I Married an Auto Worker: A True Story of Life with the UAW
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So, You're Rich, Right?
When I was 29 I married an auto worker.
It's true.
My auto worker and I had three kids together and bought a small three bedroom tract house in a big city in the industrial Midwest. We did own a car. We did eat regular meals and we did pay our bills on time.
We were not rich. No one we knew made $70 an hour or anything close to it.
Maybe our doctor did. I'm not sure. I never asked her.
Not like anyone would believe that we weren't rich, even back then. The year we married it seemed that everyone I met, even people I barely knew, had something to say to me about how lucky I was to have bagged a UAW man and his great...big... hourly wage. Nothing I said to these people would dissuade them from the fantasy that my spouse and I spent our spare time rolling around naked in huge piles of money that littered our home.
I mean, who has time to take it all to the bank, right?
So I don't actually think anyone will believe me now either, but with all the recent press about the Detroit bailout and the legendary $70/hr wages UAW workers are earning up here in MI, I thought I'd give it a shot.
Let me preface my story with this disclaimer:
I know people tend to believe what they want to believe, regardless of whether those beliefs are supported by facts. For lots of folks, I think it's just tradition to blame working class people for their own plight. Rich people always claim to have made their own way with no help from anyone, so if you aren't rich, it must be your own fault. In fact, if you aren't rich, you probably already make more money than you deserve. Never mind that half the stuff that rich people own was made or handled by you and your relatives, you are where you are because you are not as good as they are.
Remember that. Saint Ronald of Reagan said it so it must be true.
Although America is supposedly a classless society (ha!), work done with your own hands has always been considered lesser and even somewhat disreputable. By contrast, anything that requires a three piece suit and is impossible to explain is considered worthy of great respect, even if it involves hiring slaves to eviscerate children and puppies.
Whatever we do, however we do it, it seems we must always blame the middle class for our problems: the very people who make sure our buses run on time and the bread gets to the store and holes get dug for our sewer pipes. Blaming blue collar workers for greed and sloth has become some kind of U.S. religious mantra--although I admit that a certain segment of the religious right enjoys trashing poor people a little bit more.
You know the rant--if there's even one single kid in South Chicago eating Cream of Wheat on the public dime then these intellectual giants think we'd better throw that kid and his welfare mother and any of their relatives that we can lay our hands on into federal prison, where they can then at least repair our roads and make our airline reservations for free and thereby become useful members of society, albeit useful slave members.
We all know people who talk like that and it ain't pretty.
The myth of the $70/hr UAW employee is a lot like that favorite myth of the Cadillac driving, baby makin' welfare mom--In reality, these people are caricatures; political cartoons that illustrate the fears and biases of the people telling the story. But in the feverish imaginations of Americans looking for a suitable scapegoat during hard times (or even good times) these two made-up characters have destroyed the country--even though neither of them truly exists.
Anyway, here's the true story of my union with a real member of The Union:
The first year I was married to my auto worker I made $8900 a year as a magazine editor and volunteer coordinator for our local public television station. My UAW husband made around $14 an hour. That was good money back then for sure, but that first year my UAW husband was laid off about seven months out of twelve. When we filed our taxes at the end of that first year, I actually came out with a slightly higher gross income.
The second year my UAW husband was laid off a little less, and the third year he was working fairly steady--it only took him 18 years of sticking with the plant to get himself far enough up in seniority that he actually worked all year. I on the other hand, having worked my way through college against my parents wishes, had yet to crack five figures in annual wages as a professional writer.
The fourth year my UAW husband and I were married his union had to take major concessions and he lost about $3 an hour in wages and a number of benefits--this after working at the same plant for 19 years. The company also drastically reduced the starting wages of the new hires, who still had to be on the payroll for over a decade to work steady. My UAW husband went into a deep depression at this point that nobody could seem to touch or heal, and our marriage faltered. Life became very stressful.
The fifth year my UAW husband witnessed the death by beheading of not one but two men who had taken a job he'd done on the line for years--putting tires on military vehicles. Production was up, wages were down, and the average temperature inside the plant on a summer afternoon was over 100 degrees. My UAW husband ran for union steward at his plant and lost. Arnold Swartzenegger visited the plant that year and my UAW husband got to be on local TV standing next to the Governator in front of a truck. Yay.
The sixth year my UAW husband's mood problems became so severe that he was flying into rages on a regular basis. That same year I also became seriously ill. We divorced. His fabulous wages and benefits were not sufficient to solve the debilitating emotional and personal problems in both of our daily lives, most of them directly caused by factors specific to our class standing and the rough neighborhoods in which we were raised.
We brought up our own kids together though, the best we could, from separate residences, over the course of the next 20 years. All of our kids are now grown, happily married, and gainfully employed. Two out of three of them have college degrees that they obtained with their own money and through their own hard work, no thanks to Uncle Sam, and certainly no thanks to either of us, as we had no money to send them there. They went anyway, because they are wonderful, strong, smart kids.
Two years before my UAW ex-husband finally qualified for retirement, he was hit broadside while transporting a military vehicle between plants--a job which, at that time, was considered cushy and always went to the guys with the most seniority. After the accident, he spent months in a cast from ankle to hip and became severely depressed again. When the cast was finally removed, he contracted a flesh-eating bacteria in the wound and had to be re-hospitalized. A battle ensued over who was responsible for which parts of his medical bills and he had to sue the company to get the hospital paid off.
My UAW ex-husband is retired now and lives with his second wife. He likes model trains and football. He owns a modest home in the suburbs of a city that now looks a lot like Flint. He's better off than I am, but is he rich?
Not by any standard.
Who Killed Detroit?
Which auto workers make $70 an hour? Answer: No auto workers make $70 an hour. That $70 per hour figure is an artificial number created by taking all the 'legacy' costs associated with retired Detroit auto workers (pensions, health insurance, etc.) and dividing that by the number of active workers. When you cough up a number like that, it makes for great press, even though it doesn't match anyone's personal reality.
The average UAW auto worker of today makes between $15 and $25 per hour, plus health insurance benefits and a 401K matching plan. Pensions are no longer provided for new hires. Like my ex-husband the auto worker, today's auto workers have to work for many years to accrue enough seniority to work steadily without lay-offs.
UAW workers today make about the same money that nonunion workers at U.S. Toyota and Honda plants make. So you may well ask, if the UAW hasn't negotiated $70/hr wages for their rank and file, why is Detroit in so much trouble? The answer is twofold: Bad management and 100 years of providing health care and pensions--items that,foreign auto makers have not had to provide for their workers because their governments provide those benefits, giving the foreign companies a competitive edge.
Bad Management So Detroit CEOs chartered separate private jets to Washington to ask Congress for bailouts and everyone was appalled. But consider this: Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, was making $17,000 per hour when Lehman went bankrupt, and he defended that salary in front of Congress without a trace of shame or regret.
Anthony Mozilo, former CEO of Countrywide and definitely one of the most horrible, corrupt CEOs ever, left with a $110 million severance package just before the subprime lending crisis hit and the economy tanked. So yes, you are reading this right--These guys made millions for ruining their companies and breaking the U.S. economy so badly that now no one knows how to fix it.
Ford CEO Alan Mulally took home $21.67 million last year. In that same fiscal year, Japan's top 32 Toyota excutives, including Toyota CEO Katsuaki Watanabe, took home $12.1 million in salary and $7.8 million in bonuses. In other words, the top 32 executives at Toyota made less than one guy at the top of Ford. GM CEO Rich Waggoner was happy to accept $10.1 million in 2007 as a fair wage for running his company very badly--a single salary nearly equal to the take home pay of the entire upper management division at Toyota in that same year.
The UAW did not design the cars they made, nor did they decide which cars to market and which cars to push. They didn't decide to test a viable electric car and then pull and destroy every single one of them when they turned out to be wildly popular. No, GM management did that: The multi-million dollar dudes at the very top.
Ford & GM both have well-deserved reputations for severe lack of innovation and for reworking the same tired old designs over and over and over again. On the other hand, the Ford Taurus, one of the most successful vehicles (in terms of sales) in history, was pulled from the Ford line up recently. So tired old designs that sell: Those we dump. Tired old designs that hog gas and don't sell: Those we're gonna pump out til we puke. That's Detroit management hard at work, earning those CEO dollars.
What I would like to know is, where is all the outrage about CEO compensation in the U.S., not just in the auto industry, but in the financial industry and in lots of other industries? At the very rock bottom least, can't we demand competence if we are going to pay these guys obscene sums? The bank at which I was a CSR for two years went down due to mismanagement. The CEO responsible for that took home a severance package of $120 million in November of 2007, the same month the bank's stock dropped 80% as a direct result of his bad decisions to buy up subprime lending institutions and expand into Florida, one of the worst housing bubble states in the entire country.
Here's a thought: Instead of paying Anthony Mozilo $110 million to go away, how about if we put him in jail? Oh--I forgot--the jails are already full of poor people who sell drugs to other poor people. No room for Tony I guess.
Still, why do so many working people take pleasure in bashing other working people for making money they aren't even really making? We don't even need rich people to keep us down. We'll keep ourselves down. We'll lash out in a jealous rage over guys who make imaginary fortunes until all of us make minimum wage and no one has health care or retirement funds.
Yeah, that's smart.
Health Care and Pensions Every other civilized, industrialized nation except the U.S. provides for its elderly and has a system of Universal Health Care so that everyone, no matter how poor, can at least have access to basic care.
Here in the U.S., the pharmaceutical and insurance companies have done a great job of convincing the public that if we get Universal Health care and if we don't make our old people into cat food, then we'll all turn into communists and everyone will have to wear grey uniforms and wait eight years for an appendectomy.
The truth is, we pay more for our bad, dystunctional health care system right now than we would if we immediately just expanded Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child in the nation. How can that be? It can be, and is, because of the enormous sums skimmed off the system by HMOs, insurance companies, and drug companies. If we quit funneling the money to those guys, we'd have a lot of money left for actual care.
What many people don't realize is how this puts us at a competitive disadvantage, especially in the auto industry. Because we don't take care of our citizens and expect private industry to do it, and because for-profit health insurance is not really possible to provide in any humane way (that's a separate hub of its own), we have saddled our Big Three with costs that foreign makers simply don't have.
Most corporations have dropped pensions altogether. They started doing this when they realized they could get in some legal trouble for not funding them. Rather than deal with that (because many of them were NOT funding the pensions) they just dropped pensions completely, sometimes even for employees that had been promised pensions when they hired in.
Who Will Buy the Cars? It looks like a bail-out of some kind will happen. Everyone is scared. The number of jobs dependent on a healthy U.S. auto industry is estimated at about 3 million. A loss of 3 million jobs in the coming months could have a catastrophic effect on an economy already in the ICU. But here's the problem: Who can buy a car without a job? Who can buy a car without a loan? Who can buy a car working for $8 an hour half time?
It doesn't matter how much money Detroit gets if the American people don't have any money.
