UAW Walkout Puts Democrats in a Jam

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nysun.com/article/63302

By NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT
Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 25, 2007

The decision yesterday by 73,000 General Motors workers to walk off the job is unwelcome news for Democratic presidential candidates. If the dispute is prolonged, they will have to choose definitively between supporting free trade or protectionism.

Job security is a top priority for voters from both parties, and limiting imports and the outsourcing of jobs is a popular remedy. Both presidents Bush and Clinton have lauded free trade because of the prosperity it brings. But Mr. Clinton's successors have different ideas.

After a breakdown in talks, members of the United Auto Workers union began picketing GM's five main plants yesterday in their first strike against the company during negotiations in 37 years.

At the heart of the dispute is not so much pay and pensions as wringing a guarantee from the automaker's management that cars and trucks will continue to be manufactured by Americans in America, not by foreign workers in GM plants abroad.


Paul Sancya / AP

WALKING OUT. Barbara O'Leary carries signs to transport to a General Motors facility in preparation for a strike in Romulus, Mich., yesterday.



GM has a fast dwindling share of the American car market. Where once six of every 10 cars and trucks bought were made by GM workers, that number slid to 46% by 1980, one in three by 1991, and just 24.7% in the first 11 months of last year. Like other American automakers, GM has suffered competition from cars made by less expensive labor abroad.

The GM dispute highlights the conflicting arguments about free trade that have until now rarely surfaced between presidential hopefuls. The strike will ensure that the Democratic candidates will face tough questions at tonight's debate in New Hampshire, televised on MSNBC, about what they would do to keep jobs in America.

FULL 3 page story at link.

[monktonman]

1. In a jam???

yeah its real hard deciding whether to side with the American worker
or fucking yourself.

Whats a pol to do?

[OhioChick]

2. "UAW Walkout Puts Democrats in a Jam?"

:wtf:

Whose side are they on, anyway?

[monktonman]

3. my point exactly n/t