Here are some good articles to start with:
“Could Bankruptcy Judges save Detroit – or your house?”
http://www.freep.com/article/2…
“Shared Sacrifice is the way to sell auto bailout”
http://m.freep.com/news.jsp?ke…
“Further Give Backs Likely in any auto bailout”
http://www.freep.com/article/2…
8111603621014
Here is a prime quote from the “further givebacks” article:
UAW membership dwindlesThat’s bitter medicine for the UAW. The union has lost two-thirds of its members since the 1970s as unionized jobs with Detroit’s three automakers dwindled. The workers’ 2007 national contract contained substantial concessions, including a two-tier wage system under which new workers earn substantially less than veterans.
Just where any new concessions may come from is difficult to say. Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said the most likely target for givebacks is the so-called jobs bank, a provision in UAW contracts under which workers who are laid off continue to draw substantial amounts of their pay while not working.,
As some of you know, I was born in Detroit. It is well known, at least locally in Detroit & Michigan, that the CEO structure of the “big three” and the plutocracy of those firms squelched fuel efficient engines and designs over the years, using extreme measures to do so.
I support maintaining and growing manufacturing and heavy industry in the United States. In fact, this is CRITICAL because not every human being is hard-wired to participate in the “information economy” – many people work best with their hands or some combination of hand and brain. In addition, as a nation of consumers who create nothing and add no value, our economy would be doomed.
However, as to the “Big Three”, under its current management, any “bailout” capitol is more likely to enrich the hereditary management aristocracy at the Big Three rather then retool and rethink – unless there is all new management as a part of the bailout, perhaps with worker buy-in required and monitored for any capitol infusion.
The UAW is not the boogeyman here – the UAW is a pale ghost of what it once was. Labor has dwindled seriously, has been doing give-backs every year for at least a decade, and without organized labor in some viable form the indigenous and foreign oligarchs and plutocrats simply create what were once called “wage slaves” and keep on looting. New productivity has not gone to workers for more than 10 years; it has gone to the “shareholder class”, which means that there is less and less consumption at the base of the pyramind.
An “oligarch” is someone who controls an industry or capital, not always in a public way, and basically treats that industry or capitol as a private, hereditary fief.
A “plutocrat” is a member of a hereditary, self-perpetuating class of capital controllers who function as an elite for the benefit of their class only.
As my friend Ryan says so well, just my .02.