Weirdly, Henry Ford knew this. That's why he paid his workers well from the start: So they could buy the cars they built. Now the guys at the top have all the money and want some more.
How many American cars do you think those guys will buy this year?
Next time you want to bash an auto worker, think on that for awhile.
Although, seriously, I'd love to see Mozilo in a Chevette...
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Comments
This Hub is so heartfelt and gives the honest truth to someone who witnessed and lived specific events of a UAW worker. The hearing panel on Capitol Hill need to read this. Thanks for sharing your story.
nicely written hub
Thank you theomzome, laringo, and lgali! I'm just so tired of hearing it on the news, and Countrywoman said why don't you write a hub about it, so I thought, yes, maybe I will! I don't think the hearing panel on Capitol Hill cares though, I really don't. It doesn't seem like working people matter at all anymore.
Wow, great read. It's an interesting perspective, I do place blame on both sides. Both blame each other of being greedy. It's both of their faults. UAW workers want more money because execs get more money, both parties succeed in running each other out of business.
I don't support a bailout. What about all the small business owners going out of business, who's gonna bail them out?
Pgrundy, I've never met anyone who claimed to be rich. I've also never heard that auto workers are rolling in dough. Honestly, nobody ever told me that. However, anyone who thinks that managment is contributing nothing, and that assembly workers are contributing everything, ought to start his own company, where the management role isn't filled by anyone, and all anybody does is assemble things -- designed and marketed by no one.
Beautiful Hub,
I think this needed to be written, now it just needs to be read. Your absolutely right about the Executive Salaries and the Cost of Health care. I only disagree with you on one point. I don't think Universal Health care removes the cost I think it just transfers it to taxes, I think the same ticks that infest the insurance dog will just crawl over to the government dog. I think the absolute abolishment of insurance of all forms is the only true answer.
They are a parasite industry that spends a lot of money to make sure they collect a hell of a lot more in premiums than they will ever pay out in liability. If you give it over to the Government they will just hire their friends in and suck up tons of tax dollars like every other bloated bureau and agency.
I work with a lot of government types and nothing burns my balls, like listening to them complain about the 70 dollar an hour UAW worker or complain about how their tax dollars are being wasted.
It blows me away in their mind they do not realize they are tax complicators not tax payers, and the lowly auto worker is paying real taxes out of his real puny pay check.
Enough of my soap box I hear you loud and clear and will link this to everything I can think of.
TMG
Hi mdvaldosta and Aya,
I wrote this because the $70/hr figure is on the news a lot lately and it bothers me. I never said managment contributes nothing in a factory situation. I do think current CEO salaries are excessive and exploitive.
Aya, if you live in a rural area and don't watch television you wouldn't hear these things. I come from an urban center in the industrial midwest--the heart of the American auto industry. Just because you personally have never heard of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist--it just means it doesn't exist for you personally.
Thank you for taking the time to comment, both of you. I appreciate it.
Hi MoneyGuy,
Thanks! My partner has the same opinion as you--get rid of the insurance companies. They are parasitic, but in some cases--like homeowner's insurance--it seems like a halfway OK deal. Health Insurance, not so much. Actually, it should be criminal. I have a P & C license--I could tell stories, OMG. But yes, certainly government bureacracy is not tick-free.
It would be great if we could just cut out all these parasitic middlemen and pay doctors directly, in cash. It used to be like that. Or at least close to that.
I grew up like that,
The doctor where I was from made house calls and took a twenty and gave us his drug company samples so we didn't have to go to the pharmacy. His father delivered me and my mother, and he took over his fathers practice.
The down side was later he was convicted of giving Race Horses laciks, but nobody cared since he took really good care of his human patients. That's life in the Nations.
TMG
Wow, I've just learned a whole lot. I don't watch the news much, but reading about the incomes of these CEO's makes me sick.
I just can't seem to focus on the rest, I'll have to re-read it. That really ticks me off. How dare they? Just unbelievable!
OK..... I'm OK now. :-)
Thanks for this article. Lots of great info.
Michelle
Pam-Well, amen, amen. Nothing could have convinced me that the $ made, even if it was 'good money' by the working class in such positions (such as my parents) was ever worth it. I always think of the poem by Philip Levine, "What Work Is," and his narrative story about his brother when reading the poem. Worth it to look it up.
I see all this as moral issues--the human right of people to have adequate health care, housing, education, etc. Yeah, yeah, pull yourself up by your own boot straps, excellent, I applaud the spirit, too. But again, I see our society as having something of a carnival or lottery mentality--'if you work real hard now, real hard, you TOO can be that manager making the big bucks.' Many--most--believe it, when all this is--is a ploy for controlling the masses. In reality, the majority spend their lives working and getting no where.
BTW, haven't we already gone through and processed the idea that other manufacturers in other cultures are BETTER than we are because they manage from the bottom up, recognizing the workers creativity and contributions--those such as the Japanese?
As you have correctly surmised, it isn't the success of the company or the workers that many American CEO's have been concerned with over the laissez faire (sp?, :)) past few years--it is their own greed.
Well done! This article makes us aware that the American people will often focus on one area to lament how screwed up it is. It's like a "crises of the day" mentality. You just need to look around and you will see that there are many "crises" everywhere--cars, banks, real estate, education, to name but a few--and all of them can be attributed to poor management, old-boy networks, greed, blah, blah, blah. In short, the world is in shambles. How long will it take people to wake up? I mean to really wake up? Something has to have it's own little "Katrina" before we pay any attention and then the (soon to be ex) president comes on TV and says what a fabulous job his buddy, Skipper, has done.
Well, anyway, uh...thanks for brightening my day.
Seriously, thanks for the great hub!
Really great hub.
MoneyGuy--I remember house calls too! It seems like another world now, doesn't it? God, things have gotten really screwy.
michellemosely--Sorry to upset you! If you do a Google search, you'll get so mad you'll have to lie down for awhile. And it's mostly happened over the past ten years or so. Thanks W!
Lita--Yes that would make a good hub on its own--how children of the working class react and deal with their parents lives. I've thought of writing that one lots of times and will eventually. Because we do HAVE to deal with it. We have to respond in some way, and there are standard ways--reacting negatively and trying to climb up a class, reacting protectively and going all pinko, reacting aesthetically and going off work altogether, ingesting it whole and turning out exactly the same...It's funny how much class matters in this 'classless' society of ours, isn't it? It's had a major effect on my life and my views, that's for sure. Thanks for your thoughts.
Christoph, I agree. We have the attention span on gnats lately. And most people are so easily manipulated by the media to just hop from crisis to crisis without thinking. Like all this obsessive stock market watching. I mean come on, how much does that really affect the average person? Nada. And yet the DOW drops 400 points and people are all freaked out. They don't even own stock, but it's a big catastrophe. Things are so screwed up right now it will take years just to get them back to FUBAR normal, if it ever happens, ever.
Jim--thanks for stopping by. (o:
Superb hub Pam (as always), and one a lot of people need to read before they make judgments.
I was struck by the similaries in the misperceptions about auto workers and union railroad workers. Facts are, when that good union job ends, and you are no longer a warm bodied worker bee, they could care less about the promises made and agreements made for you.
My husband had to sue the railroad to get the health insurance his 37 years entitled him to and sue them again to get the retirement he was due --when Congress decided to retire everyone with 30 years service over a certain age with no notice.
Still family, friends, and even younger former co-workers still think you are rolling in the dough when you work for the railroad.
Your hub's a good reminder of why you need to look beyond the facts and stats you hear on the nightly news.
Hi Jerilee--I think the similiarities are no accident. There's no small amount of union busting going on right now with all of this, plus some north/south politicking designed to get all the industry for Dixie and screw the Midwest. So a lot is going on under the surface.
That said, the more things change the more they stay the same. I come from South Bend, where Studebaker used to be made. Lots of Polish immigrants settled there and devoted their lives the that plant. When Studebaker pulled out and moved to Canada, that was the end for those guys--most never got the pension money they were promised. Many of the vacant buildings still rot near the center of town, over 40 years after the fact.
We will remember at some point why unions were created. By then I fear it may be too late though. Probably its already too late. Thanks for your comments.
Great hub with lots of insight! I never heard the $70 an hour bit, but it is ridiculous just the same. What galls me is that those lecturing the auto execs are even worse, themselves, namely, member of Congress, who get cradle to grave perks and care, and never have to worry about things like taxes or hard times ever. And they can give themselves a raise. But, that doesn't let CEO's off the hook. I understand that the average American CEO makes 400 times the income of the average worker. i'd love to ask on TV, a CEO if he really believes that you could take 400 workers from a department in his company, and put him in their place, does he think there'd be no difference? Of course, I know this is comparing apples to oranges, but I know, from your Toyota example, that our CEO's are way overpaid.
The best way to remedy this problem would be very tough, but would be the most effective. That would be for all the current workers to quit and those currently unemployed to refuse to even apply at said company. Yes, it would be tough on the workers, both to leave and not go after job offers when one is unemployed, but paople, no matter how much money they are making, will always want more and, I believe most CEO's would eventually bend and say that they would try a new, 'team' approach with the workers and really mean it.
This is the direct method, without government or union intervention which could always be overturned later. Just look at the Edsel as an example. The Ford Edsel is synonymous with the car that can't be sold. Inadvertantly, people voted with their wallets against the edsel. What could Ford do? Nothing except to scrap the Edsel and go back to the drawing board. They couldn't go to the government and have them make people buy the car. They would have been laughed at in the White House and the halls of Congress!
There's nothing like direct, grass roots action! Go to Government, or build an organization like a union, and eventually you get screwed by the middleman!
Again, great hub!
Great article! I wish the newspapers would report this stuff.
I am a GM employee. I'm not UAW, but they are my brothers and sisters!
Feel free to read my "Voices from the Bottom Row"
Thanks for another brilliant and informative hub, Pam. How have we allowed CEO salaries to balloon up to such epic and ridiculous proportions in this country, while working class individuals struggle to make ends meet? It's sickening and I'm glad the house of cards is starting to cave in and make people aware of these issues.
I really appreciated your thoughtful analysis of the impact that universal healthcare could have on increasing the competitiveness of U.S. businesses. I also like how you helped put the monstrous CEO salaries in perspective with your comparison to salaries in Japan. The worst part about it, is that these people are earning insane sums of money, yet it isn't enough for them to do a decent job and protect the interest of stakeholders. It makes me wonder if they do anything at all, besides drooling over their bank accounts and shuffling piles of money around.
I read a great book recently, called To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work, and the author discusses democratically-structured, cooperative business ventures where employees set their salaries and schedules, and are invited to participate in board meetings. In one example, the employees collectively developed a business charter, which stipulated that the ratio between the salaries of the lowest and highest paid employees would not exceed 1:7. Think of how different the auto industry would look if they employed similar principles. Beyond that, imagine how it would feel to be an employee whose ideas and opinions are actually sought-after and valued. I can hardly wrap my mind around it...
