UAW: Union Willing to Go Extra Mile to Save Auto Industry

by James Parks, Dec 12, 2008

A small minority of Republican senators put the entire American economy in danger in an attempt to bust a union contract and drive down workers’ wages.

Last night, the Senate failed to cut off debate and vote on the House-passed $14 billion emergency bridge loan to the nation’s automakers. After the vote, the UAW made it clear it is still willing to go the extra mile to rescue the nations’ auto industry.

Republicans were demanding that workers take big cuts in pay. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a press conference this morning the Republican Senate caucus demands that workers slash wages meant

restructuring had to be done on the backs of workers and retirees. From the beginning, the UAW made it clear that all stakeholders had to be willing to make sacrifices.

He called on the White House, which supported the failed bridge loan, to use funds from the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry to provide the loan. This morning, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it is poised and ready to use part of the money to prevent the auto industry from collapsing, a move Gettelfinger endorsed.

The Associated Press reports that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told reporters on Air Force One:

The current weakened state of the economy is such that it could not withstand a body blow like a disorderly bankruptcy in the auto industry.

Experts predict that if even one of the Big Three automakers goes under, some 3.3 million jobs will be lost and the entire supply chain for all carmakers, including foreign-owned plants in the United States, will be seriously disrupted.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the Repuiblicans’ refusal to approve the deal is “outrageous.”

If autoworkers who are members of the UAW worked for nothing, they could not save auto companies that face a devastating cash crisis in our deep national recession. Yet a handful of Republican senators were so determined to cut workers’ living standards and scapegoat the autoworkers union that they were willing to block the bipartisan proposal for a bridge loan to the American auto industry and play Russian roulette with our economy. That is outrageous. This group of minority senators failed to act as stewards of the American public.

Gettelfinger says the union had reached an agreement with Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker to make some more concessions that would allow the bill to pass, but opponents in the Republican caucus defeated the deal because a small group is trying to deny workers a voice in the workplace.

The union is the only way workers have a strong voice. The right wing has tried to paint union as a dirty word. There’s no question who the minority in the Senate was representing. They figured they could use this to strike a blow to the heart of the unions.

Writing on the AFL-CIO website, Leo Casey, a member of AFT, lays it on the line:

There is going to be an attempt to use the economic crisis to create a race to the bottom for working people that only worsens the great inequalities that have become the mainstay of the American economy over the last 25 years.

Gettelfinger adds:

When you look at the facts, it’s clear the men and women of the UAW care about their country and their industry.

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