So, here’s a political take on the General Motors-UAW deal to pay workers to get out of Dodge. In one sense, for a bunch of workers who are near retirement and have over 30 years on the job this isn’t a terrible deal: if your kids are out of college and you have your house paid for, walking away with $35,000 and health care for life is okay. For people willl less than 30 years and more than ten years at GM, it’s not as great a deal and probably more of a risk: you may get $140,000 in your hand but what the heck kind of job can you expect that will match the pay?
The real people that are happy about this deal are the broader corporate world and Karl Rove. As GM downsizes, corporations can increasingly banish from the public mind the idea that when you go to work you will get decent benefits and retirement. After all, at non-union companies, the GM financial crisis would be met with pink slips and a “see you later” and no more. The power of the union contract means that GM has to actually treat people with a modicum of fairness–hence the money and healthcare benefits even as people are shown the door.
That kind of benefit makes corporations gag–and they have to love the fact that GM is sinking into its financial mess. When the generation that is just being born reaches work age, they will have no idea what it meant to have a decent job because, at this rate, there will be no model to point to. Let the good times roll…no pensions, no health care and $10-an-hour jobs.
And then there is Karl Rove and the Republican Party. Long-term, the GM debacle means fewer union jobs–and, therefore, fewer people who get political messages touting pro-union, presumably Democratic, candidates (though as we know, pro-union and Democratic are not neccessarily one and the same).
Of course, the obvious hypocrisy is that the Republicans who rejoice over the decline of unions are the very same people who tout the “American Dream” and the wonderful economic engine of America in every speech they make–something that will inevitably disappear as the only jobs that provide a decent standard of living for most of the country’s workers evaporate.
