Reluctance to Help Detroit Reeks of Class Bias (WaPo)

[Octafish]

The writer understands the real issue: Some people feel they have been enobled to lord it over the rest of us.

Isn't that un-American?



An honest wage for an honest day's work is what modern manufacturing is was all about.

Reluctance to Help Detroit Reeks of Class Bias

By Warren Brown
Sunday, December 7, 2008; G02

It has happened repeatedly in the last several weeks -- well-paid, well-known journalists questioning the wisdom of "bailing out Detroit," of helping an industry whose union-represented workers have substantially better wages and benefits than other manual or skilled laborers, or, more precisely, who are better compensated than their nonunion counterparts working at foreign-owned rival companies building cars and trucks in the United States.

The questions are tinged with outrage and ridicule: Why should Americans who earn less, have inferior pension and health-care plans, help the United Auto Workers union? Why can't the UAW be satisfied with the same pay packages given at Honda, or with an even less-expensive compensation agreement for workers at the Hyundai assembly plant in Montgomery, Ala.?

The queries often come from people who earn substantially more than the estimated $71,000 annually in wages and benefits paid to UAW members. They come from people who, having reached upper-middle-class status by virtue of their college educations and communication skills, certainly wouldn't settle for earning less.

So, why are the questions being asked?

Might I suggest class bias?

There is a feeling in this country -- apparent in the often condescending, dismissive way Detroit's automobile companies have been treated on Capitol Hill -- that people who work with their hands and the companies that employ them are inferior to those who work with their minds and plow profit from information. How else to explain the clearly disparate treatment given to companies such as Citigroup and General Motors?

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/05/AR2008120502198.html

The writer closes with a pair of excellent, rhetorical questions.

Let me add one more: Once all the good jobs are gone from the United States, who'll be able to afford to buy what you do for a living?

[napi21]

1. I think there is some of that, but I believe there's more to it than that.

There's also "buyers remorse" in Congress for how they doled out so much money to Paulson and what he hasn't accomplished with it, and also that they believe the management of the Big Three auto companies have mismanaged those companies, FOR THEIR OWN GREEDY REASONS, and they don't feel they should reward that behavior.

I share their feelings. I was pleased to hear Dodd this morning saying he believes the Sr. mgmt. of the co's should go.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Congress gave wall street $700 billion, after thinking about for only a weekend.

Congress grudgingly, after a month's debate, loaned Detroit (and the 2 million workers that depend on it) $15 billion of the $25 billion that had already been promised to them.

First, it's obvious that workers don't mean shit to our country and second, it begs the question of what Wall Street threatened.

[AndyTiedye]

5. The $700 Billion Was a Payoff to Keep Bushco From Imposing Martial Law

Paulson made it perfectly clear to our Congresscritters what they were going to do to us if they didn't get their money.

[Berry Cool]

3. How realistic is even THIS writer's point of view, though?

"The queries often come from people who earn substantially more than the estimated $71,000 annually in wages and benefits paid to UAW members. They come from people who, having reached upper-middle-class status by virtue of their college educations and communication skills, certainly wouldn't settle for earning less."

Excuse me? Do UAW members really earn an estimated $71K annually?

I have a college education, communications skills and a good job...but I don't earn anywhere NEAR "an estimated $71,000 annually in wages and benefits," and I certainly don't consider myself a part of the "upper middle class." If I earned THAT much, I'd think I was rich beyond my wildest imaginings!

What's up? Am I being way underpaid, or is it just that I live in such an economically depressed area that if you make even $50K at a white-collar job here, people think you're a Rockefeller?

Edited to add: Oh, I see who the author means now. He's not talking about Joe Schmoe Journalist here. He's talking about major media pundits who get paid millions of dollars a year to opine on TV and in the newspapers about whether or not the Big Three deserve a bailout. Whew.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Remember:

All wages have been eroded, in real terms, since 1973. Expect the Randian/Straussian/Friedmanians to use the results of that erosion, caused by them, as a wedge in this issue.

They have been raping the economy and playing us off of each other for years.

[xchrom]

6. recommend -- someone pick up the white obvious phone --

[formercia]

7. Grover Norquist and the Free Trade Mafia win again.

This is their chance to kill the UAW once and for all.

[1776Forever]

8. Octafish I am so with you - please read my post from earlier today - it says it all

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4601465&mesg_id=4603803

:hi:

[LongTomH]

9. This really needs to be the start of a dialogue

One of the biggest victories by the right was driving a wedge between 'white-collar' and unionized 'blue-collar' workers. I don't know how many anti-union remarks I've heard at the various programming shops I've worked at. By the way, I didn't earn $71K a year at any of them, nor did most of my co-workers unless they were management.

Both need to realize they're in this together. Victories by unions winning better wages and benefits for their members drove wages and benefits higher for the majority of working people. The whole idea of employee provided health insurance started with unions.

Edited to add: Check out McCamy Taylor's latest editorial: Worker's Revolution in America: Approaching Zero Hour

[boomerbust]

10. And

Southern Republican Union destruction.

[D-Lee]

11. Exactly!

Plus a bit of union busting (and some of that might come from selected Democrats, who need to be carefully identified by rigorous inspection of their words).

There is a cultural myopia which ignores that the working mean and women -- those in the trades and manufacturing -- are the numerically and ecnomically significant part of the American population and economy.

And there is also an economic cruelty which denies working women the same wages as men, as if women don't support families on their own.