GM, sticking it to your employees, and the case for national health insurance

oh, man... it just keeps on comin'... clueless, self-absorbed management runs a company into the ground, threatens bankruptcy, and holds its unions and employees hostage to gain cost concessions... odds are good that bankruptcy will be declared anyway which will very likely spell the death of the union, if not outright, certainly as any effective counter-balance to management... the unions and the employees, naturally, are terrified about losing their jobs altogether... and, of course, ford looks across town and says, "hey, me too...!"

The union agreed to this desperation deal to help keep GM alive. The once-dominant auto-maker posted a record $1.1 billion loss in the third quarter; and its former parts division, Delphi, with 34,000 union jobs, has just gone into bankruptcy. If and when it emerges, Delphi's $26-an-hour workers will be cut to something like $12. That gets your attention.

The union leadership was so eager to help GM survive that the UAW filed an unusual suit intended to block its own union retirees from challenging the negotiated health-benefit cuts. Now Ford has just reported a $284 million third-quarter loss, and wants the same kind of deal the UAW gave GM.

[...]

So GM's biggest problem is not labor costs; it's that except for its profitable SUVs (which are becoming white elephants as gas prices rise), too few consumers are buying GM's products. When management makes dumb decisions about design, quality, or marketing, autoworkers end up paying the price.

GM spends also $5.6 billion a year on healthcare -- more than it spends on steel. Its foreign competitors spend nothing on healthcare. So GM and the UAW are common victims of America's failure to have national health insurance.

let's bring in grover norquist to 'splain why everything should be in the hands of private enterprise... i'm sure we'd all feel better...

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