Michael Leon blogs at http://malcontends.blogspot.com. Michael is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His writing has appeared nationally in The Progressive, In These Times, OpEdNews.com, and CounterPunch.
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Autoworkers and All Americans Are Worth Subsidizing
Posted October 26th, 2008 by mal contends
in
Excellent piece in the New York Times Sunday on the disaster of General Motors and its workers brings to the fore several questions.
- Should the United States government help American companies like GM by subsidizing the health insurance of employees?
- Should the government reward innovations that benefit the national war effort for the environment and alternative energy?
Sure, we have not yet declared war for a sustainable environment and the development of alternative energy; most of our domestic wars are ostensibly waged against something: Drugs and so forth.
How about a war for the environment and alternative energy? For full employment?
The 2,700-word piece illustrates well the desperation of and passion working people have for: Working.
Said ... Andy Richardson, who recently took office as the new president of (UAW) Local 95. 'If G.M. wants to build lawn chairs in Janesville, we’ll do it,' he said.
Beyond the make-believe, free market world of the Republicans who like McCain think buy-American initiatives are a "disgrace" lies the reality of a shattered community with families facing financial oblivion.
"Community and political leaders from Janesville have pleaded with G.M. management to consider putting a new, small car into the plant. Workers don’t expect that to happen, though, and they see little hope of a reprieve," reports the NYT piece.
A reprieve, a Manhattan-Project size regearing of industry and the social contract that recognizes the reality that those who want to work are, as LBJ used to say, worth the risk and deserving of the respect of going to the well with.
That respect has gone missing the last seven years.
- via mal contends
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i can't support...
...subsidizing health insurance for gm workers for two reasons:
--it is far better to move toward a national health plan that removes this problem from all businesses equally--and adds the uninsured into the program at the same time.
--secondly, what happens if the gm management negotiated a bad contract that provides benefits at higher costs than most of us have today? are we required to subsidize the more expensive plan--or do we negotiate a new plan and tell the workers and retirees to take it or leave it?
--Flip-flops: summer shoes, or McCain strategy?
A single payer
system is far better.
I think Bush and Republicans have purposefully thrown the country into fiscal crisis to not just make implementing national health insurance difficult, but to also attempt to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, student aid and all those other bad things.
The upside is the clarity of the fiscal hand being forced onto the next president and Congress. The choices are stark, immediate and clear for everone to see, piercing the fog of depoliticalization.
This may be a moment when we can see dare I say a radical restructuring of national policy in favor of working families and away from the neo-liberal, neo-con policies of the last 30-some years.
I just singled out the GM workers (could have written about the paper workers that GlobalGirl hits (see http://www.uppitywis.org/wisconsin-millworkers-ought-pay-back-mccain) because the US auto industry is in trouble of literally going down the tubes in the next year or so without help.
As for your second question: I don't know.
there may actually be...
...a bit of "hoist on their own petard" thing for the rs, thanks to the bush strategy.
it will be tough to claim that health care reform "costs too much" when the same rs justified trillions in iraq, etc...
if it can be demonstrated that health care can be provided at a cost comparable to current national health care spending (and single-payer is a great system if you want defined budgets...), then a "if we could spend money there, why not here" argument could gain great traction--especially in the runup to '10 and just beyond.
--Flip-flops: summer shoes, or McCain strategy?
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