Howdy all...

Thanks for the heads up on this Destor.

In no way am I a defender of GM. Although the company is ending it's traditional pensions for it's salaried employees, it will be offering 401K plans to the some 26,000 US salaried employees as it has done with the rest of it's hourly wage-based workforce.

To say that GM is "ending pension benefits for salaried workers" doesn't tell the whole story.

Now if only the fat-cats were brought down to the level of benefits for the salaried employees we'd really be blown away...

Just my take on this subject

~OGD~

Wasn't there some old saw about as GM goes so goes the nation or some such?

9 million pales compared to Wall Street thugs.

I witnessed this turn on the unions by dems and repubs in the microsphere.

Grocery store unions would screw the younger employees; the veterens would hang on to all their goodies and continue to receive benefits and over pay and everything and the newer employees would be kept under the 32 hour limit (set by state for part time employees) and receive nada.

There is a rational argument that at times, unions have overstepped their bounds although in this case the auto unions, I think, just sold out the newer workers in favor of the old.

Now there is no one representing the worker/laborer; that is for sure.

What I like is the term 'entitlement'.

What the hell does that mean?

If you put in 35 years as a worker, why is SS all of a sudden an entitlement?

If you put in 35 years as a teacher why are your benefits just entitlements?

There are rational arguments concerning COLA's and such. We are told that we do not live in inflationary times--like the 70's.

That's all I got.

Nobody on cable so far has even touched upon the issues you bring up today.

Well our big deadlock breaker is to make government workers pay more for their pensions so we can fund unemployment insurance. (remember, Obama's always been into fed workers "sharing the sacrifice" - meaning "among themselves")

And by extending the payroll tax "holiday" we're turning Social Security into an entitlement, so it can then come under the budget ax when needed. Republicans will of course have Democrats do the dirty work as some too-clever-by-far compromise.

We are our worst enemy - ethics of the 1% with resources of the 99%, or perhaps that's too clever a formulation - "dumber than a bag of rocks". Yep, that'll do it.

And as Forrest Gump wisely noted, sometimes you just don't have enough rocks.

Wasn't the informal understanding as to worker pay and benefits that when the company they work for is profitable or productivity improves, workers' compensation is "supposed" to rise more or less in tandem?  That such compensation increases are non-inflationary when they do not exceed productivity increases?  And, what is more, deserved, under the accepted rules of the game?  

Is the obliteration or shredding of that informal understanding (if that's what it was; question whether in the absence of unions and a credible unionization threat would there have been any such understanding, informal or otherwise, during the heyday of the growth of the US middle class from roughly 1945-1973?) at the crux of the gross economic and political power imbalances we've arrived at?  

If not a resurgent union movement, what other institutional force or forces could potentially restore some sort of power balance between most of the corporate and political decisionmaker classes and the working stiffs in this country?    

Didn't Frederick Douglass get it just right, if we allow that for many of our fellow citizens, economic tyranny in our day--let's define for purposes of this point as arbitrary, unnecessary cuts to pay and benefits where companies or employers are performing well or are not compelled by revenue losses to make cuts somewhere--is more onerous than any political tyranny they experience?:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Has anything changed since then to make him less correct?   The Obama Administration gets blamed sometimes for not fixing things it has limited, or no, ability to fix.  Couldn't it make this situation you write about right, at least?  If it wanted to?  If it were committed to the middle class, as it presents itself in its campaign appeals?