So, things are ugly, but when a system becomes this corrupt and unjust, maybe it needs to come tumbling down so we can build something better and more sustainable in its place.
Hi myway720--I kind of came to that conclusion in my personal life when I left the bank. I wrote a hub about it. What pushed me over the edge was Aya Katz who made a comment to me one day when I was pissing and moaning about the bank about how I was supporting their abusive practices by working there. That stung, and at first I thought it was way too harsh--like, Geez, I live in Michigan, where will I work if I leave? But finally I had to admit to myself that it was true--if I put up with it, then I was helping it continue.
But yes, we do have to eat. And it isn't always easy. You can't grow your own food if you live in the city. But something has to change. Thanks for your comment!
Nick--thank your for stopping by and commenting! I will take a look at your hub, thanks for mentioning it. Good luck with your job, and cheers to you for supporting the union. (o:
Melissa--thank your for your thoughtful remarks! I agree that work should be a good thing, not something we have to feel ashamed and angry about. Things have gotten pretty badly out of whack. I think it may be good it's all falling apart.
I do know of factories where the workers have actually bought the factory and are now co-owners. It works very well on a modest or intermediate scale, because the workers have an interest in doing what it right--their pay is based on the company's success! The trouble with CEO salaries right now is they seem to bear no relation to performance, which is insane. The lowliest employee, the farthest down the food chain, has to account for his or her performance regularly, but the CEO is guaranteed millions even if he fails? What is that about?
Honestly, I don't know what will happen next, but I do think some of these men should be in jail, not heading multi-billion dollar corporations. I'm so not impressed with their crap, seriously. Thanks for commenting.
Here's the link to Nick's hub:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Voices-from-the-Bottom-Row
Nick works for GM, not with the UAW, but he works there now, right now, and has a good hub about what it is like.
Great hub as usual Pam. While I never thought UAW guys were rich, there was a time long ago when I thought they don't need to be rich because of all their bennies they get on a need basis. Then I watched those get pissed or negotiated away one by one. My brother lives in ypsilanti, MI and he says things are pretty grim there. Here is his experience with "Detroit" before actually going there, when he was about 19, one of his friends invented some gizmo that would make it substantially easier to make an electric car. The friend was instantly befriended by Detroities who wined him and dined him and told him how rich he'd be when Detroit built that idea, all they need is for him to sign the IP over to them. It'll be $20K upfront, and then royalties from every unit produced, OMG you'll be getting money so fast you'll have to build an extra wing on your house just to roll in it naked and you'd be going to the bank every day just to deposit it. The friend told my brother about this fabulous deal. I hope you didn't sign it, said my brother. But Why said his dazzle eyed young friend. They were so excited about it, this is my big break. Well said my brother, wise beyond his years, they buy ideas like this to stifle competition. Once they own it NO ONE can build it. They will bury it. Of course his friend had already signed the papers. Guess what they buried it. The friend saw the $20K as agreed (chicken feed for them) and that was the end of it.
I'm all for bailing out Detroit but in addition to excising their own adiposity, they need to do a HUGE paradigm shift. Here's the thing: Fossil fuel is finite and it will be depleted within a couple of generations. They need to devote ALL their focus to buildiing transport that doesn't use fossil fuels. We talk about reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but that too will be gone shortly as emerging countries like China and India start guzzling it just like we do.
Hi hot dorkage--there's a movie called "Who Killed The Electric Car" that tells the story of how GM built a viable electric car in the 1990s to 'prove' to the state of CA that no one would buy them and therefore the state's new emissions standards were too harsh. Well, people loved them. So what did GM do? It recalled them all and DESTROYED THEM. True story. Watch it sometime when you feel like getting really really really angry.
The first auto ever made by H. Ford was electric. So they've known how to build these cars for over 100 years. I have very bad feelings about the bailout, but if GM fails, we will be hurt, not the CEOs.
I think the government should seize them and make them build stuff we actually need, then sell the companies when they are viable for a profit, keeping the money to reimburse the taxpayers. But no one is really asking me, As usual. lol! Thanks for your thoughts!
I come from a long line of union workers and supporters. Pure American middle class blue collar union here, a class and collar that depend on employers to honor contract promises. I assure you, no one in my family ever made 70 dollars an hour at these jobs, or the equivalent, at any time.
Unionization is feared by every corporation, because it creates an overhead of administration and a drain on profits. Not to mention the fear corporations have, even today, of the sometimes violent history of the birth of unionization. However, if we had a system in this country to guarantee workers' health and pension benefits, the union issue would be moot. We don't have that, that's why we have unions, and that's another topic.
The media is a huge culprit here, promoting whiners who don't have, and have not worked for, benefits through their companies, as well as elite business owners who don't give a damn about their employees' benefits. Add to all of this the current hard times. This is all a disgrace.
But it's not my hub, it's yours.
Let me just say that you touched a nerve. My family worked hard in politics and in the unions to bring better benefits to workers. An uncle of mine, a president of a local Ford UAW, eventually made his way into the Labor Department to advocate for international commerce and the benefits it would bring to all, long before the idea of *global* was in place. He is retired now, but his connections and networking still advocate for the rights of the worker, to the benefit of all, not just to the benefit of the corporations and their stockholders.
It's a complex issue, and yours is a complex Hub.
As always, Pam, thumbs up.
Pam I don't know where you get the inner strength to keep going, but whatever it is keep taking it? You have a lot of admirers in this vast cyber world.
You probably wonder but believe me I've seen it before, eventually one day the sun will shine again. Good informative Hub keep up the good work.
Thanks for explaining the $70/hr figure. I've seen it a lot lately and never understood before where it came from. I have an uncle, retired from GM, who is losing his health insurance with them as a result of the cutbacks.
Sally's Trove--I knew we had more in common than writing! It will be a fine day when we no longer need labor unions to protect us, but this is not that day. Maybe it will come. You are right--it's a very complex issue especially when you factor in trade policies and benefit packages and profitability, and the adversarial labor/management model may well be obsolete in the age of global commerce. But we don't have a new model yet, and just shoving all the money to the very top is clearly not resulting in good or competitive business practice. Like that (supposed) Chinese proverb, we live in 'interesting times'--a euphemism if ever there was one! I hope when the smoke clears something better emerges. Thanks for your thoughts.
Hi agvulpes--I don't think I really have too much in the way of inner strength--I love to feel sorry for myself (until it gets boring, which is usually pretty fast). I keep going because what else is there to do? Death takes care of itself I think, so, might as well keep going! lol! I appreciate your kind remarks and that you took the time to post them. Thanks!
Hi minnow--that is tough about losing the health insurance. I lost mine in October, but the health care system is such a mess I try to avoid it anyway, if you know what I mean. Good luck to you and thank you for stopping by!
Pam, you and I have a great deal in common. I think we'll get to know more about that commonality through HP as time goes by. Meanwhile, I so admire your openess. I follow what you write for many reasons, among them that you often say what I'm thinking, when what I am thinking is something I am not willing to cough up to the world at large.
Hat's off to you.
Thanks for a great Hub! I was familiar with the general idea and salary range for blue collar work because of my grandfather, a welder with Commonwealth Edison, and the outlook of most of the people in his class. Those wages looked very good compared to the low wages immigrant workers got back in the day when he was young and there wasn't even a minimum wage.
I think it's one of the Big Lies that I've heard all my life that blue collar workers are overpaid. The outrageous CEO salaries boggle me too. That myth runs so deep though, that it's all the fault of the poor and middle class and the rich are deserving of everything they can steal. It's ironic that the people who get the shaft are the ones promoting that idea.
It may make psychological sense though in terms of denial. Accepting the reality that working hard gets you ripped off makes it unendurable to put up with the working conditions in a dysfunctional workplace. Whether these auto factories are dysfunctional workplaces or not, those are bitterly common in other walks of life -- and the same myth structure of "deserving" management who are only deserving because they already have a lot of money, no other qualification, and "lazy" workers who could be rich if they applied themselves supports the consistent bullying in offices and workplaces.
I don't know how much of that goes on in the physical shops where tangible products get made. I do know that bullying and economic blackmail are rampant in white collar work and that it gets justified because those CEOs supposedly get into cutthroat competition and office politics with each other to get those riches.
I've also seen a shift toward regarding "business" as sacred -- all of the high end things like traveling with a better seat get called "business class." Like no one ever would think of saving up all year to get a fancy vacation that's called a fancy vacation and pay a little more per day to have a fancier two-day trip versus a cheap four-day trip on the same money -- something I consider a personal choice. Now it's assumed the majority of people who go first class in anything are business executives and weirdly, even people who don't work for them are expected to defer to them and treat them as important high-status individuals because they've got a lot of money.
I've occasionally met people who tried to impress me with their money and got very nervous when I wasn't impressed. "Why is that relevant to me? What does it tell me about you? Nothing. Why do you expect me to look up to you in some way because you have a lot of money? I'm happy, and not trying to sell you anything. Don't mistake me for a salesman."
I'm looking forward to your Hub on medical care. Your point about pensions and health plans provided by companies is a big relevant one. It shuts out any small company. It's a barrier to self employment. I lived without any health care during my street art years. I couldn't afford it and so just put up with being sick.
Without any health care I wasn't screened for the disabilities that forced me to retire. I might have avoided total retirement if I'd been seeing a good doctor and gotten diagnoses and mobility aids back when they'd do some good. The government spends vast fortunes on so many other things, but a health care system that functioned and wasn't for-profit is the sort of thing that would leave me resenting my taxes a lot less.
Do write your health care hub. I've watched the quality of care decline from the point HMOs were first introduced until now a doctor can't actually do anything. They are too afraid of losing their license or their job to deal with anything that's not standard -- let alone take on a patient with multiple permanent conditions.
I don’t know how you do it Pam but you just keep getting better. You manage to get your anger and attitude into it without letting it affect the quality of the writing. Amazing.
Whenever I see the word “taxes”, I have to smile. No one seems to be at all concerned about the fact that, in reality, over 50% of our taxes go to military spending. I’m not talking about the figures the government publishes. They cook the books with the best of them.
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-milit
So, more than half of all the taxes we pay go to killing men, women and children around the world and to subsidizing companies who make the things we use to do it with. It also pays for their research and development people to come up with better ways to kill more people faster. Death, it seams, is very profitable. That’s a-ok with everyone I guess. Let anyone dare suggest that maybe a little of that money might be better spent trying to provide decent health care for the laborers who actually do the work and you hear screams of entitlement, welfare, handouts and unreasonable labor demands. Pity anyone who suggests that maybe we should spend some of that money making peace instead of war. Unpatriotic! Traitor! Communist! Peace Freak!
They call it a “defense” budget. So, our military is supposed to be adequate to provide us with defense in the event of a direct attack on our country by another sovereign nation. If that was in fact the case, we could probably cut that budget by about 75% and still be way ahead of the game. The u.s. spends as much as the next fifteen countries and almost as much as the rest of the world combined.
