American Auto Revival Pledge

I Pledge to Buy a Made-in-U.S. Car

Roger Hickey — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:27:48 -0400

I pledge that soon I will buy a new, fuel-efficient car—built in America by United Auto Workers members.

I'm asking YOU to take this pledge with me and get others to do so, too.

If enough Americans take this pledge—and pass it on—we can revive our country's auto and manufacturing industries. And we can give a big boost to the workers and communities—and to our country—that depend on those crucial industries.

Click here to take the American auto revival pledge. On that page you can pledge that:

Your next car will be manufactured in America.
It will be more fuel-efficient than my last one.
It will be made by UAW workers.
You will only consider foreign cars built in the U.S. if the UAW represents their workers.

You can also pledge to sign the Petition for Auto-Supply Chain Jobs sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, the Mayors and Municipalities Automotive Coalition, and the United Steel Workers.

In this disastrous economic meltdown, the workers in the auto and supplier plants and dealerships of our country are losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands. And the proud UAW has made painful yet patriotic wage concessions in an effort to save America's most important industry.

I want Barack Obama's plan to save the industry and revive manufacturing to succeed—so I'm stepping up to do a small thing: I pledge that my next car will be made in the good old U.S.A.

Now, I know that for some of us, buying American may feel like a sacrifice. But a Malibu matches the quality of a Honda these days. And even Americans lusting after a BMW will be amazed at the performance of today's small Cadillac. And the Ford Escape hybrid gets mileage comparable with the Prius. If we all do this together, we can make American cars cool again—and give American companies the time to invest in a new generation of fuel-efficient competitive automobiles.

This recession is a national emergency—as serious as 9-11. Back then no one was asked to do anything—except our soldiers. This time, it is our economic future that's at stake.

GM, Ford and Chrysler sold 6.3 million domestically-produced cars and light trucks in 2008, two million fewer than in 2007. Auto analysis expect that sales will drop to 4.4 million this year.

A typical assembly plant can build about 250,000 vehicles and will employ about 2,500 workers. If we collectively bought 1 million additional vehicles this year, that would save the equivalent of about four assembly plants and the jobs of 10,000 workers.

In addition, every job in Big Three domestic auto assembly creates an additional nine jobs in supplier industries and communities. So, if 1 million new buyers purchase domestic vehicles, it would create or save an estimated 100,000 jobs, based on data from the UAW and independent research groups.

We all have to step up. If you agree, take the pledge, and then, if enough of us do it, we can revive America.

After a nationwide bus tour, a Capitol Hill Teach In on Auto Jobs on May 19 will feature national economists, labor and business leaders, Members of Congress, local elected officials and everyday workers. MSNBC's Ed Schultz will lead off discussion of principles for revitalizing the auto industry by supporting American jobs and communities. To learn more about how the auto manufacturing industry impacts local communities, visit www.americanmanufacturing.org.

A personal note: At 6 a.m. one day last week I was sitting in the DMV auto inspection line, hoping my 1990 Plymouth Laser would make it through one more inspection. Other people in the line complained about how slow it was moving. They're laying people off here too, one guy explained. And those layoffs, as in every city and state in America, are due to lowered tax revenues due to growing unemployment and the deepening recession.

As I sat idling in the DMV line I knew that, even if it passed inspection, my old car (which has no air bags or anti-lock brakes), was putting more carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air than it did when it was new. I realized that my frugality in nursing along this old car (which has served me well) was not only likely to kill me, it was helping to kill the planet and the economy.

Amazingly, my old Plymouth passed. But I drove to work that morning grateful to have a job to go to—and resolved that it was time to buy a new car. And the car will be made in the U.S.A.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't make the decision out of altruism. Like most Americans, I really enjoy getting a new car. Some of my green friends try to pretend they don't need a car. But they all have at least one, maybe more. And most of us—even the greenest of greens—really enjoy driving a new car, especially when circumstances push them over the edge. Many of my friends with kids who have left the nest, for example, have been thrilled to graduate back from their minivan to anything that doesn't feel like driving a bathtub. Like them, I had just handed myself the excuse to start car shopping.

As many of us who can, let's pledge to buy a new, fuel efficient car made by the UAW.

