders is skilled, dangerous work. Try getting an education and learn all the skills necessary to do it before you make such an off-handed ignorant comment, will you? Get back to me in about four years and tell me how easy it was to become a journeyman electrician. You, whoever you are, wouldn’t be able to cut the mustard. I can assure you that you wouldn’t have the intellect to master those skills. Quit blaming the workers who go in to work every day and do the hard work in order to support their families. You don’t have a clue.
Posted by: marianna | December 6, 2008, 5:27 am 5:27 am