There would be ample money to fund health care, renewable energy, look after our infrastructure, which needs to be completely redesigned and rebuilt and a plethora of other issues that desperately need attention.
There’s a small number of people and a couple of groups who actively protest taxation for war and even advise people on how to prevent their tax dollars from going to that cause. Beyond that, I never hear anyone complain about the astronomical amount of our money we permit our government to spend in the cause of conquest, empire building and death.
Well, that’s my little hub attached to your Hub. Sorry for the rant but mass murder for profit just kinda rubs me the wrong way.
Pam- Thanks for writing this hub. I have found my answer "Bad management and 100 years of providing health care and pensions--items that,foreign auto makers have not had to provide for their workers because their governments provide those benefits, giving the foreign companies a competitive edge."
Their is an old Indian story to cut the chase I will tell the moral of the story "If you are rat then the whole world including the cat would be after you but if you are lion then the whole world keeps quiet and looks up to you with awe"
Everybody is after the poor and middle class people because they are vulnerable but their is no one who speaks against the rich/powerful. I saw that Lehman Brothers CEO with a straight face justified his take home salary and also before AIG came to the bail out party the top executives had extravagant stay at a expensive holiday resort in California.
When wages is the result of a workers efforts and a good worker is rewarded and a bad worker is laid off. But for the rich executives they are never punished for mismanagement or bad results. The rich/powerful decide what wages to be paid for the workers but the workers/staff have no say in what the top executives should be paid.
I was seeing in TV a program and it had a theory which said inefficient (since all the time engaged in office politics and power struggle) & dishonest (how to make personal profits) are at the top and efficient & honest people are at the bottom to keep the organization running. This thought really got me thinking could it be true!!!
Pam - We will ALWAYS NEED LABOR UNIONS! I am, proudly, a former union hand and shop steward. I read and studied our contract; every grievance that I filed I won! I have just read and studied the new UAW contract on the internet. And I was shocked! You guys are way behind the pulp and papermakers union! When I started in 1988, I began at $14.35 per hour. When I accepted a salaried position in 1996, I was a step 5 machanic at $35.00 per hour. It took 5 years before I returned to the level of income that I had has union hand. The $70.00 figure that the media and repugs throw around is pure Horseshit!
Keep spreading the truth!
Hi Bohica,
What frosts me is that so many working people begrudge others a living wage. It's a kind of 'lowest common denominator' thinking. So many people around here think nobody should make over $10 an hour without a law or medical degree--but you can't live on that wage. No one thinks it through--who will buy any cars from any maker if no one makes a living wage? Thanks for your comment!
Hi robertsloan2--I've been thinking a lot about the qualities of a good slave and a bad slave lately, and thinking that what we are witnessing is an all-out attempt to create a nation of frightened, good slaves. But it's better to be a bad slave, to be noncompliant, individual, and difficult, to find out who each of us actually is and be that person--not the person corporate America wants, but a real person. I've been thinking how subversive art and literature can be toward that end. Sometimes politics can get very discouraging, but if you can put yourself into your writing or your art it can have a real effect, both on ourselves and others.
Someone left a comment on one of my hubs that used the term 'permanent underclass' and I thought, yeah, that's what we're seeing here--the creation of a permanent underclass. If you can get the slave to internalize his or her own inferiority, your work is 90% done. Compliance from that point on is easy, and you can just get them to turn on each other when they're frustrated. That's how I see this bitching about UAW worker's pay--slaves turning on each other.
I know what you are saying about health care. I have a lot to say about it. I will definitely put it together--I know it won't win any applause, but sometimes you just have to say what you think anyway. Thanks for comments Robert.
CWB--Thank you! I've been feeling worse and worse about paying taxes, but that just started this year. Up until this year I was glad to pay them--I see tax as a responsibility that falls to everyone who wants to live in a civilized society with paved roads and public schools and so forth. But this year I see these enormous sums going to incompetent wealthy CEOs and going to Wall Street and going to Iraq and it just makes me sick. It just makes me think, why am I sending these people money? Why not just find a rich guy and give him my paycheck in person? Why not cut out the governmental middle man?
I'm giving Obama a chance though. I do still like him and believe he's a good guy, but he's been handed the mother of all messes. I don't know that anybody can fix this country at this point.
Countrywoman--That is a great story and a great insight. Rattling the rich and powerful is riskier than turning on the poor and powerless. Kids do a version of this--they give the easy going parent the most crap--because if they give it to the less easy going parent there are consequences! Thanks for that story--it's an excellent one!
PGrundy, you're right. I live in a rural area and don't watch TV. So, I didn't know what the context of this hub was. I take it then that this is about blame -- about whose fault it is that the American auto industry collapsed. And in the context of this pointing of fingers, both autoworkers and executives are being blamed for making too much money?! There's still something I don't understand about this. Since when was making a lot of money bad -- and since when did people start boasting about how little they made? The working conditions you describe sound awful. No doubt the auto industry failed because it was mismanaged. If someone is working someplace where decapitation is an ordinary event, I don't think the right response is to ask for more money. The autoworkers shouldn't have asked for a raise. They should have quit unconditionally. That's the only way to send the message that there are some things you will not tolerate for any amount of money.
Hi Aya,
Believe it or not we actually agree on this. I urged my ex to quit when his wages were cut and he became so severely depressed. At that point in our lives, we could have easily met all of our obligations for housing and food and so forth if we each worked half or 3/4 time jobs that we actually liked. He would not do it. His feeling was that he had devoted his life to this job, and what they were doing was wrong, and it was up to him to stay and fight. But we look at the industry now--Everyone is losing. Customers, workers, taxpayers--the only people not losing are the top tier managers who have made such obscene sums of money for their mismanagement that they are pretty much set for life.
I just think people who work for a living should be accountable and fairly paid. I think the UAW members are both and the CEOs are neither.
"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." A very famous quote attributed to Robber Baron Jay Gould.
The Wealthy have always employed the use of scabs, immigrants and minorities,along with police and militia drawn from the working class. To suppress the other half of the working class.
They have done this many times in the past, and I don't see it changing anytime in the future. I was reading some stuff from the Roman Senator Cicero, and it appears the plight of the working class has changed much.
At least they were honest in those days as Cicero stated anyone that sells his time for a wage is just another slave.
TMG
Hi MoneyGuy,
Anyone who sells his time for a wage is a slave--I mean, OK Cicero, that sounds very profound and all, but not everyone can start his or her own business or learn a skill that is saleable to the degree that it actually supports life on planet Earth. So are these people, the ones who are not clever or smart, destined to be slaves and oh well bad on them, sucks to be a slave? I mean, that's one way of looking at it, and it's an especially comfortable way of looking at it if you are one of the clever ones with money of your own and property and so on, but I don't like it, I don't like the fatalistic tone of the statement. Cicero wasn't a slave, was he? So of course it's in his best interest to make snotty slave statements.
We make the choice to accept this society of a few masters and lots of slaves, and the slaves are actually holding a lot of power, most of the power, but they don't take it out of fear or because of brainwashing or whatever. Honestly, when Enron went down, I thought, why don't these workers just kill their bosses? Lewis Black has a bit about that in his routine--like, why didn't they rise up AND SLAY THEM?
I mean seriously--I'm not saying killing is right, I'm just saying that killing them would have been an appropriate and understandable response. Instead it was just this sour acceptance--Like, "Oh damn these guys stole my whole pension, gosh that's not right. They're so bad. Boo hoo." That is not a sane response in my view. Where is the outrage? Where is the action?
Yeah, we're like trained monkeys at this point. But at least monkeys get fed once they're trained. You've invested X amount in training, better feed the damn monkeys.
These guys aren't even feeding their monkeys anymore. Time for us to fire them.
Fantastic Hub! My dad worked in auto industry (on the line) for years and all he got was a gold watch, and a plaque. He recently retired and opted for a shoddy buyout before they could lay him off (like the other workers around his age).
Wow...interesting turn of the discussion. Just some info. and fodder for more thought--I was, at the end of my grad school career, going to add a secondary teaching endorsement to me degrees, when I ascertained that there was really a glut on the market in my areas to teach college. In the U.S. history of education class, we found out that the first U.S. public schools, complete with bells and short class periods, were really, honestly and truly, training for working class individuals to work in factories.
I don't think it is about 'clever' after all--I think we are taught to be 'good,' and to the detriment of ourselves.
One way of achieving freedom is to take up the ways espoused by Thoureau. If we keep dwelling on getting, spending, and accumulating--that means both the monkeys and their keepers--we are no better than animals such as horses, which if allowed, will literally eat themselves to death. Human beings were not meant for such things--there has to be a higher purpose.
Another interesting thought is in the study of the brain, it has been found that we share all the parts other animals have--it is rather like an onion, so that the reptilian brain is covered over with a mammalian part, and that is covered over with the part of the brain that makes us human. Some have taken the 'human brain's' primary function to be creativity or self expression.
Hi tourmaline2777--I agree that it is not such a great deal, the lifetime at the plant. My partner is 57 and was recently offered a buy out by his employer. With five years to go until his earliest possible retirement date, he chose to drive to another city to try to work out the five years, but who knows if he will make it. He's a truck drive in MI--if Detroit fails, there goes his job too.
The thing is, they don't really feel any obligation to workers, not really. No matter what is promised, once you close in on that retirement date, if they want to renege they can and will. Thank you for commenting.
Lita--I think when we were mostly an agrarian society these issues were nonissues because people could support themselves off the land. Now most people live in cities and it simply isn't practical to declare that it's now every man for himself and wage earning is a sign of character weakness or some such thing. How are people to feed their families? Forage through trash bins? Write poetry about how food isn't all that important? I mean it's a real problem. If wage earners are to be disrespected and worthy of abuse and disdain then we are all in trouble I'd say.
I agree though that people need more than money and jobs. I do anyway. I personally need to feel like I can look myself in the mirror in the morning, and I need to care about what I do and be respected for doing it. The pay is not actually all that important to me as long as I have enough and can do what matters to me and as long as I can see it also matters to others. The problem for me comes in that 1) so many jobs I've had don't pay enough just for basic living which creates resentment, 2) so many jobs available now are not respectable or worth doing--they actually make life worse for everyone.
I earn some money writing and I'm putting movies on shelves for a wage right now. I don't feel bad about doing either of those and the pay is OK I suppose, but already I notice the wage job--the movie stocking gig--is starting to demand a fair amount of off-the-clock unpaid work in addition to the hourly work, and is constantly bugging me at home--this for a 20 hour or less a week job with no benefits. So that kind of thing, it really chaps my ass, you know? And it's just rampant right now.
But yes, art, writing, philosophy--without those things I'd be dead already. What's to live for if all you have to look forward to is a little paycheck and work that doesn't mean anything?