Auto Bailout Blues: Spin, Lies and Layoffs

OurFuture.org Staff — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:04:15 -0400

The Case for Kenosha

OurFuture.org Staff — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:41:12 -0400

Who's Afraid of Industrial Policy?

OurFuture.org Staff — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:41:12 -0400

Why GM May Go Bankrupt

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:40:45 -0400

GM to American Workers: Pay for Your Own Execution

Leo Gerard — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:50:20 -0400

The proposition General Motors has presented to the United Auto Workers and American taxpayers in its latest restructuring plan is simple: You must pay for your own execution.

GM, which already took $15.4 billion in bailout money, wants another $11.6 billion and is offering in return this deal: It will close 16 of its American manufacturing plants, terminate 21,000 of its factory workers and double the cars it builds in low-wage Mexico, China and South Korea and ships back to the U.S. to sell.

There it is: GM is demanding that Americans pay to send their own jobs overseas.

In the world where corporate executives live, the one in which boards of directors grant CEOs multi-million dollar bonuses even after companies tank, maybe that’s not a perverse proposition.

But in the world where real Americans live, we’ve had enough of this crap. Decades of foolish tax and other federal policies that encouraged American manufacturing firms to throw Americans out of work and expatriate were bad enough. To expect American taxpayers to bankroll GM’s plans to layoff American workers and move their jobs overseas goes too far.

We’re taking a stand. It’s gotta stop here. The United Steelworkers (USW), the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) and the Mayors and Municipalities Automotive Coalition (MMAC) are conducting an 11-state, 32-city protest bus tour. At each stop so far, hundreds of people have cheered our message: “Keep it Made in America.” And they’ve signed our petition calling for support of a simple idea: Buy it here; build it here. We will present the petitions at a teach-in conference in Washington, D.C. on May 19 when we will explain to elected officials why GM’s plan fails America and why they must require GM to submit a new plan supporting American jobs.

As much as for the UAW, this is a life and death struggle for the USW, American manufacturing, and for millions of Americans in good-paying jobs. Without manufacturing, America is in danger of attempting to subsist on an economy based on nothing more than amorphous derivatives, credit default swaps and Ponzi schemes. The Steelworkers represent hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs depend on the auto industry, from steelworkers who make the steel, to the rubber workers who make the tires, to the glass workers who make the windshields, to the paper workers who make the glossy pamphlets.

Altogether, more than 7 million paychecks depend on the U.S. auto industry, including healthcare, education, service, retail and other jobs. This bus tour is about preserving those jobs, all of those jobs.

In just the past eight months of this recession, caused in huge part by recklessness on Wall Street, this country has lost 1.2 million manufacturing jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. GM cannot take tax dollars to slash more. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich agrees. Here’s what he told the Washington Post, “. . . it raises fundamental questions about the purpose of bailing out these big companies. If GM is going to do more of its production overseas, then why exactly are we saving GM?”

It’s not as if it’s impossible for a U.S. auto company to manufacture here. Ford Motor Co., which is not taking any bailout money, is investing $500 million in retooling its Michigan Truck plant outside Detroit so that it can make small cars that it will sell worldwide, including its next-generation, battery-electric Focus. And Chrysler, which is getting bailout money, has made a deal with Fiat under which the Italian car company will manufacture a small car in one of Chrysler’s U.S. assembly facilities, which, along with other long-term commitments, will eventually create 4,000 U.S. jobs.

On the first day of the bus tour, I was joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, actor Danny Glover, the angriest mayor in the U.S., Virg Bernero of Lansing, and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, among others.

The Rev. Jackson drew cheers as he remarked that somehow we’ve given billions to the “banksters,” yet somehow we’re still hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs and homes each month. He called for a moratorium on foreclosures and plant closings, and I’m with him.

Bernero is tired of Wall Street describing his father, a retired auto worker, as a legacy cost. His father is a human being, a senior citizen, who worked hard every day of his life and returned home exhausted from an honest day’s work. Now, however, Wall Street thinks it’s fine to reduce him to a sub-human term and cheat him out of the retirement benefits he earned.

Bernero’s father made things, real things that could be touched, held in the hand – not derivatives, not figments of the imagination that turned out to have less than no value at all.

