A Horse's Head For Chrysler

There was this old mob technique which was employed when they wanted to take over a bar or other such money-making establishment. They'd send in some boys to trash the place or rough up the staff and then offer the management the opportunity to buy protection. The thing is, the cost of protection tended to go up, and to come with other strings attached, so that eventually the owners would just give in and sell up for a fraction of the real value of the business. This is called extortion.

Chrysler is in bankruptcy. The real owners of the business are the secured lenders, since they have first call on all the assets of the business. This is what was agreed contractually when they made the loans. However, the deal being offered to them is to sell up for approximately 20% of what they are owed. Guess who gets 55% of the value of the "new" Chrysler? Yes, it's the UAW autoworkers union.

There are lots of theories about why US automakers went in the toilet, many of them referring to "poor management" or "unattractive product". There's even been a chorus of wisdom suggesting that they lost money because they weren't offering fuel-efficient vehicles, making a neat link with prevailing eco-weenie sentiments while neatly missing the point that the only vehicles they made any money on were trucks and SUVs. No doubt they had poor management, but if the product has been weak it has to be related to the fact that they've been losing money for years. How can you put A-grade vehicles in the market if you make a loss on every one, and would make a bigger loss if you tried to make them better?

Let's cut through all the bullshit: the reason the traditional US automakers are losing money is the gold-plated, over-the-top, extortionate pay and benefits that the UAW has extracted over the years with threats to strike and shut down operations, plunging the companies into insolvency. For years management has chosen to pay off the thugs at the UAW rather than face them down, and just like the poor bar owner faced with the goons from the mob it's hard to pass judgment on them from the safety of your armchair. Any normal company shuts down plants when sales fall (and remember that US automakers have lost share every year), but in the twisted world of the UAW, the automakers have to pay all the workers even if there are no jobs to do, or pay them a small fortune to fuck off, and then pay their medical costs, pension costs and those of their families, forever.

What really pisses me off is Obastard's government brokering a deal where the union gets to walk off with most of what's left of Chrysler, in spite of them having no secured position (unlike secured lenders) and completely missing the fact that the UAW is what caused the whole mess in the first place. They should be grateful that there are any jobs left for their members at all after what they did. Obastard has been bought and paid for by the UAW (campaign donations anyone?) and has pressured the rightful owners of Chrysler to sell out cheap.

Tell me what's so different between the UAW crippling the automakers and then walking off with most of what's left, and the mob running down a bar and then buying it for a song. The labor laws over here just encourage this sort of large-scale extortion (remember the unions did the same thing to the airlines, bleeding them dry until 9/11 came along to finish them off) and it's no accident that the non-union auto operations in the US are growing.

In the twilight world of left-wing ideology we're supposed to look the other way as union thieves take other people's property, since it's all "in the interests of the workers". But what else would you expect from a government determined to confiscate ever more of our money to hand out to its cronies to buy votes?


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison