Like each of the bail-out plans that has come before Congress, the U.S. auto industry bail-out score has been accompanied by a howling chorus of nay sayers singing an angry counterpoint. The negative lyrics of this chorus include such lines as “let them fail. We don’t care if they go out of business. All they know how to build is over sized gas guzzlers that pollute the environment.”
UAW Blamed
Still another set of lines pertains to the United Auto Workers (UAW) Union and unions in general. These lines say something like this: “It’s the UAW with a long history of sweetheart contracts with management, the result of the repeated capitulations of management over the years, that has brought the U.S. auto industry to the low state it finds itself. Now is the time to get rid of the UAW and maybe the industry itself will revive. And while we’re at it let’s get rid of all labor unions.”
What is to be done? The higher pay and benefits won by the UAW for its worker members over the decades of union contract negotiations has helped to make these workers and their families even more valuable contributors to society as tax payers, as consumers of products and services in their respective communities, and as involved citizens active in community affairs than would have been possible had they been members of an oppressed working class as they once were during Henry Ford’s time.
Good Pay Hurts Competitiveness
On the other hand, the case can be made that these same workers with their middle class pay and benefit packages have contributed to the declining competitiveness of the industry of which they are part as that industry attempts to compete with the products of foreign manufacturers with a work force often earning much less and receiving much less in benefits. They’ve accomplished that simply by doing what all of us humans do by instinct, that is, to seek to improve our situations in life.
Nor can we remove from blame the senior executives of these organizations with their obscene pay and benefit packages and the corporate jets at their disposal costing $35 million or more. They too have played a role in keeping the U.S. auto industry less competitive than it should have been.
Horrendous Ripple Effect
Do we let this industry employing hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country just go out of business? The ripple effect would be horrendous with not just assembly line workers but all the people who make the tires, the glass, the batteries, the electronics, and other parts as well as all the people employed at the dealerships out of work as well. No, we simply can’t let that happen. The unemployment figures are already alarming enough. Imagine those figures two to three times as high.
Do We Attach Strings?
And so I ask the question again. What is to be done? Now is a good time for a reexamination of the economic and political principles that lie at the heart of our most sacred assumptions. Do we attach strings to the bail-out funds for the industry? Do we say to both senior management and union rank and file, “We’ll give you several billion of taxpayer money. Now you agree to substantial pay cuts and benefit cuts until this industry can turn out affordable products that will compete with the products of the Japanese and the Koreans—products that have less of a negative impact on the environment ”
The answer in my opinion is a resounding “yes.” These same strings need to be applied, in my opinion, to all organizations receiving taxpayer hand outs. Communism is dead and good riddance to it. Even socialism has significantly less standing now than it did during the middle of the last century. We don’t need to be guided by these left wing philosophies, but what we do need is to uphold a middle ground philosophy that accounts for individual rights, but which still encompasses the interests of all of us as a group with common needs and interests as citizens or taxpayers—a community of common interests.
Survival With Healthy Economy
Our common need and interest is the survival of this country, survival with as healthy an economy as possible. This, I believe, is part of the concept of “happiness” as stated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence—our “unalienable rights” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
A political philosophy that comes closest to expressing this concept of a middle ground philosophy that respects both individual rights and the common needs of the members of society is called Communitarianism. One of its spokesmen is the philosopher Amitai Etzioni, who for many years was associated with George Washington University in Washington, D.C., my former employer. Etzioni has done a lot of critical thinking about supposed conflict concepts such as the rights of pedophiles versus the rights of society to be protected against pedophiles.
Etzioni’s Golden Rule
Etzioni proposes a new Golden Rule, which goes like this: “Respect and uphold society’s moral order as you would have society respect and uphold your autonomy.”
Okay, so what do we need to expect from the auto industry—both labor and management—in turn for the bail-out? Here are the terms I would impose:
• Cars and other vehicles must be built to the highest safety standards
• Cars and other vehicles must be built to last as long as possible. No more planned obsolescence.
• Warranties must be fully guaranteed and protected by federal law and fully transferable from owner to owner, that is, if the vehicles are fuel efficient
• There must be across the board commitment to hybrid technology including hybrid and electric car combinations. No new vehicles getting less than 20 miles per gallon. Outlaw them.
• A federal board—the Fair Executive Compensation Board--established by Congress to review and approve (or veto) all executive compensation above $250,000 per year, criterion number one for this board, the effect on car prices and competitiveness
• A federal board—the Fair Labor Contracts Board—established by Congress to review and approve (or veto) all labor contracts, criterion number one for this board, the effect on car prices and competitiveness.
Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my latest book, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, is now available. It would make a wonderful holiday present for someone you care about. It can be ordered on line. I am also happy to announce that still another new book by Stephen Alan Saft, City Above The Sea And Other Poems, is nearing completion. In fact, you can also order it on line right now. You’ll learn more about both books at the sasaftwrites website.
Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft
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