KIOSK HELLO

It’s look­ing like the cur­rent Automaker Bailout is not going to make it as the Sen­ate rejected the bill… I’m not the most informed per­son on the sit­u­a­tion but this makes me really mad:

“The Repub­li­cans sen­a­tors emerged from their meet­ing an hour later hav­ing decided they would not agree to a deal. Sev­eral blamed the autowork­ers union.

“It sounds like the U.A.W. blew it up,” said Sen­a­tor David Vit­ter, Repub­li­can of Louisiana”

and another tidbit:

“The automak­ers would also have been required to cut wages and ben­e­fits to match the aver­age hourly wage and ben­e­fits of Nis­san, Toy­ota and Honda employ­ees in the United States.”

Wow, inter­est­ing how the union is get­ting blamed for the fall out, sounds like another cap­i­tal­ist spin on things. Can you really blame the work­ers union for not agree­ing with the notion of their work­ers tak­ing on the cuts to sup­port the bailout? How about if for the next two years each white col­lar worker in the indus­try takes a big old cut of 30% of their salary and the union­ized work­ers keep their salaries at the same rates for the period, we’d at least see wages com­ing closer together.

I find this out­ra­geous, just the fact alone the CEO’s first flew in on pri­vate jets and then drove to Wash­ing­ton in their hybrids is stu­pid enough! Jesus, we can’t get our shit together here. We need a work­ers rev­o­lu­tion. Here you can see, it can work, we can come together! 

One more thing, Bank of Amer­ica received $25 bil­lion in bailout money and just announced today they are cut­ting 35,000 jobs over 3 years “as it digests its acqui­si­tion of Mer­rill Lynch.” Yeah digests the aqui­si­tion deal they did with money from our gov­ern­ment. Bril­liant, get the funds, get even big­ger and then dump 35,000 peo­ple. What exactly are these com­pa­nies  get­ting our money for? Each of us needs to start ask­ing. Take time to read the news, busi­ness sec­tion too!

Image cap­tion:

“Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, unem­ploy­ment was high. Many employ­ers tried to get as much work as pos­si­ble from their employ­ees for the low­est pos­si­ble wage. Work­ers were upset with the speedup of assem­bly lines, work­ing con­di­tions and the lack of job secu­rity. Seek­ing strength in unity, they formed unions. Auto­mo­bile work­ers orga­nized the U.A.W. (United Auto­mo­bile Work­ers of Amer­ica) in 1935. Gen­eral Motors would not rec­og­nize the U.A.W. as the work­ers’ bar­gain­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Hear­ing rumors that G.M. was mov­ing work to fac­to­ries where the union was not as strong, work­ers in Flint began a sit-down strike on Decem­ber 30, 1936. The sit-down was an effec­tive way to strike. When work­ers walked off the job and pick­eted a plant, man­age­ment could bring in new work­ers to break the strike. If the work­ers stayed in the plant, man­age­ment could not replace them with other work­ers. This pho­to­graph shows the bro­ken win­dows at Gen­eral Motors’ Flint Fisher Body Plant dur­ing the Flint sit-down strike of 1936–37.”