G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
U.S. laborers suffer, Japan gains while our government fiddles
By Pierre Tristam
Created Oct 2 2007 - 9:12am
Back when labor wasn't an expletive for management and media, you could
expect news outlets to report labor conflicts at least partly from workers'
perspective. Not anymore.
Workers today are incidental to the stories, mattering the way wheat and
oats futures matter in the pits of the Chicago Board of Trade -- as
commodities. Last week's General Motors labor deal shows how. What was
reported in the national press read like excerpts from GM's annual report:
The company did what it did -- replacing six decades of generous health and
retirement benefits with hope and a trust fund -- because market forces and
shareholders demanded it. The United Auto Workers' 181,000 employed members
might as well have been nameless guest workers in the background. That, in
fact, is just what they're being turned into.
The GM deal won't affect the auto industry alone. Just as auto union
contracts once created "an industrial aristocracy of blue-collar workers
whose pay and benefits set the standard for the American middle class" (as
The Wall Street Journal put it last week), the systematic busting of
benefits once gained through union-led bargaining is lowering that quality
across industries. Companies alone, however, aren't to blame for this
degradation. A little memory-jogging:
The United Auto Workers' union was formed in 1935. Through successive
contracts and a few strikes between 1950 and 1970, years of rapid growth and
wealth for the American economy, the union won significant benefits to go
with hourly wages. By 1970, GM was providing full health coverage to active
workers, retirees and surviving spouses of retirees, plus prescription-drug
coverage, plus eligibility for retirement after 30 years. GM called it
"concessions." I call them basic rights, the kind of rights workers and
their spouses enjoy in all other industrialized countries without being
derided as claiming favors, handouts or concessions.
GM's commitments mean that each hour of labor costs $73 ($31.75 in wages,
$22 in health care, $19.25 in pension, insurance and other benefits). That
compares with $45 to $55 an hour for Japanese autoworkers. It makes it hard
to compete.
It so happens that American carmakers' products are significantly clunkier
than those of their Asian rivals and much less in demand than they once
were. Toyota's U.S. market share exceeds Ford's and Chrysler's and is
gaining on GM's fast. Even putting that bit of reality aside for a moment,
it still leaves 340,000 retirees for GM alone to take care of, a $51 billion
obligation. Considering that GM lost $12 billion in the past two years, it's
not hard to sympathize with a company that's been parallel-parking next to
bankruptcy for the past few years.
That still doesn't mean GM made foolish promises to its workers for 60
years, or that the company is right to cut and run now under the guise of
competing more evenly with Asian automakers (it'll be buying out a slew of
contracts and abandoning its retirement fund to a "trust," hoping that the
trust can generate enough income to sustain its obligations. In other words,
to a bet).
What the business stories don't tell you about those $45 to $55 an hour
labor costs for Asian companies is how richly subsidized they are. True,
Toyota, Nissan and Honda don't have to provide retirement health benefits
and prescription drugs to their workers. But their government does. So do
the governments of automakers in Germany, France and Italy, where the
health-care system is a less expensive, better-quality and universal version
of America's Medicare.
The solution isn't to bail on workers, as the market-driven corporate
playbook now has it. It's for government to help companies even out their
competitive position by taking on the health-care burden every other
industrial nation's government takes on. Some companies, including
Detroit's, are trying to compel government to do just that. But it's token
lobbying, not the kind of concerted effort that -- if corporate America were
truly committed to it, and without playing vassal to the insurance
industry -- would make national health care a reality faster than the
Patriot Act became law in 2001.
Instead, workers are increasingly getting the worst of all possible worlds.
They're being forced to make concessions to their companies to save their
jobs while government sits by, a solution in hand, but indifferent. Or,
rather, still subservient to the nation's Reagan-era motto: "In business we
trust." So benefits are cut, pensions ended, jobs eliminated and promises to
retirees left to the whims of chance, making the American work force a
mirror of that other former backbone: the nation's creaky, battered
infrastructure. When lawmakers get involved, it's to tax less, regulate less
and question not at all. Economic Darwinism of this sort might make us more
competitive for a while. But it's also making monkeys of us all again.
_______
About author Pierre Tristam is a Daytona Beach News-Journal editorial
writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net [1] or through his personal Web site
at www.pierretristam.com [2] .