Pamela,
You made my point better than I was able to, I was trying to point out that Cicero was rich and the philosophy of the rich toward the poor has not changed since the days of Rome to the Days of the likes of Jay Gould to our modern days of dick Cheney.
You even further got to what I was trying to imply in the comparison to Rome, their slaves easily outnumbered the masters and were in all the important government and commerce positions, just like it is today.
I know this is hard for some people to wrap their head around, but even most of the management of our government and our companies are still just slaves, just as in Rome. They don't know it, they even have this belief that because they live in nicer quarters they are somehow better than the other slaves, they even believe they are not slaves and for that they are more hopeless than us, but let one of them try to exercise free will and he will quickly find out he is still one of the slaves. Anyway you said it way better than me.
Our society was intentionally changed from one where anyone born could exist and be self sufficient, but it was with very evil a capriciously changed.
As Lita Sorenson has stated it was very much done with the public school system and compulsory attendance. It is crazy, but she is absolutely right. The literacy rate went from somewhere around 98% prior to WWII to 70% in our modern times.
Anyway thank you for saying what I was trying to, as I am an Engineer and writing is my new endeavor that I hope to keep improving.
TMG
Hey--I'm a wage slave, too. I've done almost, I dare say, every kind of work there is, including factory work at one time... And so did the poet Phillip Levine. I haven't escaped that into any fantasy (and neither do most good writers worth their salt!). And we'd be foolish to believe even the so-called upper middle class is anything but wage slaves, too... As to your ideas about how people deal with coming from a working class background--you know, I think I've actually done all you suggested, :).
I'm not advocating we all give up the ghost and go live on Kibbutz farms. I think understanding the value of work and respecting other's rights is part of this higher purpose I'm talking about. Maybe like you, we accept less work--as did Thoureau and what is actually in practice now in many western European countries. So that there is time for other things. A voluntary simplicity movement that isn't so 'ugly American' and about useless baubles and Walmart products and the pursuit of those as a sign of success would be good.
You know what I believe people of a conservative bent fail to realize is that not everybody wants "to succeed," in that old school way of management making the difference, etc. Some of us--maybe many coming from the working class--may have already analyzed all this stuff and decided it is just wrong.
Interestingly, did I tell you that at my last newspaper job, I offered the manager a proposal (five pages, in detail and humble as I knew how to be) that would trim down overhead and cut my wage (but offer me a decent life and some dignity), appealing to all her best instincts? And also for the best of the company? Of course she said no. All about the power, when it come down to it. Then I quit and they used my idea. Ayn Rand, be d*mned (oh, sorry!).
The answer is a something of a revolution, I believe, yes, whether it is peaceful or not--whether we have come to a point in our evolution that this is possible--is the question.
LOL "I am Sparticus!"
Pamela,
I think you will find this an interesting article,
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/index.php/article/
It is very communist, but only a fool turns a blind eye to all available knowledge, I am of the belief that a good Idea is a good Idea regardless of who has it.
As for how to create a revolution I was thinking on this, most successful modern examples of revolution come from eastern Europe in the form of the national strike. I don't think most people in America are ready for such an action even though the only thing they really have to lose is their chains it is just hard to convince a lot of people.
However, I think a lot of people are buried in Consumer Debt, and I believe that is what is truly holding so many back.
So I propose we pick a month in the future, we publicize, blog, get mainstream to pick it up, and convince everyone to do a consumer credit strike.
I think it would be a lot easier to accomplish than a walk out or a sit in, and it would bring the system to it's knees much faster.
Simply demand to have the debt erased for all, it is imaginary money made of imaginary interest and created fees.
No real harm to the wealth of society (Wealth is land plus improvements none of which would be affected), but would liberate so many people from this financial choke chain.
Give me some thoughts?
TMG
Funny, TMG, what you say about land. That's where I've invested. I agree.
Still, I've got this 'good girl' attitude that I've got to pay my debt, though. Cannot seem to shake it. :)
Pam- In recent times I agree about $30 Billion spent to rescue 3 million auto industry jobs seems justified.
Does anybody have a figure as to how many people would be affected if the financial institutions bail outs of $800 Billion didn't happen (now I know lots of people say the entire country of 350 million would be affected which I am not sure is so true as the politicians make it out to be).
I am for paying for honest debt also, but I think you will find that the debt I am referring to isn't honest. I am not religious by any stretch of the imagination, but the crime of the money changers is still alive and well.
Whether you believe the story is real or not, doesn't take away from the lesson. Controlling the money in order to oppress the working faithful masses is immoral, it doesn't matter if it is minted coins or electronic transactions they are stealing from both sides of the transaction, and making people feel like sinners for not being able to keep up.
I was thinking about creating a syndicate of enlightened working class folks to create a company that invests in real estate, I was thinking of using an open end structure like a REIT only with out the termination point. Keep it private placement so only workers can participate and keep it acquiring true wealth until they owned enough of this country to matter and have a voice. But, the masters have made everyone so skeptical and drum their heads full of stories of con men that it would be nearly impossible to get anyone to believe you actually have good intentions.
So, here I am just stirring up a revolt. :-)
TMG
TMG-I'm with you in all you said concerning real estate investments. Yes, they have people just brainwashed about rip offs. Even talk to my fellow newspaper people--supposedly educated and dealing in the information business, and you will find similar attitudes.
And I also understand about the credit on an intellectual basis. The student loan industry, ie, has undergone some changes under the Bush Admin. And yes, they make it a crime, nearly, when you cannot keep up. The protection plans they offer on cards, I've found, are often fraudulent. But I haven't completely broken through all 'the education,' they weaned us on, so that emotionally, I still feel somewhat that I did something wrong... I've also analyzed it that it is simply easier to pay some of that crap than to fight it when they make it so hard to fight.
I posted on Pam's other hub (she's not afraid to get to the grit of things, is she?) concerning a successful real estate broker here in the area who started his businesseven though he had horrendous credit. He did this by continually disputing all the bad marks on his credit report on all three agencies. Rather than tie up their costs in disputing him, they eventually removed all the red marks.... Haha, that would be a revolt.
Hey, we need people who are in a position to think of and execute a revolt.
Pamela,
The gravity of some of your comments just dawned on me. I was thinking about how intelligent you are, and how observant of your surroundings your are. I was thinking of the depth of your perceptions, and to top it off you are highly educated.
Then I was thinking of my yesterday, and this fat Department of Transportation bureaucrat I know was treating this lady in the Kmart like shit, then suddenly it dawned on me she could be you.
So I thought he was a jerk before now I really think he is a jerk. Trust me, we as tax payers are not getting our money's worth with this guy. What's worse he doesn't even think twice about who he abuses, I am sure it never crossed his mind she could be smarter, more useful, and more educated than him on any given day of the week, and she probably had the decency not to tell him either.
TMG
Hi MoneyGuy, Lita & Countrywoman,
Wow, I went to get the dog his heartworm medicine and when I got back you guys had started the revolution without me! lol!
Hey that'll teach me to leave the house!
Seriously, MoneyGuy, I think you are right about unsecured credit. I still can't bring myself to default or see a lawyer about mine though--even though I know these people are just sucking my blood. I think it really is immoral. It's kind of like being raped though--you don't want to tell people, you think in the back of your mind, well maybe I deserved this, or at least, people will blame me and say I deserve it whether I do or not--so you keep it to yourself, and they really count on that shame to keep people on the hook when they are past the point of ever catching up. That's where they want us--right at that sweet spot where we can barely make the payments, which are almost all interest, and never touch the principal, but yet we keep paying because we're ashamed. That's right where I am right now.
The idea of a national strike against credit card issuers is a great one--I'd love to see that. What makes me even angrier than the usurious rates and practices on the issuing of unsecured debt is PayDay loan places, most of which are actually owned by major credit card companies like MBNA and Citi. The interest rate on those short term 'loans' works out to something like 4000% if you extend it out annually, and I know from working at the bank that once a poor person takes even ONE of those Pay Day Loans they are doomed... They will go right in and clean out their bank accounts no matter what the people think they are agreeing to.
I used to to just tell people who borrowed from Pay Day Loan places straight up, Man, you're doomed. They'd be all like, How can I fix this? And I'd tell them, pay them back, close your checking account and never borrow from them again. Use cash and when it's gone, stop spending. They thought I was nuts. But every once in awhile I would sit by a new hire who was still new enough to be shocked and horrified at what really happens in the world of low finance, and that did give me some hope that a few people are still decent and caring.
So yeah, revolution--sign me up! lol!
Lita, I've done about every kind of wage-earning work too--it sounds like we have a lot in common that way. I'm at a point in my life where I just am kind of sick of it, and when I'm upset I withdraw. That's my coping mechanism. So I'm home writing about foot powder and pool cues for word bucks and working at a job as little as possible, not because I think I'm too good to work for wages but because I'm totally burned out and pissed off. I'm 55, and I'm sick of taking crap off people half my age who've memorized a corporate micro-management script and think that makes them 'successful.' It makes them suckers, and the only outlet they ahve is to stick it to you and me even when it makes no sense to do so. Your supervisor couldn't use your idea because it was YOUR idea. Once you were gone, it was HER idea, so then it was a good idea. I've seen that over and over and after awhile it just makes me tired and overwhelmed. I just can't deal with it and I have to withdraw. I'm not that functional anymore, but in some ways I think it's because I'm getting saner...
Countrywoman, that's a good question about the financial industry. I don't know that thei bailout money saved any jobs. Maybe it did, but I doubt it. My sense of it is that it was used to shore up some balance sheets, and it might not have accomplished that either. It sounds like the story is still in progress!
Viva La Revolucion!!!
I am not sure about the auto industry, but I know about the finance industry, all of the money has went to buy stock in the banks.
Yep, that's right once all the ink was dry on the papers giving Paulson the money he reneged on his original plan to buy the bad debt from the banks, something that would have helped a little, and bought stock instead giving the Nation an ownership stake in the banks (Although I am not sure since I believe it is actually the Federal Reserve that owns the Stock, which is actually a private corporation with an official sounding name I will look at that again).
What's worse is it didn't save a single job, as all of them have done massive layoff, in order to consolidate overlapping interest in the wake of buyout mania. So much for honesty in politics. What I thought was cool was how they used the official term, "We have lots of opportunity to reduce redundancy in our operations" (Dude, your getting a pink slip in layman's terms).
I am not sure about the Auto Bailout, as now we know they don't necessarily do with the money as they say, but if they do as they have planned, it will mean a lot of layoff for the auto industry.
The plans I saw submitted to congress called for money to build overseas plants and to modernize plants here, or to build more plants in the South, depending on the company. That means the new plants will have more automation and less workers will be needed, and the new plants will be built in right to work states meaning the Union will be busted.
That's all I know about that.
TMG
Yes I heard on the Lansing NPR station today that whether Detroit gets the money or doesn't, Michigan is basically screwed big time. Jobs will contract severely here even WITH the auto bailout--worse of course if any of the Big Three go bankrupt. Kinda scary.
