Free Republic

The New Plan? Cripple Honda! Save Detroit with Card Check! Eliminating the secret ballot and making it easier to organize U.S. Honda and Toyota workers (and imposing contract terms via binding arbitration) would "level the playing field," says Dem. Congressman Tim Ryan. ... Then when Honda and Toyota responded by importing more cars from abroad, we could have import quotas! Eventually the whole automotive sector could be planned by Congress in conjunction with existing business and labor interest groups. Red State has seen the future and it is corporatist. ...12:21 P.M.

Unions are to blame for the Big Three automakers’ problems, according to a television ad meant to stoke public opposition to organized labor’s number one legislative priority. “Steel, auto, airlines. What do these industries all have in common?” asks the ad sponsored by the business-backed Employee Freedom Action Committee, which was active in several hotly contested Senate races this year. “Hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and union bosses that helped put them out of business.” The advertisement urges people to fight the Employee Free Choice Act, which unions hope will be taken up quickly by the Democratic Congress and...

President-elect Barack Obama, who co-sponsored the misleadingly titled Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate in 2007, has vowed that the measure, called “Card Check,” will be the law of the land once he’s in office. Given the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, if Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss loses Georgia’s runoff election on Dec. 2, Card Check probably will become law—and that would be terrible news for Americans who want to keep their jobs. Card Check would do away with the present secret ballot process used by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when employees vote on whether to...

There is a curiously dated logic in unions insisting that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which belies the back and forth accusatory rhetoric of intimidation between business and big labor. There are two principal methods for employees to join and command employers to recognize their union's collective bargaining request. First: Company workers can get at least 30 percent of their colleagues to sign petition cards requesting representation, send the cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and have them oversee a secret ballot election. Second: If more than half of the workers sign up for representation, a...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable. "Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol. She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan. The decision averted a likely defeat of...

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner said Democrats' use of secret ballots to chose its leadership was ironic because the party wants to nix workers' rights to a secret voting in deciding whether to unionize. "The secret ballot election is a cornerstone of our American democracy," Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Thursday. "If it is good enough for House Democrats to rely on during today's high-stakes vote, shouldn't it be good enough for millions of American workers across America who value their workplace privacy?" He vowed Republicans would stand firmly against the Democrat's "card-check" legislation - dubbed the Employee Free...

DETROIT, Nov 20 (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said on Thursday that lawmakers need to take immediate action on a $25 billion bridge loan bill to support the U.S. automakers or one or more could fail. Gettelfinger, who testified on Tuesday and Wednesday to U.S. congressional committees in support of the loans, said he would not comment on a possible compromise bill reached by Democratic and Republican senators until details were known. When told that one detail might be that the automakers would have to provide a strategic plan to get access to the money, Gettelfinger said...

TALEGAON, India: General Motors Corp. opened a second plant in India on Tuesday, boosting its production capacity from 85,000 to 225,000 vehicles a year. The factory is part of GM's aggressive push into emerging markets, which have helped cushion the beleaguered auto giant from falling sales in the developed world. It also furthers the Indian government's ambition to turn the country into a manufacturing hub for small vehicles. "We believe India in three to four years will be a significant source of profit for us," said GM Asia Pacific President Nick Reilly. The first car — a pint-sized red Chevrolet...

The United Auto Workers union called on Congress and the Bush administration to get a loan to U.S. automakers to prevent their collapse before the legislature adjourns Friday. "Congress must not adjourn with the Bush administration in place without an agreement," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "If there's no action, we could see the collapse of one or more domestic auto companies by the end of year." Gettelfinger said the cost of not acting would be devastating for the industry's employees and the U.S. economy. "The current recession that we're in would be made much worse," he added, saying states...

The Big Three automakers’ chief executives testified before Congress today, blaming the credit crisis for their downfall. But Richard Wagoner, CEO of General Motors (GM: 2.11, -0.68, -24.37%) did not use the credit crisis as an excuse for the company’s poor profits when he wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal in December 2005. In his opinion piece, which came amidst record sales, he blamed not the credit crisis, but a kaleidoscope of other reasons, including “intense” foreign competition, soaring gas prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and high benefit costs for the automakers’ downfall. And in his...

