Speedzzter

What Big Auto Wants from Obama

Another thing the "Beg 3" probably wants is passage of the anti-secret ballot union "Card Check" legislation.

Why?

Because the Detroit companies were stuck with unions as a result of FDR's outrageously pro-organized labor policies in the 1930s and early 1940s.

The Japanese invader assembly plants have avoided unions through exploiting the "right to work" loophole in a number of states (most of which who paid dearly in corporate welfare subsidies to land assembly plants). The Japanese invaders' success in fighting off the UAW has also been augmented by decades of Department of Labor policies and administrative law decisions that have helped non-union employers avoid the parasitic costs of unionization (e.g. stupid work rules, featherbedding, solid-gold benefit plans, severance restrictions and payments).

Note that the Detroit 3 couldn't shed their expensive unions in "right-to-work" states because of the threat of strikes in "closed shop" states and the practice of "pattern bargaining" , despite some reasonable balance returning to federal labor policies in the past 30 years.

Moreover, given the concentration of the Detroit 3 plants in "closed shop" states and Obama's huge political debt to organized labor, even shedding the UAW contracts in bankruptcy is probably a short-lived outcome.

But with a "card check" law, the hapless United Auto Workers union will have its best shot at infecting the Japanese invader assembly plants with unionization, ultimately leading to a more level domestic playing field through "pattern bargaining."


The "Beg 3" also probably want some sort of national health insurance plan so that some (not all) of their excessive benefit costs could be off-loaded onto a larger number of taxpayers and the health "tax" costs of the invader plants would be increased.

The Detroiters (and the UAW) probably also secretly dream of a tariff deal of the sort that saved Harley-Davidson in the 1980s -- but that's unlikely in the current environment. Still, the Obama administration could use the strawmen of environmental and labor standards to weasel out of some "free trade" agreements. However, such an approach probably won't be targeted enough to help the Detroit 3.