The president of the United Automobile Workers union, Ron Gettelfinger, cut right to the chase when he announced last week that autoworkers were prepared to sacrifice job security, funding for retiree healthcare and other contract provisions to help salvage their fast-sinking industry.
"Concessions -- I cringe at that word," he said. "But now, why hide it? That's what we did."
Say what you will about the role of the union in exacerbating Detroit's financial troubles, one thing stands out: Blue-collar workers are taking it in the shorts as part of their employers' efforts to secure some bailout bucks from Uncle Sam.
I don't recall white-collar workers on Wall Street stepping up with similar concessions in return for their companies' receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer cash.
"There is absolutely no excuse for a bailout without significant sacrifices by all stakeholders," said Robert Reich, who served as Labor secretary under President Clinton and is now a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley.
"We should be making everyone on Wall Street jump through hoops, not just the automakers."
This isn't exactly an apples-to-apples situation. Wall Street has been hammered by a credit crunch resulting primarily from all those radioactive mortgages on companies' books. The auto industry just isn't selling enough cars.
Solving Wall Street's woes, in theory, involves pumping a lot of money into the financial system and hoping the credit crunch goes away. Detroit's problems are more systemic and will require more extensive triage efforts.
That said, a bailout's a bailout, at least as far as taxpayers are concerned. So why are we holding blue-collar workers to a different standard than their white-collar kin?
Put another way, how many people can even list the terms of the recently announced multibillion-dollar bailout for financial colossus Citigroup Inc. and what the company agreed to do in return for our generosity?
"Most Americans don't understand -- or don't want to understand -- the complicated deal we made with Citigroup," Reich said. "But when you talk about General Motors, it's much more concrete. People know what a car is."
For that reason, he said, lawmakers in Washington have been more assertive about wringing concessions from the auto industry, whereas the heads of Wall Street firms essentially got by with slaps on the wrist.