WASHINGTON -- A full-court effort by U.S. auto makers to secure federal aid appeared to be on the rocks after the companies failed to convince lawmakers of the urgent need for a rescue. Michigan Rep. Dale Kildee, Chrysler Chairman and CEO Robert Nardelli, GM Chairman and CEO Richard Wagoner, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Michigan Rep. Sandy Levin (left to right) prior to a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill at which the auto makers made their case for federal assistance. Late Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid backed away from efforts to force a vote this week on a Democratic-backed...

The chances of the US Congress quickly approving a bill to save the "Big Three" car manufacturers are said to be "remote" but one economist warned that their collapse could shave 4pc off America's gross domestic product next year. Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, who chairs the influential Senate banking committee, believes that the chances of Congress approving a new bill this week to advance up to $25bn in lifeline funding to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are slim. "I'm anxious to see something happen," said Mr Dodd, who on Tuesday heard pleas for the money from the leaders of the...

Barney Frank favors bailing out the Detroit automakers over letting them go into bankruptcy. Chief among his concerns is that bankruptcy might "bust" the unions. You know, those organizations whose contract demands have put Detroit on the brink of extinction. The Massachusetts Dem, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was interviewed by Maggie Rodriguez on today's Early Show. He appeared alongside Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al.), ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, who favors letting the automakers reorganize under Chapter 11. View video here.

There’s a big push on in Washington to bail out the Big Three automobile companies. It’s the usual “crisis” scenario where scare headlines predict woe and economic gloom if something isn’t done NOW!But would a bailout of the Big Three actually solve their problems? No. But it would make sure unions which have held these companies hostage to a failing business model don’t get hurt.Consider this: GM also famously spends over $1,600 per vehicle on the healthcare costs of current and retired U.S. workers while Toyota pays about $200 per vehicle. Although GM also pays about another $1,000 per vehicle...

DETROIT: When Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Automobile Workers union, appears this week at congressional hearings to help make the case for the Detroit automakers getting emergency U.S. government aid, he wants lawmakers to know what he believes is at stake. "It wouldn't be just one company failing here," Gettelfinger said in an interview. "It would be all three going down." He might as well add the UAW. The union's membership at General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler has been nearly halved to 139,000 workers in the past three years, and it continues to shrink with every new plant...

WASHINGTON: As top Detroit auto executives prepared to make their most intense plea for aid to Congress on Tuesday, General Motors also pleaded Monday for a billion-euro credit guarantee from the German government to help its Opel subsidiary. The request, greeted with some skepticism in Germany - Chancellor Angela Merkel promised a reply by Christmas - demonstrated how what had been building as a Washington drama involving efforts to save the venerable Detroit auto industry was fast becoming a story about how the international industry might be transformed by the spreading financial crisis. Governments around the world, from Tokyo to...

A card-check law would give union bosses an unfair advantage in organizing the workplaceTHE ISSUE: A card-check law would give union bosses an unfair advantage in turning workplaces into union shops. Probably no group celebrated the election of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama as president more than organized labor. For decades, labor unions have watched membership rolls dwindle. In 1983, union members made up 20.1 percent of employed wage and salary workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Today, the union membership rate is down to about 12 percent. In Alabama, union membership is even lower, about 9.5 percent. The...

- - Says Taxpayers Demand Real Reforms & Accountability From Washington WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, made the following statement regarding today’s announcement by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid that he will seek Senate passage next week of a $25 billion bailout for the U.S. auto industry. Senator Reid’s support for this latest government bailout comes on the heels of yesterday’s announcement from the Treasury Department that the federal government has a record deficit of $237.2 billion for the first month of the fiscal year. This represents the highest monthly imbalance on record....

JERUSALEM – The enactment of a "single payer" socialist health care system; passing laws to make joining a labor union easier; raising the minimum wage and increasing labor union support – all these are just some of the policies the Community Party USA has mapped out as crucial for Obama to push through during his term of office. Just days after the party's official newspaper lauded the role of labor unions in Obama's election victory, another article in the Communist Party's Political Affairs magazine by leading party member and Rutgers University history professor Norman Markowitz outlined the kind of "change"...