[A-List] He's back! Kerkorian bids $4.5 billion for Chrysler (new propaganda for unions)

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

"In addition, York noted that a private company can "offer a  substantial
portion of equity in the company to the UAW as part of finding a  solution to
ever-rising health care costs, which not only are unaffordable  by
corporations, but over time will likely prove to be unaffordable  by
governmental entities as well."

Bid may seem favorable

Some  analysts, including Brian Johnson of Lehman Brothers, say they  believe
DaimlerChrysler may look more kindly on the Kerkorian bid because  he
expresses a willingness to work with the unions to address the  company's
stiff liability issues.

"We would classify the Kerkorian  offer in the category of labor-friendly
private-equity buyer," Johnson  wrote.

Comment 

The last time around Kerkorian's bid and plan was  to break Chrysler up and 
sell off it divisions and parts of its productivity  infrastructure.  
Kerkorian's $4.5 billion bid for Chrysler is well below  the $36 billion Daimler-Benz 
paid for Chrysler in 1998. The reason for the low  bid is Chrysler's mountain 
of debt, of which "running" pension and health  obligations are a small part 
or, as it is called, "legacy cost."

Legacy  cost is really the cost of the legacy of capitalist exploitation and 
45 years of  million dollar bonus payments CEO's and their minion.   

GM, Ford  and DaimlerChrysler all have "special funds," supposedly monitored 
by the Union,  and governed by federal guidelines,  to pay for these benefits. 
The  companies estimate each year their immediate money obligations to 
retirees and  report whether they have enough money in the funds to meet these 
future  expenses.

Counting pension and other retiree benefit obligations, GM reported  last 
year that its plans were under funded by $45 billion. Ford's plans were  under 
funded by $34 billion, according to its annual report. These legacy cost  build 
up year after year and decade after decade, in a way not to different from  
credit card debt. As long as you can make your monthly payment, in this case  
yearly payments, no one cares about the long term debt and its consequences. 

The problem is that no section of capitalists or their bourgeois  politicians 
in Congress, gives a damn about workers pensions; only quarterly  profits and 
their personal bonuses, consequently ensuring the financial health  of these 
funds is never a priority - as long as the monthly note is met. With  federal 
laws allowing the legal under funding of pensions, even union contracts  
cannot guarantee the retired workers economic security. 

Who writes these laws that shortchange the workers? 

What makes these companies valuable to investment clubs of the  bourgeoisie, 
is that during good years, the investment group can take the money  and run, 
allow the legacy to grow - continue, and then start looking for another  buyer, 
sinking the workers into more debt. Because this "legacy thing" is a  system 
or set of rules governing the economic life of our country, there is no  
escape for the workers as a class, short of changing the system. The system has  
been changed before or we would still be a slave society. It can be changed  
again. 

"Labor friendly" . . . . "Labor friendly" . . . . 

Mr. York  ("Chrysler's former chief financial officer and Kerkorian's 
right-hand man")  statement reveals, his anti-working class and anti-union outlook on 
the all  important issue of health care, although he would be quick to say he 
is playing  by the rules of the game. 

Well . . . this is not a game. 

Placing  the financial burden of health care (for 40 - 50 million people), 
squarely on  the back on federal and state governments would no more bankrupt 
the federal  system, than the huge cost of the wars of our imperialists and 
their terror  campaigns. 

We need to figure out how to do things on the side of the  working class.

If tiny Cuba can consistently meant the rising health care  expectations of 
its people, through suppressing much of the profit motive in  health care 
delivery and health education, so can we. The cost of health care  should not be 
carried by small businesses or the large unionized companies for  that matter, 
and most certainly the individuals should not be responsible for  the cost of 
primary care. 

Primary care has to become a birth right. Two  tiny hand fulls of the wealth 
spent on the war against the people of Iraq, is  more than enough to met the 
primary health needs of the American people, and  everyone knows this. 

Who side are you own? 

The power of capital,  its economic law, drives increasingly larger sections 
of higher paid labor into  the ranks of the lowest paid workers. It is not 
just a technology thing, but  technology in the hands of profit lusting 
capitalists. 

