Most of the MSM reporting on the opening yesterday of the negotiations between the UAW and General Motors and Ford was pretty standard fare. The New York Times article doesn’t reveal a lot but there are two things of note. First, from UAW prez Ron Gettelfinger:

 

Mr. Gettelfinger, too, sees the outcome of the negotiations, which have been called the most crucial in at least a generation, as having a larger purpose.

 

“We are fighting for good jobs for America,” he said. “It’s not just about us. These negotiations are about everybody.”

The Detroit carmakers say they must cut costs deeply to better compete with Toyota and Honda of Japan, whose costs at nonunion plants in the United States are lower than at their American counterparts.

 

Indeed, the point here is that (a) as go the UAW talks, so go wages for everyone down the road and (b) the growth in non-union work is hurting all Americans. I’ve often pointed out, as have others, that the best middle-class jobs program is broad unionization–after all, the auto industry is, in fact, growing in the U.S…but it’s growing in the non-union sector which means a downward pressure on wages. Duh.

The Wall Street Journal’s article is entitled “GM and UAW Cannot Ignore Health Care, Labor Chief Says.” At first I thought the “Labor Chief” referred to Gettelfinger but, nope, the newspaper gives that title the auto company’s human resources honcho, Diana Tremblay. Memo to WSJ: a human resources hack is not a “labor chief.” But, the article commits a worse sin:

She said the company spends $4.8 billion annually on health care, including $3 billion for retirees and more than $1 billion for prescription drugs. She said the company may need to be “creative” during negotiations on how the company and the UAW tackle the issue. “There’s a lot of different ways to get at this.”

One of those “different ways” does not apparently include single-payer health care, which is the only long-term and financially sensible way of solving the auto companies’ health care costs–not to mention solving the rest of the health care crisis–but it is never mentioned by the WSJ. Look, I’m not surprised–but we have to keep pushing this point as the wisest financial solution.