"They thought perhaps they could have a twofer here maybe: Pierce the heart of organized labor while representing the foreign brands," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said at a Friday morning news conference in Detroit.
The U.S. auto industry is solely to blame for its problems, and any government aid package must have strings attached.
As someone who worked for two of the Big Three automakers, I witnessed firsthand the problems in the industry: large, inefficient bureaucracies that kill good ideas, a crippling, top-down, military-style chain of command and a system that churns out bland, uninspiring products.
In the 1970s, the Big Three were manufacturing their gas guzzlers when the United States was hit by the oil crisis. Unprepared for change, they were served up as lunch by their Japanese and European competitors, which offered smaller, attractive, fuel-efficient cars.
Earlier sticking points involving oversight, emission standards and the source of the rescue money had all been resolved rather quietly. The deal killer came when Republicans demanded — and Democrats rejected — that members of the United Automobile Workers take a big pay and benefits cut next year.
The Republicans’ insistence on union concessions is part of a larger GOP effort to diminish the role of organized labor across the nation, according to many labor experts, union leaders and Democrats. With Democratic congressional leaders vowing next year to take up contentious legislation to expand workers’ rights, Republicans are using the highly partisan battle over the UAW as a warm-up.
“After three weeks of hemming and hawing, it really became clear that this argument was about labor,” said Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes, a Detroit-based labor-advocacy group. “It’s a fight about whether labor unions are a legitimate institution in the 21st century. … The mask fell off [last week].”
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