Hunting season ended yesterday in Montana.  More than ever people needed to get meat into the freezer. People who live close to the land like we do on a working cattle ranch understand that the weak will die in the snow come winter. Frontier theory goes that culling the animal herd with guns or arrows will leave more feed for winter for the deer, antelope, and elk while putting food on the human's table. Less weak all the way around, but something's got to die.  And a big old buck is what they aim for.   Fine. But when men in Armani suits talk of blood in the snow or on the floor, my blood runs cold and my injustice alarm goes off.

Alexander Cockburn, in The Nation pens a piece called "Nail That Double Standard to the Mast".  In it, he quotes George Melleon, a former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal recalling a lunch with Paul Volcker just after Jimmy Carter had appointed Volcker Federal Reserve Chairman in 1979.  In explaining what he was about to do with the Fed and monetary policy Volcker said:

    "When there's blood all over the floor, will you guys still support me?"

Cockburn points out that the blood was the blood of bankrupt farmers in the Midwest and Latin America.  There was blood on the floor literally in the form of suicides.  Cockburn points out that "the WSJ's editors have always taken a stern line about letting the weak die in the snow."  That kind of attitude he, as well as I, had noted on the McLaughlin Group of November 23 as the group griped about autoworkers extravagant pay.
When it comes to the U.S. auto industry what should we do?  How do we get out of the woods and into the Emerald City without going through the field of poppies?  This is a very serious debate that we must have.  It is practically life and death to millions of Americans who work in the auto and auto related industries.  So it would help if the white-collar media would get the facts straight about blue-collar pay. The Fat Cat News is at it again.   On November 17, 2008, New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin made the case that the Big Three should declare bankruptcy because they have so utterly mismanaged their work force.  He harrumphed that at GM those workers "get paid $73 an hour if you include health care and pension costs".  Coddled car guys with their "lavish contracts" said the New York Post.

Great labor journalists like Jonathan Tasini blew the whistle on all this crap back on November 19 directly after the testimony of the auto executives and auto workers reps. He posts at workinglife.com and at huffingtonpost.com.
http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=10368

In the case of the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal there was no reporting--ZERO--about the parts of the testimony of UAW President Ron Gettelfinger that detailed the hits UAW members have taken just in the last few years (and some didn't even bother to even mention Gettelfinger was even in the room).

Tasini points out one exception, the Los Angeles Times.  The reporter noted that Alan Reuther, legislative director of the UAW states that huge concessions were made in both the 2005 and the 2007 contracts between the UAW and the Big 3.

"Wages for new employees were slashed 50%; new employees do not get any guaranteed retiree health benefits; they also do not get the traditional defined-benefit pension plan," he said. "And the healthcare liabilities for existing retirees will be transferred to an independent [entity]. Bottom line: The workers and retirees have already accepted major cuts.

Sorkin's piece in The New York Times dumps on the workers without a mention of these concessions.  It obviously doesn't fit the tall story (myth) he's weaving.

So thank goodness we have a great media watchdog like mediamatters.org. that keeps after this malarkey.    Eric Boehlert writes on Nov 29 that there's a whole lot of "misrepresentation" going on about autoworkers' salaries.  But he points out that it's one thing for conservative columnists like Charles Krauthammer and conservative radio host Lars Larson to bloviate about the audacity of union workers.  That's to be expected.   But he is most aggrieved that Sorkin in the  "paper of record" the once venerable NY Times would keep this meme (myth) going.  mediamatters.org/columns/200811250012

What is the truth?  Boehlert says that Felix Salmon over at Portfolio gets to the heart of the $73 an hour auto worker pay "urban myth".    www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/11/18/the-return-of-the-70-per-hour-meme

The average GM assembly-line worker makes about $28 per hour in wages, and I can assure you that GM is not paying $42 an hour in health insurance and pension plan contributions. Rather, the $70 per hour figure (or $73 an hour, or whatever) is a ridiculous number obtained by adding up GM's total labor, health, and pension costs, and then dividing by the total number of hours worked. In other words, it includes all the healthcare and retirement costs of retired workers.

What it costs GM per worker to make cars and what GM pays its workers are two different things.  And Boehlert says that to use the $73 figure is "misleading and dishonest".  Friends in Michigan told me that many of the new young workers make $14 an hour.  And what about the auto parts shops in the Midwest that Cockburn mentions?  "They are non-union, sweatshop-type factories with few benefits and an increasingly Latino and undocumented workforce."

Toyota and Honda have their labor cost per car around $47.  Autoworkers have already made huge concessions and have now taken over their healthcare by establishing a UAW run trust. So the $73 will begin to fall sharply says Solomon.  Jonathan Tasini notes in his piece that in Ron Gettlefinger's testimony he speaks of the concessions and says:

 As a result of all these painful concessions, the gap in labor costs that had previously existed between the Detroit-based auto companies and the foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated by the end of the contracts. [emphasis added] Indeed, one industry analyst has indicated that labor costs for the Detroit-based auto companies will actually be lower than those for Toyota's U.S. operations. Thus, the truth is the UAW and our active and retired members have already stepped up to the plate and made the hard changes that were necessary to make our companies competitive in terms of their labor costs.

That's the truth.  Felix Solomon concludes that columnists who have a theory are using bad statistics and leaving out the truth.  Why?

As of 2007, the UAW represented 180,681 members at Chrysler, Ford and Genera Motors; it also represented 419,621 retired members and 120,723 surviving spouses. If you take the costs associated with 721,025 individuals and then divide those costs by the hours worked by 180,681 individuals, you're going to end up with a very large hourly rate. But it won't mean anything, unless you're trying to be deceptive.

"Trying to be deceptive" and "misleading and dishonest" are the conclusions of these reporters.  Why?  Why you ask?  Because it is war.  It's class war and the battle lines keep being drawn.  But whatever side you are on, making crap up about hard working Americans is something that makes my blood boil.   It's just a nasty elitist way of talking trash about workers in the guise of a phony economic theory. It's just the eternal conservative's justification for selfishness, to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith.
 
And, as often is the case, Alexander Cockburn nails it to the mast:

You see, shoveling money at Goldman Sachs and the other titans of Wall Street constitutes systemic rescue of the billionaires vital to national well--being and self-esteem.  Stabilizing the remaining core of America's industrial base, particularly a core infested by people with union cards, is quite another matter."

This is not about welfare, but warfare. . It's warfare dressed up like righteous indignation over the begging society aka unions aka poor people.

So, the Wall Street Journal does a full frontal attack as do various conservative wind machines and bloviators like Limbaugh, Hannity,Beck, et.al.  That's to be expected.  But when the mainstream corporate media get in the act, then alarm bells should be going off.

Is it 1980 all over again?  Is this some awful deja vu? Is this plain old union busting?  Rather than restoring labor to its rightful place at the head of the table, are working Americans once more being thrown crumbs and told that they are the weak of the species and they should die in the snow?

James Galbraith in his new book "The Predator State" makes a compelling argument that good paying jobs will get us out of this mess.  That less inequality is the most efficient way to run a capitalist system because people don't leave good jobs.

We got this all ass backwards.  If anybody should be lying on the floor it should be people who can't dig or build or teach but can only make things up out of thin air.  If any groups should be culled and left to die in the snow, it should be the people who don't know how to make anything except hot air.