GM/Ford Bailout Deal is Union Busting Disguised as Corporate Welfare

by Scott Creighton

**UPDATE*** read:   The Auto Industry Bailout is NOT A Red VS Blue Divide. It’s Worse Than That

Perhaps it is just bad timing, or perhaps it foreshadows even more union busting to come, but just as the new Obama/Clintonista regime is taking shape, there is a new PR campaign underway to eviscerate one of the strongest labor unions in the U.S. And unfortunately it looks like they are going to win the approval of our “progressive” left simply because Obama is part of the sales team.

The endgame of the War on the Middle Class is being played out even before Clinton’s NAFTA team sets foot in the White House as they are covertly targeting the United Auto Workers of America. And unfortunately for our union brothers, they are up against the combined power of the Bush administration, the incoming Obama administration, the congressional DLC and New Democrat Council, “Blue Dog” democrats, and the corporate media at large (not to mention the “all-Obama-all-the-time” minions of the “progressive” left).

Yet another example of how our government (both “viable” parties) and their accomplices in the corporate Mainstream media are deliberately working against the best interests of the American people.

There is a 25 billion dollar auto industry bailout plan right now being pushed by congressional DLC type leaders and the Obama transition team. This money is supposedly going to be part of the original Paulson TARP 700 billion dollar plan, but that is still up for “negotiation”.  I would bet my bottom dollar that it ends up coming from somewhere else. The corrupt bankers want their payday too.

Though the plan has not yet been released, some details have been leaking out from Nancy Pelosi and others, including President-Elect Obama himself, who’s 60 Minutes interview/Infomercial on the subject will be aired later today.

By leaking the plan details, the congressional democrats are working the media angle to make it appear they are “standing up” to the Bush administration.

In fact, this is just part of their bi-partisan sales-pitch of a plan that will ultimately crush the UAW and put our auto-workers on par with those in Ford’s and GM’s plants located in third-world nations.

Opposing the democrat’s efforts, in order to give the Pelosi/Obama plan the appearance of being “for the people”, is the Bush White House. President Bush is playing the role of spoiler here, pretending to be against the bailout (since when has Bush EVER been against ANYTHING that benefits big business by handing over taxpayer dollars to them without real conditions?) until certain stipulations are met. They are apparently going to demand that cars are built with higher MPG standards and set limits on CEO compensation.

But like the Paulson Bailout Bill, we have heard all of this before, and yet the financial CEO’s are just handing out our cash like it was Christmas. The restrictions are a joke. The legal wording of the TARP was deliberately constructed with loop-holes so that these outrageous compensation packages could still be dished out. The same thing will happen with this plan. Bet on it.

Of course GM and Ford are going to design and build cars with better MPG estimates. That is what the market demands right now. But they won’t be in the 50mpg range, and they won’t stop making the big gas guzzlers, their friends at Exxon wouldn’t like that very much. But it is obvious that better gas mileage is a huge selling point right now all across the world, and so it would be stupid of them to ignore that.

So what does that leave in the “negotiation” process?

“So my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all of the stakeholders coming together with a plan – what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like?”  Barack Obama.

What does a sustainable auto industry “look like”? That’s a good question.

I know exactly what that “sustainable auto industry” looks like and so do they because its model already exists at Ford’s Camacari Assembly Plant in rural Brazil.

(The following link will take you to a recent PR “news” story that attempts to sell this process of production to the American people. You can expect to see clips of this video all over the MSM in the next week or so and possibly even tonight on the 60 Minutes piece. You will want to go view this video. It lays it out quite clearly.)

The Camacari Plant is billed as Ford’s most advanced plant and it is certainly one of its most profitable. Located near a sea-port that is also owned by Ford (takes care of the dock-workers union), this plant is capable of assembling 5 different models, all on the same production line. They also have inside the plant, and designed along with the layout of the assembly line, are the manufacturing of various parts of the vehicles or the “suppliers” that Obama is talking about in his quote. The “suppliers” fabricate their products right beside the auto-workers, thus eliminating shipping and handling of those parts (Teamsters).

This plant began operations in 2001 and has been a developing efficiency model ever since. Like the Chili “experiment” was for the Milton Free-Market savage capitalism plan in 1973, Camacari is an operating design experiment for undercutting the living wage of the workers. A place where Ford was able to tweak and mold the auto-plant of the next generation in order to minimize expense and maximize profit. And much of that profit comes from undercutting the workers themselves.

It is important to note the year the plant. Ford went down there, outsourcing yet another major plant when American workers were losing their jobs, during the “pro-free-trade” pro-globalization Clinton administration. Ford was probably given massive tax incentives to do it as well.

So here is the deal, boys and girls. Ford wants to open a new plant in the US in the profitable Camacari mold. Were they to do this with the economy being what it is, they will get a lot of positive free press from the MSM. But what the media won’t tell you is that the plant itself is designed to undercut several different trade unions, and reduce the quality of life for the workers there.

Now here is the brilliance of it; Ford will get the U.S. taxpayer to pay for the construction of their plant (like they did under the Clinton administration) AND they will get congress to hobble the United Auto Workers Union at the same time. And the whole thing will be blessed by the new Obama administration, so therefore it will be touted by the populist “progressives” as a wonderful thing because they just can’t get enough of “all things Obama”.

This is the ultimate goal of “progressives” like Pelosi (and the Clintonistas that Obama is stuffing his cabinet with) when they say things like:

“A restructured, competitive American automobile industry will continue to play a crucial role in our national economy and in the global marketplace,” Nancy Pelosi.

The “global market place” means we get paid too much for Ford to keep its profit margins as high as they want. It’s just that simple. Ford isn’t in trouble because of the UAW or because of the Teamsters or because of the Dock Workers. Ford is in trouble because they struck a deal with the oil companies to keep producing gas guzzlers even when it became clear we didn’t want them.

If you are like my father, you will probably support this deal. There are many reasons the MSm and the Obama administration will cite that you should. But in the end, what are we talking about?

We are talking about the taxpayers paying for the building of a plant that will be owned by a private company and forcing workers there to settle for less.

All because the economy is in the toilet, because of their efforts to make the US “more competitive on the global market”.

The democratic leadership knows this, the Obama team knows this, the White House knows this, they all know it and they are all counting on the fact that you will, once again, lend your blind-faith, unwavering support to anything Obama signs off on.

You have to know better people. This is a War on the Middle Class and they are targeting one of our strongest unions and using one of our heroes and our money to do it. Don’t let it stand. Don’t let them tie labor union concessions into this deal. Stand with the UAW. Stand with the Teamsters. We have to take a stand. We must not let them turn the Midwest into a third-world nation, all in the name of corporate profits and investor dividends.

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