I am going to toss this at ANYONE who is telling me to "just go work at BMW". Seriously, Pam, I sympathise. Divorce because he had a shitty job? You both deserve better than that, you know? No one should EVER have to be forced into a crummy job like that. This is why I fervently refuse to even come close to Auto manufacturers. I'll stick to my retail day job and musician night job for now, thanks :)
Hi t.keeley!
It turned out for the best though. His new wife shares his point of view and his values a lot more than I ever did. He always thought I was kind of a nut and I always thought he was kind of a redneck lout and we were both kind of right. But when I look at both of our lives honestly, I do think that his life was no bed of roses and whatever money he made he deserved every penny. Pretty much he gave them his life, his whole life and all his energy, and what did they give him? Mental problems, anger management issues, and a messed up leg.
Bad deal I think. You have the right idea! Hang in there!
Poor guy. I wasn't trying to sound like you all should still be an item or anything, just to clarify, but yeah he did seem to have it rough. It's not easy for someone like you either, to put up with it. I hope my wife can manage me for the rest of my life so I don't go crazy. I have aspirations and I expect to make them happen!
I admire you for your aspirations t.keeley, and I'm thinking your wife probably does too. (o:
Divorce sucks, but life goes on... Sometimes it really can be a good thing--although it never feels like that at the time. I doubt it will be anything you will ever have to face, but if you ever do, I know you'll come through it. All the best to you!
My 'rents are divorcing after 24 years of marriage and six kids. Doesn't make sense to me why either. As far as I can tell, my mom is being a pain. Could be she's having an extra marital affair too...
Ouch. That's pretty depressing. I'm sorry that's happening.
I read somewhere once that the most common divorce times are in the first year of marriage, in the seventh year of marriage (the famous 'seven year itch') and at 25 to 30 years after all the kids are grown suddenly the two people start feeling like they want to do all this other stuff now that that's over. Also, it seems some people grow apart. But having been divorced I can't imagine anyone doing it frivolously, especially after 24 years.
Maybe your Mom will change her mind. It's not all that fun to be single when you're old. I've been there.
98% OF AMERICANS SAY 'OH SHIT' BEFORE GOING IN THE DITCH ON A SLIPPERY ROAD.
THE OTHER 2% ARE FROM MICHIGAN
AND THEY SAY, 'HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS!
Hi Pam, I know this is totally off topic, but a friend (formerly from Wisconsin who I met here in Sacramento who now lives in Portland) sent this to me. I IMMEDIATELY thought of you and just had to share it. Hopefully it will bring at least a little smile. MM
Well, Pam, if you hear something on the news long enough, you're bound to believe it. The CEO golden parachutes, private planes and other outrageous benefits only made the UAW $70 per hour myth more believeable. Thanks for the eye opener.
Another great hub, Pam. This bit about the downtrodden accepting their lot and often voicing extreme anti-socialist opinions, and blaming each other, or immigrant groups, or foreign competition - that's where we were in the UK at the turn of last century. Yes, I mean early 1900s. It's hard to understand the extreme fear of co-operative society. We're suposed to be social animals. Not that everything's rosy in the UK of course, but we were bumbling along before importing Reaganomics (Thanks Maggie!) and Globalisation
Mighty Mom thanks for cheering us up with jokes in these times (I am sure we need more of those kind to keep the spirits up).
T.kelley- I am thinking of another possibility is that once parents have kids they have a sense of common purpose but once the kids grow and leave the nest they again feel they have lost the purpose. Their could be something done for them to regain their sense of self worth or common objectives. It is too tough to play out the last years of one's life alone after one gets used to a person for so long.
MM--LOL! That's hilarious. That was me yesterday too--except I didn't have a beer to hand to anyone. Man, I was skidding all over the place. I was really glad to get home.
rockinjoe-- I think there's a lot of politics attached to the auto thing. Part of it is regional with the South trying to get a leg up on new industry and part of it union busting. It appears that we are doomed in any case, no matter what they do or dont do--lol! Thanks for stopping by.
countrywoman--I hope they work it out too. It's so good to have a companion late in life--although, maybe for them it's not so good. But I hope it works out.
Paraglider--One of the great mysteries of American politics is how so many working people are persuaded year after year to vote against their own best interests on the basis of personal and social issues that government has no business even addressing. Over and over again we see them manipulated this way--and the knee jerk negative reaction to 'socialism' makes no sense at all. We'd benefit quite a lot from a little more socialism at this point. Thank you for your comment.
pgrundy, my Dad is a retired UAW employee. He worked in Parma, Oh for GM for many, many years. Im so sick of my parents having to worry about their financial well-being and hearing all the negatives about the auto-workers. Im glad you wrote this piece and I hope a lot of people get to read it who are helping perpetuate the myths. I am proud of my Dad, but he by no means ever rolled in any money, same as your family. He lived comfortably, like other people in America that have some education.
Thanks Pam and CC, read thru your comments and am hoping/praying they remain together.
Fantastic hub Pam, and some great comments from everyone. As Paraglider says, you guys are where we Brits were around a century ago. I hadn't realised how highly paid your top execs are. We're talking quite eye-watering amounts here. No wonder Japan and China are making such great in-roads into America's traditional industries. There is room for success even in Japan and China, but that success doesn't need to be rewarded with salaries that are larger than the Gross National Product of a small nation! I'm sorry, but once you have a certain amount in the bank, and you've got your luxury lifestyle sorted, any excess is just a row of meaningless numbers on a bank statement.
Hi Ardie--I know it's hard to hear all this UAW bashing lately. And it's not even true the stuff they are throwing out there, but like you say, it's nothing new--People have been picking this bone for years. Good luck to your folks, and let's hope people get a little smarter about blue collar work out of all this mess.
t.keeley--Yes, good luck to you and both your folks.
Amanda--I don't understand these insane CEO salaries. They've gone up something like 400% just in the last several years, and these guys aren't even doing a good job. Like you point out, anything past a certain amount of money is just meaningless. Plus, it looks to me like most of them should be fired even if they were at a low salary. They build these guarantees into their contracts of a certain amount of money no matter if the company tanks or succeeds. It's nuts.
Wow! You created a firestorm of responses with this hub! I agree that health care costs are a HUGE reason our companies cannot competitively compete in this global market. And our health care industry is just about DOA. One reason not mentioned are the huge lawsuit settlement amounts given to those that successfully sue hospitals; doctors; nurses and anything else within reach of tacking on to a lawsuit. If these were limited like they do elsewhere, this would be one tremendous help in curbing costs.
Peggy- Legal costs are a huge thing. Maybe they also add up to a certain extent in raising the overall costs. Btw have you checked this hub about stupid lawsuits: http://hubpages.com/hub/Five-Stupid-Lawsuits-You-D
Pam- I just came back to unearth any more reasons and always find thoughtful comments in your hubs. You do have a gift and should consider writing a book who knows it may become the next no.1 best seller.
Hi Peggy,
I was glad to hear Obama come out yesterday and say he wasn't going to put health care refomr on hold because of the economy, not just because we need health care reform, but because it is such a big factor in screw up the economy. And you're so right--frivolous lawsuits don't help. What's scary is how many of them are not frvolous. What a mess! Thank you for your thoughts.
Thanks Countrywoman--I wish I could publish a book but I doubt it would be a best seller! Everybody will be reading Sarah Palin's book. I'm a small fish in a small pond but at least I'm having some fun. I always like to hear your opinions. I don't expect anyone to always agree with me! Thanks for your thoughts. (o:
Pam- Inner substance will always eventually win over 'outer packaging". You can write one chapter a month about the autoworkers life if not anything at least it will be a tribute to all those thousands of hard working people who made America what it is. Just spend 30 minutes a day write a 1/2 pages a day with in a year you should have a book. Also since you know people you can interview people or talk to other folks who matter for more information and historical pictures. Since writing comes so naturally to you and also since this is a topic on which you are passionate about then I am sure the end result would be a good book. Just give it a serious thought.
Wow, you know, that's a great idea. It's true--a year will go by whether I write a page a day or not, so why not at least try it? I would have a book after a year--I never thought of it like that. Thank you countrywoman! You know, I love writing here at Hub Pages, but they started this trial feature that lets us know when our work is stolen and almost all of my highest rated articles have been just flat out stolen and posted as another author's original work somewhere else.
When I saw that my heart sank. It's flattering in a way to have your work stolen, but when it's the best ad-revenue work it's like stealing money, and it's so wrong--they didn't even give me a byline, just stole it and put their own names on it like they wrote it. I thought, wow. If I was publishing in print the publisher would not allow that. They'd copyright the work and sue anyone who stole it. It made me think I am not putting my energy in the right place, as much as I love it here--there's no real protection. Anyone can steal any of it and just say, "I wrote it first, prove I didn't!" It's really sad. It really makes me sad.
But I was already thinking, I should write more for paper media instead of the internet, and then you posted that comment right at the right time. Thank you. I will definitely put some thought into this and I will probably do it. It's a good idea.
Another great hub, pg-- glad you pointed out that auto workers don't actually make $70 per hour and how that figure got arrived at. I'm getting sick of hearing it bandied about LOL. Just came across a fabulous video that explains the union vs. management pension sleight of hand--very funny. Here's the link. Go have a look
Hi robie,
Thanks for the link! It appears that Bush may float the auto industry until January 20 out of the TARP money, though he hasn't announced it for sure yet. It's all getting pretty scary.
What's especially aggravating about Richard Shelby from AL and his cranky friends is that 1) wages are roughly equal for new hire UAW workers and nonunion workers at the foreign-owned U.S. plants, and 2) it isn't wages that's hurting GM, it's bad management and the credit crunch. So seizing on the opportunity to do a little union busting here at the expense of millions of jobs and possibly triggering the next Depression seems really selfish and especially egregious. It isn't even a real issue--they're just using the current situation to do some union busting and keep all the auto manufacturing in the South.
PGrundy;
My career started at the UAW. It was good money for a guy just out of college. Then, I became one of the "suits".
Believe me, it is not just the auto CEOs that are overpaid. All of the auto company mid level managers are so far overpaid it is ridiculous. Wagoner working for $1 will accomplish nothing. Shutting down the company planes will do nothing. Cutting the salaries of thousands of managers to a reasonable level would. It is important that these guys (who do virtually nothing of value) take a big cut, now. If not, I am doubtful if the Big 3 will be competitive.
Another tidbit to toss into the discussion is that Japan dominated our market by dumping cars here. Toyotas and Hondas were thousands cheaper here than Japan for decades. Hmm, I did not realize we could save money by shipping big cars overseas. Oh, and our cars were double in price there vs here. Japan dominated our two largest industries, cars and electronics, by being a smart government.
We will have a hard time getting out of this recession. Typically, we start a war. That is great for the economy. Also, we manufacture our way out. How will we do that now?
