Auto bailout fails in Senate

Watching C-Span2 while grading papers.
The auto bailout has failed.
Came down to Union wage concessions; there weren’t any.
Various Senators are thanking their staffs and Harry Reid is banging on about how bad things are. Barbara Boxer is now saying if you didn’t vote for the bailout you don’t care about people. Now it goes to Treasurer Secretary Paulson to give up some TARP money, according to Boxer, in order to save the automakers.

One thought on “Auto bailout fails in Senate”

  1. Well, this version of the events is false by omission; it tells a little less than half of the story. The UAW already has already proactively made wage concessions. A year-old contract is already in place to move new hire wages into line with the non-union foreign company plants and shift the burden of retiree costs, among other things. The UAW also agreed to broader wage concessions in these negotiations, just on a different timeline than the Republicans preferred, and from their point of view the main problem was that worker and retiree cost concessions were being asked for out of context – other stakeholders were not being asked to pony up. If the UAW was the sticking point because the Republicans really didn’t ask anyone else for concessions, it’s not exactly fair to say they were the roadblock.

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