The UAW is being  maneuvered into a position where it will appear to be part 
of the cause for the  collapse of Chrysler - if it does not grant huge 
concessions, but to grant such  concessions, accelerates its own demise. 
Who should pay the legacy cost in  the here and now, considering the workers 
themselves, could not pay such cost  even if they wanted to? Slowly but surely 
the workers themselves must learn to  take sides in the class war. The UAW 
workers are only a small fraction of the  workers being hit by legacy cost, but 
they are a politically significant  fraction because they are organized with a 
capacity to arouse the working poor  of America. 

It is time for the union to step up to the plate.  

This is a contract year with the union having lived with the current  
contract for last 5 years. The fight is right now . . . today, but we have to  look 
down the road because survival is at stake. Two more five year contracts  from 
now (2017) and the UAW, as one of the premium unions of the industrial era,  
shall not exist as such. 

Shifting from collaborationist policy (business  unionism) - carried to the 
extreme by former President of the Chrysler Division,  Nate Godden, places its 
new President in a difficult position with little  choice. Business as usual 
means the death of the union. We cannot and must not  go quietly into the 
night. 

The union leaders and its members face an  extremely advanced stage of the 
crisis of the entire social system of capitalism  and no amount of wars of 
aggression can get us out of this.  The union must  find the political will and 
means to reform itself and literally leap outside of  a purely  trade union 
framework and trade union politics and reconstitute  itself as a fighting unity 
(union) with one foot in the poor and marginalized.  

Not just witting letters to ones Congressman and passing resolutions but  
investing in class politics. 

Such a feat may very well be impossible.  The old form of the industrial 
corporation and the companies that once ruled  supreme, could not make such a 
transition and were displaced by new comers like  Intel and Cisco systems. Perhaps 
it is true that old soldiers don't die . . .  they just fade away. Yet . . . 
the union is not a business and cannot be run  like a business. When 
capitalist businesses go broke they go belly up and the  lives of the workers are 
destroyed. When the union goes broke . . . , we don't  belly, we tally and rally up 
and go into revolution. 

The headquarters of  the UAW faces lay-off of its staff due to the increasing 
shrinkage of its  membership base.  Oh well. 

It is a hard times for the trade union  movement as it is pushed further down 
the social ladder. Between the post WWII  period and the last strike wave 
period in the industrial sector (1968-1978) it  was possible for the union to 
wage the battle for a greater share of the social  product for its members and 
support efforts to expand political liberties, -  (for blacks and women), even 
when such support was token and had to be wrenched  from within the union by 
these large groups. 

>From the time of its  formation to the ending of the last great strike wave, 
the health of the union  rested upon the expansion and deepening of the market 
itself. Auto workers were  America's industrial middle class and every 
incremental increase in wages, meant  more consumption and more consumption meant 
more work for  everyone.    

Today the health of the UAW and indeed its  very survival rest solely on the 
platform of the vast majority of labor who have  yet to find an organized 
voice. These industrial workers cannot - not, fight  back. Demanding relocating 
plants back in America is not just a pipe dream, but  if it were possible or 
even desirable, would only increase rationalization of  production, heighten 
competition between the world auto producers, creating more  vicious cycles of 
unemployment as human labor is further rendered superfluous by  advanced 
technology.   
 
Organizing the unorganized and extending the union in new field of labor is  
the mission. 

The fight for the dignity of union labor cannot be carried  on and pushed 
further within the old boundary of the industrial unionism with  its contract 
between one employer and one group of workers and one industry. 
 
Health care and pensions are not union issues but issues dear to the entire  
working class. Negotiations with DaimlerChrysler, in and of itself, cannot   
solve the health care issue and the union cannot get the support of 40 - 50  
million people in need of health care, if it does not create and find the forum  
to fight for this issue in the national political arena and win the respect 
of  the "great unwashed," who tend to be any of our seniors who have already 
worked  a lifetime. 

A real Labor Party in America, fighting in national politics  on the platform 
of class issues would make a difference. 

"Labor  friendly" . . . . "Labor friendly" . . . . got to be kidding. 

York is  friendly to the domination of the capitalists. Behind his pondering 
the plight  of health care for auto workers and retirees is a concerted effort 
to shift the  responsibility of health care and pensions onto the back of the 
union  itself.  

The decay of the union, as it had existed, is so far  advanced that no one 
believes its survival is possible and it is not without  change.  

The upper layer of union leaders are stunned and  disorientated in the face 
of this dramatic decay. What is needed is a new  perspective - a class 
perspective.  

What are these workers to be  told? 

The truth. 

Who side U on? 


Melvin P. 
 



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