I agree that there was nothing wrong with paying workers a fair wage. When did it become so bad for a company to take care of its workers?
Yes, health care and retirement were big parts of the mythical $70 an hour deal. I personally think all Americans should applaud the companies that pay their workers well, not say they were stupid. Who will pay anybody anything if we keep that up?
Thanks for the personal story that is important for us all to consider.
Thank you for sharing your own experience Viral Prospector. I think you are right--we will have a tough time getting out of this recession. Our manufacturing base is gone, so if we start a war, that won't do it--we don't even manufacture our own arms here anymore--that's how nuts it has gotten. (Not all of them anyway.) So another war won't shore up the manufacturing base, because, basicially, there isn't one to shore up anymore.
I agree with you about wages. Instead of getting mad at UAW workers for making a living wage, why not get made at one's own employer for not paying a decent wage. If no one makes a good wage, who is going to buy cars? We're finding out the answer to that question--no one is buying cars.
Trade policies (like NAFTA but that's no the only one) really killed American industry. I know we can't be isolationist anymore, but we can't shoot ourselves in the foot either by making our own industries noncompetitive, then funneling all the money to the bankers by issuing credit at exorbitant rates so people can keep buying. Well, we CAN do that. This is what happens when we do that.
Thanks again VP.
Pam- Glad that you have given the book idea a serious thought. I am looking forward to more positive news on that front. As they say in India a thousand mile journey begins with a step at a time. Glad you took that first step and hope to see you at the finish line.
Thanks CW!
Great hub. This is information that should be printed in every major newspaper throughout the United State! There's no information like Hub information!!!
Thanks for your comment klw5200! I like Hub Pages too. :)
Hi Pam,
Just thought I'd stop by again and see how the comments are going, but also ~I wanted to say that I saw a programme on TV last night about the Honda Clarity. This is the new hydrogen car which is apparently available in Calefornia, but not yet elsewhere in the USA. It's the future of motoring, that much is clear. That's what the car industry needs. Big wage cuts at the top and a healthy dose of relevant, meaningful innovation on the production line. If Ford and GM do not get their act together on this, then things look even bleaker for the years ahead!
Hi Amanda! Yes, hopefully Bush will come out today and say specifically what he's going to do to tide the Big Three over until Obama takes office. After the bailout was shot down in the Senate, he said he'd used TARP money, then took the weekend off, bless his hard little heart. I haven't heard of that hydrogen car--it sounds great though. Personally I'd love a little electric car. For me it would be perfect. I mostly do short runs of under 5 miles and I don't drive fast, so that would be a great car for me. I hope they some. Soon!
Hi Pam,
Here's the link for the honda Clarity. The programme I saw it on is a very reputable one, and they really rate it way above the electric cars. But I'm with you, an electric car would be fine for pottering around locally!
Thanks for the link Amanda! Clearly they HAVE the technology! Let's hope they use it now, finally.
Amanda;
That is a terrific point about hydrogen cars.
The technology is still tough. Hydrogen is tough to obtain (meaning expensive). The hardest atom to break is water. The tool to do that is called an electrolyzer. It can be powered by windmills, but it takes a lot of power. Still, that is clean energy.
An electric car still uses electricity, most of whcih comes from coal currently. The windmills are hard to get, too (also meaning expensive).
The drop in gas prices has put many alternative energy projects on the back burner unfortunately, for the time being.
I understand that CA is building a 'hydrogen only' freeway. That is a great idea. If people want to drive on it, then they have to have a hydrogen fuel car. The current efforts to produce hydrogen come from that initiative by the governator and team.
In my opinion, hydrogen is the real answer. After all, we have plenty of water, huh? Hey we can electrolyze all the melting ice caps - OK bad joke...
Again, great point...
Great hub. I don't think they should bail out the auto industry, but if they do, I think the execs should be fired and replaced by people chosen by the government. Would love to see what someone like Bill Gates would do if he owned one of companies-it's not his expertise, but he'd probably more ept in the position.
Hi Writer Rider,
Good idea. I think they should fire the executives, seize the industry, get them building things we actually need like wind turbines, batteries, and fuel efficient cars, then sell the industry at a profit when the country is back on its feet. I don't blame the workers. Thanks for your thoughts.
You know, CEOs make a lot of money, but they also have (typically) expensive educations and unless they inherited the job because of family, had to either work hard or be very clever to get into those positions.
It actually makes me sick for you people to say the government has any role in helping any industry. That's socialism and it doesn't work. It's not the American way. We don't rely on govnernment to decide what's best for economy or business. Their job is to defend our borders and protect our rights to personal property. If you think otherwise then you need look no farther then what our founding fathers wrote.
Socialism sucks. It doesn't work. It has failed over and over and over again. If Ford wants to come back into the market, let them put together a business plan for a car that will compete and borrow the money to try it again.
No sob stories. If you're an autoworker, I'm sorry that your jobs are leaving, but life sucks.
Welcome to the wild wild West
music4mic,
If you're saying socialism doesn't work you should look no further than Europe where socialism and capitalism live happily and successfully side by side in many countries.
No doubt you have been fortunate enough to have an education, and I surmise that you are either in solid employment or from a background where money is not an issue. Things may not be so black and white in an area which is heavily reliant on the motor industry.
Nobody 'earns' 22 million dollars running a failing company. Get real.
Thank you Amanda for pointing out that socialism actually works very well in many places in the world.
HOHO,This Hub is so heartfelt and gives the honest truth to someone who witnessed and lived specific events of a UAW worker. The hearing panel on Capitol Hill need to read this. GOOD!!
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Your hub is an eye -opener. Yes, our so called leaders should read this.
I remembered my husband told me how his dad worked his ass off in an american auto industry. His dad did not like how they managed the company so he moved out and made his own shop. He did well without the company. Oh well he had to do that because he had to raise 5 kids.
Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you fanji and hibiscus_mel. I appreciate your comments!
you really want the government, who can't seem to get anything else right deciding what businesses are important and which aren't? I think it's you that you "get real."
And by the way, European governments are struggling to pay their expensive medical bills.
music-No, I'd prefer a more sane govt. that supports regulatory policies for business rather than a boy's club that sees to it their buds are all getting wealthy and can retire well after Bush's 8 year, uh, term.
Why should working class Americans have to pay for this crap?
I'd like to hear from Euros. who are experiencing first hand about governmental medical bills.
Actually we spend more for our current inefficient overpriced medical system than we would if we shifted to universal care tomorrow. We spend a LOT of money to make sure that only certain people get the care they need and not others--and also to make sure the drug companies and insurance companies get a healthy cut of the profits. Without reform the whole system will collapse within the year--I don't have to convince you and I won't try, just wait and watch what happens. Both of the hospitals here are nearly bankrupt already.
I disagree with your opinions, but your ideas don't "make me sick."
Maybe you should see a doctor. I take it you have insurance. And money.
I hope you have lots of money. If you're sick, you'll definitely need lots of money, insured or not.
Music4mic,
I live in the UK where we have universal healthcare paid for out of National Insurance deductions which are collected along with our regular taxes. I've never heard mention of our goverment struggling to pay for the NHS, nor have I heard any similar story about our European neighbours. I wonder where you are getting this information?
We are, however, having financial problems in the UK as a direct result of over exposure to the American banking sector.
Great hub! People forget their history. When we got into WW2 we needed fast ways to come up to speed with weapons. Only the auto industry had this infrastructure in place. I don't think they could do it again with the condition they are in now but investment needs to be made as well as oversight to make them healthy again.
They have great insurance in Europe. Went to Germany for a few months and got the works, though I had American insurance. Great doctors to. We Americans are a very intelligent, creative group of people who could make universal healthcare work.
Pgrundy,
This paragraph says it all:
The myth of the $70/hr UAW employee is a lot like that favorite myth of the Cadillac driving, baby makin' welfare mom--In reality, these people are caricatures; political cartoons that illustrate the fears and biases of the people telling the story. But in the feverish imaginations of Americans looking for a suitable scapegoat during hard times (or even good times) these two made-up characters have destroyed the country--even though neither of them truly exists.
$70/hr? You and I both wish we make or could make that an hour.
Thanks for the insight.
Many Blessings and have a HAPPY HANUKWANZMAS!
Hi zstephaniez! Happy Hanukwanzmas to you too! I sure do wish I made $70 an hour! Something tells me I'm not going to see that in this lifetime, but money isn't everything after all, is it? Thanks for your thoughts!
I grew up like that,
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Thanks pgrundy your hub reminds me to work more hard and together with smart although your UAW husband earn USD14 per hour it still great how about people outside there, to have a breakfast is like a dream come true so I think we was very lucky
Hi ahmadnaim--You're right, lots of people don't have enough money to eat at all. When you look at it like that, he was lucky. Thank you for your comment.
Well, they got their initial 17 bill from Bush. I know how much of a personal issue this is to you Pam, but I'm scared to death as I see industry in the northeast crumble (and factories close) all around the northeast.
Who's going to buy these cars?
Yes, the auto makers did get their loans. I noticed that concurrently Toyota and Honda are asking the Japanese government to manipulate the yen again. I hope everyone watches that one closely. If you see the yen drop vs the dollar, you can really look out. Many still feel that the yen is artificially subsidized by the Japanese government, despite it being slightly better than before.
That simply means that Japanese car companies will be dumping cars over here again. Also, no American cars can be sold there again, not that many are sold there anyway. Japanese see the big picture of autos (and electronics, our two biggest markets).
Whether or not we like it, we now own a piece of GM and Chrysler (until the loans are repaid). We need to carefully watch our investment and see that we are repaid. Artificially cheap Japanese cars will of course doom the Big 3. We will not see much savings by the way. Toyota and Honda will pocket most of it.
Yes, it is a little more complicated than this, but we should be vigilant of this, now more than ever. We are in an even bigger mess than we are already in if the Big 3 go down.
Hi RJ & VP,
This $17K is just to tide them over so they don't go belly up on Bush's watch--but you are right, who is going to buy these cars? Every day more massive lays offs are announced, and credit is still frozen. I don't think we can sustain the same kind of society we had before this financial crisis--Everyone is talking as if we just need to substitute electric cars or hydrogen cars for gasoline powered cars, but what we need is a radically different world with a radically different infrastructure. Lots of big box stores are going belly up, a third of the stores in the mall here are going belly up, suburbs are full of vacant minimansions--cheap money and the age of driving all over hell for a quart of milk, that's finished. I don't think very many people 'get' that yet, but they will eventually.
I'm glad they made the loans. But I think you're right, the long term prospects look really scary. Thanks for both of your thoughts.
Pgrundy,thanks for the excellent hub and setting the record straight. My father-in-law retired from Nummi (formerly General Motors) and he has a modest retirement. He worked very very hard all his life at the plant. My husband also worked there for several years but was let go when Nummi came in. He also worked very very hard in the plant. These guys are under alot of stress and are not paid that great for what they have to deal with on a daily basis. I think they are underappreciated for what they do and how hard they work.
