Today, Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) have come to a tentative agreement that will result in thousands of quality manufacturing jobs at a critical time in our economy. Ford has stated they plan to add another 5,750 U.S. jobs in addition to the 7,000 they announced in January, which will in turn create a ripple effect of new jobs for other manufacturers and businesses throughout the supply chain. Many workers and their families will benefit from these additional jobs.

Both large and small manufacturers are essential to our economy and the recovery.  The United States is still the top manufacturing economy in the world and today’s announcement, which will create jobs, will make the manufacturing sector stronger.

Jay Timmons is president and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers.

In pushing the Employee Free Choice Act, organized labor says they are trying to protect employees against being threatened and silenced by employers.

And if you disagree, they threaten and try to silence you. The latest:

Teamsters President Urges Local TV Stations To Pull Commercials

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today said that anti-union commercials running on local television stations are false and should be taken down.

Anti-worker groups funded by big corporations are spreading misinformation about the Employee Free Choice Act, which is expected to be introduced in Congress soon.

A corporate front group called the “Employee Freedom Action Committee” paid for blatantly false television commercials in Arkansas, Nebraska and North Dakota.

“These ads are dishonest and should be taken down now,” Hoffa said. “It does not serve the public interest to run commercials that lie about legislation important to working families. These ads are funded by big corporations that don’t care about employee freedom, they just care that their employees don’t join unions

Rather than engage in the debate, Hoffa tries to browbeat others into silencing his opponents. It’s no wonder workers fear the Employee Free Choice Act and the loss of the secret ballot. The secret ballot protects them from union organizers whose method of operation is shouting, censoring and bullying.

In the last few weeks we’ve seen the head of Change to Win threaten companies with political retaliation if they oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, and the head of the United Auto Workers play the race card to silence his critics. Now the Teamsters’ Hoffa wants opponents to be kept off the airwaves.

Fundamentally, these union leaders have a real problem with freedom.

Brian Worth, chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (the NAM is a member), responds to the op-ed by UAW’s Ron Gettelfinger we wrote about below.

From today’s Detroit News, “Publicizing labor votes violates workers’ privacy”

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger crossed the line when he injected race into the debate over whether American workers should have the right to vote in private during union organizing elections (“Worker rights bill deserves debate, vote,” Feb. 6). By comparing opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act to the Southern senators who blocked civil rights legislation in the 1960s, Gettelfinger undermines his own credibility and does a disservice to the labor movement.

Let’s be clear about what the Employee Free Choice Act does. The bill would replace secret ballot elections with a card check scheme where the votes of workers would be made public to their employers, co-workers and union organizers.

Without the protection of the secret ballot, there would be no guarantee that workers could express their true wishes on the personal decision of whether to have a union in their workplace. Labor leaders want Congress to pass card check because the bill will make it easier for labor organizers to recruit workers into joining unions.

But the American people, including rank-and-file union members, understand the importance of the secret ballot and are opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act by overwhelming margins.

In a recent poll conducted for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, 73 percent of union workers opposed the proposal. This helps explain why President Barack Obama has backed away from card check in recent weeks and why Gettelfinger is desperately playing the race card to defend it.

That’s right. The political support for the Employee Free Choice Act is weaker than advocates hoped for. (See this Hill article, “Contentious labor bill struggles behind the scenes“)

Besides being an odious line of argument, Gettelfinger’s rhetoric is also foolish in the big political picture. The UAW is a supplicant right now, asking members of Congress for help in supporting the domestic auto manufacturers. It’s not smart politics to be arguing, “Hey, you Senators! You unreconstructed Dixiecrat racists — Give us money!”

In the public debate over the Employee Free Choice Act, union leaders have recently favored this line of argument: “Opponents are LYING. They’re LYING. Liars!”

Now, Ron Gettelfinger of the United Auto Workers has added a different argument: “And they’re racists too!”

That’s the inescapable message from Gettelfinger’s Feb. 6 op-ed in the Detroit News, “Worker rights bill deserves debate, vote.”

The effort to stop social progress was led by Dixiecrats — Southern Democrats who stood for the privileged elite against the will of a majority of the American people. Today, their spiritual heirs have changed political parties, but they still reward the fortunate few who hold wealth and power and trample the needs of everyone else.

In December, a group of Republican senators used a filibuster to block legislation authorizing bridge loans for the U.S. auto industry, despite majority support from both houses of Congress. They were unwilling to give a penny to American companies and workers without imposing conditions that would effectively legislate our union out of existence.

A minority made up of many of the same senators is now threatening another filibuster — this time against an effort to expand workplace rights. They have signaled they will attempt to block the Employee Free Choice Act, which is supported by President Barack Obama and majorities in the House and Senate.

Ah, we see. Today’s opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act are the moral equivalent of the Senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act.

We doubt that Gettelfinger wants an open discussion of business versus labor’s historical record on civil rights (Davis Bacon lives on, after all). No, what this appalling op-ed is about is playing the race card, attempting to silence critics by casting them as bigots.