Now Wall Street and GM must be made to understand that Main Street isn’t going to take it anymore. We’re not going to continue allowing corporate America to outsource the American dream. Bernero said it right: “This is America’s fight.”

Join us. Sign the petition. We have no intention of buying our own noose. We intend to win this fight.

What's Good for General Motors Is... Never Mind

Robert Borosage — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:29:54 -0400

Is the Obama administration saving General Motors or is it saving auto industry jobs in the U.S.? Is it saving GM as an American brand or GM as an American manufacturer?

These aren't academic questions. General Motors, which has been buttressed by $15.2 billion in loans from taxpayers with more to come, has been circulating a plan for its recovery which envisions it doubling the number of cars that it builds in China, Korea and Mexico and sells in the U.S. According to a United Auto Workers analysis, GM projects opening the equivalent of four plants abroad to build cars for the U.S. market, while closing more than that here at home.

Labor costs in those countries are far lower. While paying a U.S. autoworker with benefits cost about $54 an hour (before the massive concessions), a South Korean worker earns about $22 an hour, a Mexican worker earns less than $10 an hour and some Chinese workers can earn as little as $3 an hour. This may make sense for GM's bottom line, but it makes no sense for American taxpayers.

Although GM is an American brand, it is a global manufacturer. What's good for GM is no longer necessarily good for America.

This isn't the first time the administration's efforts to rescue the U.S. economy have run into the reality of globalization. The furor over the bonuses paid to AIG executives distracted from the real scandal: that $93 billion in taxpayer money was funneled not simply to Goldman Sachs, which is bad enough, but to a parade of Europe's leading banks—Germany's Deutsche Bank, France's Societe Generale, UK's Barclays. No explanation was made on why U.S. taxpayers had to pick up the entire tab.

Knowing that the U.S. can't afford to lift the entire global economy, Obama went to the G-20 meetings intent on getting Europeans to adopt bold deficit-financed recovery plans like that of the U.S. But, led by the Germans, the Europeans pretty much stiffed the president they so admire. That left the U.S. to do the lifting, and rack up the debts, dangerously weakening the recovery effort.

Saving good jobs in America can't be done simply by rescuing GM or Chrysler. The Europeans get this. The Italians provided $1.7 billion in aid to Fiat, on the condition that the plants stay open in Italy. France loaned $8.5 billion to its big three automakers, but again with pledges to retain jobs in France.

The U.S., however, is the champion and the protector of the global market. Americans have served as the consumers of last resort for the world. We've largely spurned industrial policy—other than that associated with the military industrial complex, agribusiness and finance. We've followed—from Reagan to Rubin—a high-dollar policy that made imported goods a bargain and U.S. exports expensive. We've allowed our global corporations and banks to define our trade policy, while borrowing $2 billion a day to cover record trade deficits. As William Greider summarizes, we've assumed that aiding multinationals in the global economy served the national interest. "That is how America became a debtor nation with its steadily weakening industrial base and stagnant wages. That condition became the predicate that led to financial crisis."

Now those days are over. Our trading partners must be put on notice that the old order isn't coming back. The U.S. can no longer afford to borrow unsustainable amounts to buy stuff made abroad with the jobs our companies have moved there. We need to lower the dollar and balance our trade. We need to build things in America once more.

Saving GM won't work without broader changes. Export-led countries like Germany and China must be challenged to generate internal demand (the Chinese have done far more of this than our European allies) to help reverse the global downturn and as a first step to a new and sustainable growth model. Taxpayer dollars should be conditioned on the maintenance of good jobs here—rather than subsidize their export abroad. We should be leading, as Obama has done, global efforts to help developing nations recover and lift their own standards in the process.

Demanding that taxpayer dollars go to save jobs here will be denounced as protectionist. But it is squandering billions in public monies on companies that then move jobs abroad that will fuel a protectionist fury.

Save General Motors or save an auto industry and jobs in America? The president and the Congress have to decide. It ain't necessarily the same thing.

The Reckoning -- Thousands of Dealers To Be Cut This Week

OurFuture.org Staff — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:23:34 -0400

Breaking Down the Auto Bailout

OurFuture.org Staff — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:33:26 -0400

What's Good for Chrysler vs. What's Good for Wall Street

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:12:42 -0400