Pelosi Backs Special Session on Auto-Industry Aid (payback to the unions)

WSJ ^ | 111108 | GREG HITT

[Amendment10]

Didn't Chrysler, under Lee Iococca, get a loan from the feds, not aid? And if Speaker Pelosi really means a loan to the auto industry, arguably more constitutionally justifiable in my opinion, or should I say less constitutionally unjustifiable, then why doesn't she say loan instead of ambiguous aid?

[Toddsterpatriot]

The new hires get $14.00 per hour and no benefits.

How much do the guys in the job bank get per hour?

[JasonC]

The average cost of a UAW worker is $146,000 a year. $80,000 in pay, $52,000 of it base pay and $28,000 in special increases for this that and the other, average, plus $66,000 in benefits, mostly super generous cash-payment pensions and just decent health care.

2-3 times the national averages.

If they cut wages to national average figures, the auto companies would be the most profitable big companies in America.

The unions sucked them dry & wrecked them - cut them in half, drove the remainder to bankruptcy - and now they want more.

[JasonC]

GM debt is trading in the secondary market right now for 25 cents on the dollar, yielding 40%. No takers.

[JasonC]

You are *paying* people who already rob you for $146,000 a year, just to *go away* and *not* work for you. Do you realize how *insane* that is? Do you have any clue? Now you want to ask the rest of us, people making half to a third as much, to pay them *more*, when demand for your products just fell 40% in six months?

Walk off a bridge...

[edge10]

“Let them die!”

No bailout, until after restructuring of deals with unions.

[Amendment10]

GM debt is trading in the secondary market right now for 25 cents on the dollar, yielding 40%. No takers.

Are you saying that GM would amount to a subprime loan?

Now where have I heard about problems with subprime loans?

[sickoflibs]

RE ‘This auto deal is probably already a done deal.’

You have reason to be bitter and expect the worst but the election with house republicans being tricked into the financial bailout losing seats tells me that democrats will have to go it alone this time. I would guess republicans are deeply bitter at democats, Bush and McCain, like WE have been for a while. I am saying we may have a smaller party but more principled, how much?? Time will tell.

[bronxboy]

If GM goes under - perhaps. The bridge loan does not require the government to cover pension or anything like that. GM merely wants a chance to survive the credit meltdown which those who have already been bailed out caused-in between taking their expensive trips and shafting their stock holders of course.

[JasonC]

If the government wanted to be business-like about saving GM and Ford, it would bid 30 cents on the dollar for their debts and own them outright, since they will default absent immediate assistance. Then it would tell the UAW it is taking a whopping 50% paycut, no discussion, no buyouts, no shakedowns. Then it would announce a public offering of new shares for half their new capital, keeping the other half itself for now in the form of 5% senior debt. A nominal rate meant to make them as competitive as possible, which, along with UAW paycuts, would float the common.

The treasury would turn a profit, bondholders would get hurt but no more than they already think they are, existing stockholders would be wiped out but the anyone brave enough to be a new one would be richly rewarded in the long run for helping save the American auto industry, and the UAW would only give up pipe dreams, while they'd all keep decent jobs paying a fair rather than an obscene wage.

I did say, if they were business-like. Expect them instead to just give $100 billion to the industry, which will just give it to the existing UAW vampires and let the companies die two years from now anyway.

[VeniVidiVici]

Right. They’ll dump the healthcare on the government later on. I honestly don’t believe the union ever intended to manage it.

[bronxboy]

Perhaps, however I promise you that if millions of people are thrown out of work with no health care and no real job prospects, we will have it much sooner. Large Job losses will lead to socialism. It’s ironic that trade policies favored by mostly conservatives(Dems are wish washy on trade)have lead to massive job losses in the Mid West and more to .This will certainly usher in a new era of socialism.

[Fresh Wind]

Maybe you should multiply the wage and benefit packages of the rank and file worker by the number of workers, and then multiply the salary and benefit packages of CEO’s by the number of CEO’s, and then look for problems.