Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Tom Coburn Gets It - sort of

According to Oklahoma's Republican Senator Tom Coburn, the United Auto Workers union is "solely" to blame for the failure of negotiations over the proposed Big Three bailout.  (Link to story here.)

Coburn told CNSNews.com that "all we asked [of the UAW] was, 'Just give us a date at which you will have competitive wage rates'" with non-union foreign automakers' plants in the U.S.  But the union refused to consider renegotiating their contract with General Motors.  The union would, apparently, rather see GM go down than to take a pay cut to get their wages back in line with reason.

Coburn is right on the point he's making.  But I do have one problem . . . it seems that he thinks the government bailout is a good idea.  If he opposes the idea in principle but is simply working to tweak what he feels is inevitable - then he gets it - without reservation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have to agree that the UAW is a major cause of the auto industry crisis. But I also have to blame the manufactures themselves for not having the forsite of the foreign automakers and continuing to put most of their production towards large, luxury SUVs and pickups rather than spending more R&D dollars on increasing fuel efficiency.