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Pierre Tristam
Created Oct 2 2007 - 9:12am
Back when labor wasn't an expletive for management and media, you could
expect news outlets to report labor conflicts at least partly from workers'
perspective. Not anymore.
Workers today are incidental to the stories, mattering the way wheat and
oats futures matter in the pits of the Chicago Board of Trade -- as
commodities. Last week's General Motors labor deal shows how. What was
reported in the national press read like excerpts from GM's annual report:
The company did what it did -- replacing six decades of generous health and
retirement benefits with hope and a trust fund -- because market forces and
shareholders demanded it. The United Auto Workers' 181,000 employed members
might as well have been nameless guest workers in the background. That, in
fact, is just what they're being turned into.
The GM deal won't affect the auto industry alone. Just as auto union
contracts once created "an industrial aristocracy of blue-collar workers
whose pay and benefits set the standard for the American middle class" (as
The Wall Street Journal put it last week), the systematic busting of
benefits once gained through union-led bargaining is lowering that quality
across industries. Companies alone, however, aren't to blame for this
degradation. A little memory-jogging:
The United Auto Workers' union was formed in 1935. Through successive
contracts and a few strikes between 1950 and 1970, years of rapid growth and
wealth for the American economy, the union won significant benefits to go
with hourly wages. By 1970, GM was providing full health coverage to active
workers, retirees and surviving spouses of retirees, plus prescription-drug
coverage, plus eligibility for retirement after 30 years. GM called it
"concessions." I call them basic rights, the kind of rights workers and
their spouses enjoy in all other industrialized countries without being
derided as claiming favors, handouts or concessions.
GM's commitments mean that each hour of labor costs $73 ($31.75 in wages,
$22 in health care, $19.25 in pension, insurance and other benefits). That
compares with $45 to $55 an hour for Japanese autoworkers. It makes it hard
to compete.
It so happens that American carmakers' products are significantly clunkier
than those of their Asian rivals and much less in demand than they once
were. Toyota's U.S. market share exceeds Ford's and Chrysler's and is
gaining on GM's fast. Even putting that bit of reality aside for a moment,
it still leaves 340,000 retirees for GM alone to take care of, a $51 billion
obligation. Considering that GM lost $12 billion in the past two years, it's
not hard to sympathize with a company that's been parallel-parking next to
bankruptcy for the past few years.
That still doesn't mean GM made foolish promises to its workers for 60
years, or that the company is right to cut and run now under the guise of
competing more evenly with Asian automakers (it'll be buying out a slew of
contracts and abandoning its retirement fund to a "trust," hoping that the
trust can generate enough income to sustain its obligations. In other words,
to a bet).
What the business stories don't tell you about those $45 to $55 an hour
labor costs for Asian companies is how richly subsidized they are. True,
Toyota, Nissan and Honda don't have to provide retirement health benefits
and prescription drugs to their workers. But their government does. So do
the governments of automakers in Germany, France and Italy, where the
health-care system is a less expensive, better-quality and universal version
of America's Medicare.
The solution isn't to bail on workers, as the market-driven corporate
playbook now has it. It's for government to help companies even out their
competitive position by taking on the health-care burden every other
industrial nation's government takes on. Some companies, including
Detroit's, are trying to compel government to do just that. But it's token
lobbying, not the kind of concerted effort that -- if corporate America were
truly committed to it, and without playing vassal to the insurance
industry -- would make national health care a reality faster than the
Patriot Act became law in 2001.
Instead, workers are increasingly getting the worst of all possible worlds.
They're being forced to make concessions to their companies to save their
jobs while government sits by, a solution in hand, but indifferent. Or,
rather, still subservient to the nation's Reagan-era motto: "In business we
trust." So benefits are cut, pensions ended, jobs eliminated and promises to
retirees left to the whims of chance, making the American work force a
mirror of that other former backbone: the nation's creaky, battered
infrastructure. When lawmakers get involved, it's to tax less, regulate less
and question not at all. Economic Darwinism of this sort might make us more
competitive for a while. But it's also making monkeys of us all again.
_______
About author Pierre Tristam is a Daytona Beach News-Journal editorial
writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net [1] or through his personal Web site
at www.pierretristam.com [2] .
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