But then, the Employee Free Choice Act is an attempt to silence employees who might oppose the unionization of a business. Intimidation is the consistent tactic in both cases.

Columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin is the harshest, most unremitting journalistic critic of the federal involvement/aid to various sectors of the economy (like so many, indiscriminately calling them all “bailouts”), and the UAW is one of her many targets. For all the many good points she makes about UAW golf courses, spending and corruption today in her syndicated column, “The UAW’s money-squandering corruptocracy,” we’d also like to hightlight this one:

Curious about how the UAW will be spending my money and yours, I sifted through the union’s most recent annual report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor (which you can find at unionreports.gov). Who knew hitting the links was so central to the business of making cars?

Malkin was able to write an informative and damning column because of reports made available through the Department of Labor. She and other journalists, the public, and union members have all benefited from Labor’s concerted efforts to improve union transparency, most carried out through the Office of Labor Management Standards and including such sites as unionreports.gov.  With all major players in the U.S. economy under increased scrutiny and unions hoping to create a more static, less responsive labor market through the Employee Free Choice Act, maintaining oversight and transparency are critical.

Yet there are many indications that the Department of Labor in the next Administration will head in the other direction, the wrong direction. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a recent editorial, “Quantum of Solis“:

From day one of the Obama era, union leaders want the lights dimmed on how they spend their mandatory member dues. The AFL-CIO’s representative on the Obama transition team for Labor is Deborah Greenfield, and we’re told her first inspection stop was the Office of Labor-Management Standards, or OLMS, which monitors union compliance with federal law.

Ms. Greenfield declined to comment, citing Obama transition rules, but her mission is clear enough. The AFL-CIO’s formal “recommendations” to the Obama team call for the realignment of “the allocation of budgetary resources” from OLMS to other Labor agencies. The Secretary should “temporarily stay all financial reporting regulations that have not gone into effect,” and “revise or rescind the onerous and unreasonable new requirements,” such as the LM-2 and T-1 reporting forms. The explicit goal is to “restore the Department of Labor to its mission and role of advocating for, protecting and advancing the interests of workers.” In other words, while transparency is fine for business, unions are demanding a pass for themselves.

Along similar lines, Mark Tapscott of The Examiner asks if the (very vocal) liberal advocates of transparency and open government will speak up on behalf of the OLMS and Labor’s transparency initiatives.

Organized labor’s leaders sure hold idiosyncratic views about secrecy, don’t they? With the Employee Free Choice Act, they would destroy secret-ballot elections so organizers can force unwilling workers into unions. But in attacking Department of Labor union transparency rules, labor bosses would restore and extend secrecy into union operations so they can spend members’ dues however they want.

Both issues — the Employee Free Choice Act and union transparency — are early tests of an Obama Administration and its views on accountability, transparency and the importance of a dynamic market economy. We certainly hope the decisionmaking is carried out in a transparent way.

A look around at the coverage:

Reuters, “U.S. automakers rush to finish plans for Congress“:

DETROIT/WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – U.S. automakers rushed to submit restructuring plans demanded by Congress before lawmakers reopen debate on a $25 billion bailout the industry says it needs to survive.

Under fire for fighting fuel standards for years, the Detroit-based automakers are expected to present plans that call for them to build more fuel-efficient cars, ax unpopular brands, cap executive compensation and restructure their agreements with the United Auto Workers union.

Associated Press, “Auto Workers to hold emergency meeting on bailout“:

NEW YORK (Associated Press) – Local United Auto Workers leaders from across the country will hold an emergency meeting in Detroit on Wednesday to discuss concessions the union could make to help auto companies get government loans.

UAW leaders called the meeting Monday night in an e-mail, obtained by The Associated Press, to local union presidents and bargaining chairmen.

Among the subjects to be discussed at the meeting will be the possibility of restructuring the union-administered health care fund so that the automakers can delay payments to the multibillion-dollar fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The union leaders will also discuss potentially eliminating the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers keep receiving most of their pay.

• Marketwatch, “Auto execs prepare for second run at Washington“
• Bloomberg, “Canadian Autoworkers’ Jobs Would ‘Take a Hit’ in US Bailout“
• BusinessWeek, “Auto Workers to hold emergency meeting on bailout“ 

Finally,  Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne pounds the class warfare drums in his op-ed today, “Crunch Time for the Big 3,” making the comment, “A hideous class bigotry has disfigured this debate.”

You can’t have bigotry without bigots, and to Dionne those bigots are the people who have criticized the UAW and organized labor for exorbitant contracts.

Look, there’s enough blame to go around here, but you sure shouldn’t exempt organized labor from criticism, and criticism does not equal bigotry. Consider the UAW e-mail cited above: “The union leaders will also discuss potentially eliminating the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers keep receiving most of their pay.” Job banks?

