Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republicans, plus a couple of Democrats, after handing over, without question $700 billion to Wall Street, now threaten to block a minimal $15 billion bridge to the Big 3 automakers. Wall Street makes nothing. It is a massive factory of illusion in which shell games are run to create a myth of money making money making money. However, by threat of destroying the economy, they get carte blanche with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars as fast as a bootlicking Congress can effect it. Detroit, on the other hand, with union labor, makes actual stuff. And the powers that run this country HATE workers who organize, because they might actually manage to get a fair share of the wealth they create.
The propaganda machines of the right wing and the moneyed classes have been running day and night to paint auto workers as the cause of Detroit's problems. Don't buy it, unless you actually believe that sitting in a cubicle selling financial "products" to foolish investors is actually the equivalent of working on a factory assembly line.
I would rather see a million bankers and stockbrokers homeless and begging than to see one assembly line worker lose even more benefits because his or her management is totally incapable of predicting the obvious about the future of the automobile industry. Remember, workers do not plan, market, or design the automobiles, yet they are the first to suffer when such planning and marketing and design prove to be faulty.
The downstream effects of bankruptcy of the auto companies are incalculable, but even worse is what will happen to what remains of the American labor movement. If you are a wage earner, know your enemies in the Senate and House of Representatives. Let them know you know what they are doing. Call your own senator's and representative's offices and tell them that you will not tolerate any more attacks on American workers.
One great heartening development, however, is the workers' occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago after the Bank of America tried to shut them down. I hope this is an inspiration to all threatened workers. Do not go politely, do not go gently. Those who actually create the wealth deserve their fair share.
