Battle heats up between UAW and Republicans

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit Free Press

Battle heats up between UAW and Republicans
BY JUSTIN HYDE AND BRENT SNAVELY • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITERS • DECEMBER 14, 2008


The conflict between the UAW and Republican congressional leaders continued escalating today, with each side pointing fingers at the other about who was to blame for the failure of a rescue plan for the Detroit Three.

While the White House continued working toward a rescue plan, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told “Fox News Sunday” that “the bill would have passed with 90 votes” had the UAW “just agreed to be competitive by the year 2009.”

Corker said that he had talked to the White House about a deal he had reached with the UAW. That plan would have required a two-thirds cut in the debt of each automaker, forced the UAW to take stock for payments to its health-care trust for retirees, and required the UAW to accept pay equal to what foreign automakers offer their U.S. factory workers sometime next year. The UAW rejected Corker’s proposals for pay cuts, and Senate Republicans blocked the compromise plan worked out between the White House and congressional Democrats.

Corker also accused UAW President Ron Gettelfinger of rejecting the proposals by Senate Republicans because “he knew the White House would bail them out.”
However, Gettelfinger dismissed that notion on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” accusing Corker of “stretching the truth.”

Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20081214/BUSINESS01/81214035

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Republicons will pay for prostitutes, but won't pay honest workers."

The truest kiss off yet of the freaky phony 'family values' republicon homelanders and their crusade against the men and women of America.

[unkachuck]

13. "Republicons will pay for prostitutes, but won't pay honest workers."

....in this country it costs money to fuck prostitutes, but you can fuck honest workers for free....

[Plausible]

2. The UAW needs to

throw shoes at Corker.

Why isn't someone on the news saying that the rank and file workers did not create the Big Three's financial crisis. This country needs more Republican bashing and less union bashing.

I talked to old timers who remember when the coal companies in Pa would drag families out of their company homes in the snow in the middle of the night. Little chldren went into the mines from dark to dark. Only the unions changed this.

[youngharry]

12. Rebublicans v Unions

It is time to riot the offices of the Republicans that vote against the American worker and the American people. These people are playing politics with the economy and health of this country. It is time they were rooted out of office.

[pipoman]

17. Personally, I expect it of the Pugs

not so much of Dems...until a few years ago anyway. It seems hard to throw stones from a glass house considering that several Dems voted this down as well, including our own Harry Reid, and then there is the Dems overwhelming support for NAFTA and GATT, and the nonstop talk by Dems of how Americans can compete with any other workers in the world, and then there is the statements about how Americans can be more productive (translated to mean work more hours for less pay). All of these things make it difficult to throw this all at the Pugs...too bad...

[Captain Hilts]

3. It's the South refusing to return the HUGE subsidies they get from the North EVERY year. nt

[boomerbust]

7. This is who the North needs right now!

[ogneopasno]

4. WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE LABOR-ENDORSED DEMOCRATS?

Unions should stop endorsing, donating and encouraging their members to volunteer until the Democrats start standing up the way labor stands up for them. Every fucking election cycle we get the Democrats siddling up, hat in hand, for endorsements, and then when the shit hits the fan they're nowhere to be found. I am g.d. sick and tired of it.

[stillcool]

5. I don't know if he was labor endorsed..

but Barney Frank is going to be on 60 minutes tonight.

[Blue_Tires]

6. irony of ironies in that a fewshort years ago the big 3

were spending millions to lobby these same GOP congresscritters to stonewall fuel/emissions standards...everyone was all buddy-buddy then....

[Faygo Kid]

8. This is war. This is the proverbial line in the sand.

Productivity up, wages down. Americans are working harder than ever, and the Rove/Cheney/Bush/McConnell types are laughing their asses off, as they have used gay marriage, Rev. Wright, and (now) Blagojevich to distract hard-working (if gullible) Americans from real, pocketbook issues like health care and financial security. Now their true priorities are showing. Will the people finally wake up from their stupor?

We shall see. They voted for change. Finally. I feel like throwing a few shoes myself.

[antimatter98]

9. Congress -- war declared on working Americans.

While the UAW issue is most visible, take a look at the unemployment
figures, foreclosure figures, and bankruptcy figures:

600,000 unemployed last month.
10,000 foreclosures a month.
5,000 bankruptcies a DAY.

And what is Congress doing to help? ZERO.

For those who do not know about unemployment benefits, they last for a given
period of time and then they end. Period. And they are taxable.

Meanwhile: Congress hands over 8.4 trillion to the banks and Wall Street--NO CONDITIONS!
(In a FOYA response to Bloomberg, Treasury/Fed refused to indicate how 2 trillion was used)

Congress has declared war on the working people of America. It's the UAW that has had
the guts to fight back. The rest of Americans are too timid to do anything. This is what
it's come to: timidity on the street, and a disociated Congress, beholden only to corporate
and banking interests.

It WILL get worse.

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."
---Henry David Thoreau

Do we all see the trout, I hope?

[liberalhistorian]

20. The only good thing about Congress' complete

inaction, indifference and, in some cases, outright hostility, is that it just may finally be the catalyst that throws so many of them out. For the first few years of the Depression, Congress was the same. Indifferent, inactive, reactionary, provincial, downright hostile to the average worker and their interests, even after the election of FDR. A few years after his election, though, things had changed and people's eyes were opened up enough, and they were angry enough, to take a sharp turn leftward, vote out the blockhead republican motherfuckers and any Dems who did nothing and/or voted against them also, and put in people who gave a shit and who were on board with FDR. FDR had hesitated to do a lot of things for fear of non-support from Congress but he, too, took the leftward turn along with the country in the mid-30's.

May this happen now in our times as well, as people's eyes are finally opened to the hateful hostility of the republicons and their DINO allies; hell, they're not even trying to hide it anymore.

[McCamy Taylor]

10. This is war. The UAW needs to get its ass down south and sign up those autoworkers.

The new Obama administration needs to enact federal guidelines to protect unions and union organizers. I suspect that they plan to do this, and this is why the GOP and the foreign automakers are so desperate to bust the UAW right now.

Hold out UAW.Starting next year, you should be able to make headway in the south----and then all those foreign automakers will have a level playing field across the country. And the South will have less poverty so it will stop getting an unfair share of federal tax dollars to hand out to businesses.

[Captain Hilts]

11. Red and Blue people need to know how hugely the blue financially support the red. nt

[Doremus]

14. You know you've seen everything when our elected officials tell us WE make too much money.

It's fvcking mind boggling.

Why every person in America isn't calling for their heads is beyond me.

[UTUSN]

15. I'm betting on the UAW!1 n/t

[Odin2005]

16. Hey Pukes, you wanna class war? you gotta class war.

Off with these ECONOMIC TRAITORS' heads!!! :grr:

[harun]

19. Just when we though Pukes couldn't get any dumber

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

18. The national debt is $11T.

I demand pay cuts from those who put us there. Work for a dollar, Bob?