Dionne’s comment is even more distasteful when you look at the sentence that immediately precedes it: “If saving our auto industry means moving GM workers ever closer to Wal-Mart wages, the bailout isn’t worth doing.”

Implicitly demeaning Wal-Mart workers as so unworthy that just moving “ever closer” to their wages — what, 1 percent, 2 percent closer? — justifies shuttering the Detroit automakers is as good of an example of “hideous class bigotry” you’ll find in this debate.

The Senate Banking Committee holds a hearing today at 3 p.m., “Examining the State of the Domestic Automobile Industry.” Following a statement by Senate Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the second panel witnesses are:

• Mr. Ron Gettelfinger , President, International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America
• Mr. Alan Mulally , President and Chief Executive Officer, Ford Motor Company
• Mr. Robert Nardelli , Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler LLC
• Mr. G. Richard Wagoner , Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, General Motors
• Dr. Peter Morici , Professor, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

 And the latest news…

• Auto executives take case for bailout to Congress Reuters
• Automakers head to Capitol Hill to plead case  MarketWatch
• Democrats propose $25 billion in loans for carmakers Los Angeles Times

Meanwhile, the Detroit News leads with this story, “Gettelfinger: No wage or benefits cuts,” based on the union leader’s prepared testimony from the hearing. Gettelfinger:

We do not believe there is any justification for conditioning assistance to the Detroit-based auto companies on further deep cuts in wages and benefits for active and retired workers. We would also note that in the cases where the Treasury Department has acted to rescue financial institutions, it has only imposed restrictions on executive compensation. It has never mandated cuts in wages or benefits for rank-and-file workers and retirees. Thus, there is no basis for singling out the auto industry for different treatment.

Gettelfinger also rebuts arguments for a bankruptcy as the appropriate approach. Again, from his prepared testimony:

Consumers will not purchase vehicles from a company that has filed for bankruptcy. And bankrupt auto companies would not be able to obtain ‘debtor-in-possession’ financing to enable them to continue operations. Thus, the stark reality is that these companies would be forced into a Chapter 7 liquidation, with their operations ceasing entirely and their assets sold for pennies on dollar.

• Washington Post, “House to Consider Auto Aid“
• Washingon Post, “Federal Bailout May Include Credit Card, Loan Companies“
• Workday Minnesota (a union-oriented publication), “UAW president urges action to aid auto industry“
• USA Today, “Pelosi calls for auto industry help to be on House agenda“
• Heritage Foundation, “Morning Bell: No ‘Change’ Coming to Corporate Bailout Parade“
• ABC The Note, “Obama Gambles on Bailout Bill“
• Washington Examiner editorial, “No Bailout Without Big Changes in Detroit“

We’re sure seeing a lot of that last sentiment, sometimes with the criticism focused on the unions and high labor costs, sometimes focused on past errors of Detroit.

The NAM’s position was expressed in a statement last week by NAM President and CEO John Engler:

The automotive sector is the country’s largest manufacturing industry, and it accounts for approximately 20 percent of our manufacturing GDP. Automakers are actively restructuring and modernizing to become more competitive while at the same time meeting new standards imposed by Congress. But the fact is that this evolution takes time and money that the automakers just don’t have right now.
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Financial and market instability, an ongoing credit squeeze, and closed capital markets have drained the liquidity from automakers’ operations.  Auto sales have plummeted along with consumer demand and confidence, really cutting back on automakers’ revenue. A partial or total failure of a major auto manufacturer would have a massive economic ripple effect on the entire U.S. economy. And the serious economic troubles affect far more than just the major auto companies. It’s the manufacturers, the suppliers, the dealers and all the way down the chain.
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The auto industry in America cannot be sustained under these extraordinary economic conditions without additional support.
 

• Dow-Jones, “Manufacturers Call On Congress To Approve Loans To Auto Cos“: “WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The National Association of Manufacturers Wednesday urged the U.S. Congress to approve a federal loan program that would provide up to $50 billion to the bruised automotive industry…’Now is the time for Congress to keep their promise to provide these loans,’ NAM President John Engler said in a prepared statement.”
• The Detroit News, “Groups back auto industry loans“: “WASHINGTON — Direct loans to the auto industry drew additional support Wednesday from two influential groups, the United Auto Workers and the National Association of Manufacturers. “
• Detroit Free Press, “Federal cash to aid electric R&D“: “A top Chrysler executive Wednesday said multibillion-dollar loans to the U.S. auto industry would help automakers, such as Chrysler, come to the market quicker with electric cars…’I think it will allow everybody to bring electric cars, plug-in hybrids, hybrid cars, even range-extended hybrids. All of those vehicles will be accelerated,’ Jim Press, a Chrysler president and vice chairman, said after a speech to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit.”

NAM President and John Engler’s statement follows:

Manufacturing is the mainstay of the U.S. economy, providing a primary impetus for economic growth, and accounting for 75 percent of export growth this year. The automobile industry is a key to U.S. manufacturing; it is imperative to our nation’s economic future that this vital sector be strong and competitive.
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