Just my 2 cents....and thanks again for writing on this.
Hi Dorsi--I agree that auto workers (and factory workers in general) are underappreciated and made the object of scorn for reasons that have more to do with the frustrations of the people who scorn them. Why not push for everyone to be fairly paid for their labor instead of dragging down the few who are? And as you point out, the work is hard--The pay is not that great when you realize the nature of the worl. Now they're looking for ways to cut the benefits of the retirees who spent their lives at that job. I think it's wrong.
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Great writing. There never seems to be any appreciation for the little guys that keeps the wheels turning. I so agree with you. I never heard of auto workers making 70/hr, but then again I do not live in your area either, where that type of topic comes up. I must admit, I am not big on watching the news, because it seems to be one depressing thing after another. I figure if it is something big and I need to know it, one of my news hound friends or family members will let me know. I do know, that the rich just keep getting richer and the poor just get poorer. It is harder and harder for the "average Joe" to get by without sinking into debt. It seems that there is a whole lot of talk about caring for the little guys...but it is just talk. A way to look good in front of the cameras.
"...the rich just keep getting richer and the poor just get poorer. It is harder and harder for the "average Joe" to get by without sinking into debt."
Wow, amen to that. And I think you're right about the news too. So much of it is just blah, blah, blather... It leaves me depressed if I watch too much of it. Thanks for your thoughts on this. I hope it gets better soon, but I don't think it will. I think we're in for five or six years of tough times, maybe more.
and let me be the who wants to be one of those
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Nice job. Very true about the phony $70/hour figure. Wages are going down in the auto companies for a declining number of workers, but the $70/hour figure keeps going up due to the cost of pensions and health benefits for retirees being divided among a smaller number of active workers.
Birmingham, Michigan 48009
December 18, 2008
Editor
New York Times
The recent scandalous revelations about Wall Street bonuses reveal serious flaws in the conventional wisdom about compensation. Wall Street and many corporations provide wildly excessive rewards for myopic, managers who take reckless risks with other peoples’ money (O.P.M., Soc It Tuum as HBS Professor Pearson Hunt used to say) and sometimes cook the books and backdate their options. This reward system is based on a simplistic theory of human motivation handed us by traditional economics. Behavioral scientists tell us that motivation is much more complex than the economists and business school professors would have it, and they question the necessity and usefulness of attempts to tie compensation closely to performance on practical and theoretical grounds.
Sincerely,
Ralph Deeds
Here's another recent letter to the editor (neither was published)
Editor
Detroit Free Press
Professor Morici's biased, one-sided diatribe against the auto companies and the UAW is about what one would expect from one of the architects of the U.S. failed free trade policy that contributed in great measure to the current dire situation. American consumers have benefited from cheap imports, but the high costs have visited on auto workers and residents of Michigan and throughout the midwest. Morici and other free trade negotiators have been quick to pursue intellectual property protection for U.S. companies, but when labor and environmental considerations are mentioned they react as if someone was trying to pour sand into their Rolexes. Mr. Morici should explain why he and his trade negotiators supported an open U.S. auto market while allowing the Japanese, Korean and other markets to remain closed to American exports. He should also be held accountable for his recent innacurate statements on network TV that U.S. auto workers are making $75 an hour. His polemics against the UAW and auto company managers are not becoming for a university professor, nor are they helpful in reaching a fair and practical solution.
Ralph Deeds
Super Hub! Such truth speaking seems rarely heard these days. I too marvel at how Americans keep bashing workers and the middle class while the deck is increasingly stacked against them. Our institutions seem to be at war with us. My particular pet peeve is credit card companies, bankruptcy legislation and how anti-usury laws have been iviscerated by corporate interests.
Hi Ralph & barranca,
It does feel like our institutions are at war with us. I'm especially concerned about labor issues right now. Without a healthy and decently paid work force we can't have a healthy economy. It's really that simple. If this year hasn't proven that supply side economics is a pipe dream maybe next year will. I just hope it isn't too late by the time we all wake up.
"People will believe what they want to believe, don't bother them with facts." Rita Mae Brown wrote in of her earlier works. One of the truest quotes I ever found in a book!
This hub made me a bit misty eyed, the personal angle is really touching. I've been a while here reading all the follow-ups, too, you seem to have a knack for opening Pandora's box with your hubs :-)
I'm not as outraged at the CEO salaries as I am at incompetence being rewarded. I'd prefer that the CEO salaries and everyone else's, really, where more aligned with the value add they bring to their companies, and that's not so impossible as it sounds, you provided Toyota as a closer-to-fairness deal.
On the bailout, I recently commented on ColdWarBaby's hub about capitalism, I am not a real fan of "helping" this greed travesty get itself sorted out, but I get sick to my stomach thinking of the consequences for all the innocents if some kind of help isn't provided. At the end of the day, these CEOs and their golden parachutes won't have a problem to make ends meet, but what of the rest of us regular citizens? It's like you say, the bailout may be a kind of reward for the economic monstrosities that have been committed, but if help doesn’t come in some shape or form, then who can buy cars or anything else without a job? My instinct would be to leave it all to go to hell, but that means sending to hell a lot of families that really didn't have their hands on the cookie jar.
You touch on some governments providing benefits for their citizens –one just needs to be a citizen (a human being, really, in Spain immigrants get the same primary healthcare and education rights as a native/citizen) to be "provided for" in their basic needs, mostly health, education & pension as you write. That is an equitable system that has been going on for years in most European countries and which seems to be seen as "people sucking up on welfare", which you also write about in this hub, in the USA. Well, I for one, am glad that my taxes go to paved roads and education and hospitals and, really, to live in a more equally distributed world –as opposed to sending half of them taxes marching out to war.
Right, off my soapbox now! I ought to do my own hub if I really need this much space for a comment! Laugh! Great read, thanks as always!
Hi Elena--We are on the same page with everything you said here. I don't begrudge CEOs a good salary--I mean, I wouldn't want the responsiblity of being a CEO--but right now it is out of all proportion to the actual work and talent involved, and it isn't even tied to performance, which is maddening. The sale of the bank I worked for was final Jan 1, and the top 6 executives including the CEO will receive $49 million in severance, all of it to come out of TARP money. Incredible. The bank fails and they get a $49 million reward out of taxpayer money. The people at the bottom---not so much. Three months of unemployment if they are lucky.
I agree about socialized medicine and pension and so forth. I don't understand the American harshness about these things. People here are very judgmental and tend to follow and ideology and pitch their common sense. I think it's quite harsh. Thanks for you comments.
You've done a wonderful job here! So much information! I never did believe auto workers were any higher on the food chain than my two uncles who worked for the railroad. Their families lived "comfortably", but only because the wives worked too.
We *must* eliminate Big Pharma and the for-profit companies that steal billions each year under the guise of providing medical "benefits" before this country goes completely under! Universal health *care* for all citizens is NOT socialism any more than funding local fire and police departments through taxes.
Amen JamaGenee! The health care system here is really bad right now. I think it's not even correct to call it "care" anymore. It's more like that health don't care system! Thank you for your thoughts.
Like one of the posters above, I live in the UK, and we have the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS isn't perfect - well, what in life is? But in general, it's a Good Thing. Health care is free at the point of delivery, and paid for out of general taxation.
As I understand it, health is overall better in Europe than America (infant mortality is lower, life expectancy higher) but a smaller percentage of our GDP is spent on health care.
I'm all in favour of the NHS.
nicely written hub
Hi Londongirl,
It's true--We actually pay more, much more, for our dysfunctional private health care system with its limited availability and unaffordable options even for those who have access, and the end result is poorer health. I hope Obama sticks to his plan for reform, but I do think national health care would be even better. I'l be surprised to see either anytime soon. I really do think they'll let the system melt down first just because so many other problems need attention immediately. Thank you for your comments.
Excellent!
Thanks Marie!
OMG! Thank You so much for writing this hub. It is great. Finally someone spoke the truth about the UAW and this whole financial crises we're in. I can't believe no one pays attention to the CEOs in this country either. I worked for Ford Motor Company for 9yrs, was a UAW member, and recently took the buy out. My parents were in the UAW also so I am definitely in the know. People really do have so much misinformation.
The big problem people have with the pay UAW members recieve is that in some cases they make more than someone who has spent a lot of time in college. The funny thing is the people that complain are the people who don't want the UAW job. Why complain?
I think we should have universal health care also.
I am in favor of the bail out. Anyone who is not really doesn't understand the impact the collapse of the automotive industry would have on our economy. You think we have problems now...yeah, let that happen. The very one's not in favor would be the main ones crying. Plus... Why would you let one of the last industries to manufacture anything in the states to collapse? That's CRAZY. doesn't anyone remember what made this country???? Talk about being "UNPATRIOTIC"
Hi Lydia Rose--Thank you for validating my feelings on this. I think you are right--we need a U.S. auto industry and blaming on the UAW for the crisis is just nuts. Good luck to you. Let's hope this gets b etter soon.
jossmasher--thank you for commening.
Great Hub Pam, and right on. I know a few UAWs and they sure don't make anywhere near $70.00 an hour. Sure, they do well with their wage and benefits, but $70.00 an hour, what a joke. I also look at it like this; even if they were to get that amount, nobody should complain because the fact is we all persue jobs where we can make as much as we can. And another thing, I would like to see the complainers go work in these sweat shops every day for ten and twelve hours. Bottom line here is that when the market can sustain high wages, we receive higher wages. When the market shifts (Recession) the wages follow. I don't know, maybe the next big news story will be how our baby sitters are stealing food from our babies mouths because of their ungodly, outrageous, wages.
Hi sinnnersystems, Thanks for your thoughts. Sadly lots of those jobs will be lost now even with the bailout loans. Maybe the Big Three can get volunteers to build cars. That might make Washington happy.
Not living in the US, I had not heard about the mythical $70ph for car workers. Typical spin from auto owners, especially when times are tough. I would like someone to write a hub about how tough the lives of auto owners have become. Hmmmm.
Great hub pg as usual - real insight into ordinary people's lives.
Thank you for commenting pdjscott. We're losing 500,000 jobs a month now here in the U.S., so if that continues, ALL of our lives are going to get a lot tougher.
Hi,
I stole one of your pics (executive pay) for a hub I did about the Industrial Workers of the World union (A.K.A. Wobblies). I just wanted to tell you as a courtesy.
I don't remember if I commented the first time read this, but it is very well done and informative. I enjoyed reading actual facts rather than inflated propaganda.
thnx,
Kelly
Thank you Kelly. Good luck on the hub. It sounds interesting. I'll stop by and read it.
great hubs are those that make the pain more bearable! good job pgrundy!
Thank you for reading it baban78!
theomzone says:
11 months ago
Thank you for your valuable personal insight. I think the $70 an hour figure being tossed around is so ridiculous no one really believes that - except of course the people, who really, really want to.
Blessings on your holidays.