Maybe my ignorance has whacked me again: I haven’t been here at the lake very long and the posting process is largely a mystery to me. I thought the main articles were called “diaries”.

I’ve tried to watch the hearings, news, postings here, etc. on the subject of the auto bridge loan. I’ve concluded that Gettlefinger is the most straight talking and brightest bulb in the whole damned bunch! He does a fantastic job of seeing into the dirty manipulations of all the factions that would do the UAW in. Maybe Obama should consider him for Secretary of Labor.

I appreciate all your contributions, Sunshine. Take Good Care Of Yourself, you belong to us…(the pups).

pup34

Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor instead of taking their first blow from it.

Gettelfinger also tells us that Volkswagon is getting financial help from theri government AND OUR government.

Lets take Volkswagon, Volkswagon right now is asking their government to give them assistance. Our government has already given them over 500 million, ya, 500 million dollars to locate in the state of Tennessee. So their going to get money from their government to help them. Now how does that help our industry for us to subsidize our competition? What about health care? What about Free Trade Agreements? What about lack of an industrial policy?

Hey, I heard on Detroit’s ch 7 news that Canada is going to help out our domistic auto companies. At least we hear some really good news. After all we have done for the world some things come back.

Question 2
Reporter: There was no agreement last night. I know that you said you felt there was a double standard there but now that if the companies, 1 or 2 of the companies go bankrupt there’s a chance that your contracts with them could be null and void and that they could take that standard at you when they don’t have to deal with the actual contract because their bankruptcy. So how do you deal with it then?

Gettelfinger: Look, we’ve said all along bankruptcy is not an option and it won’t just be one company that’s impacted. It’ll be 2, 3, others, the supply bases, they’ll all be impacted, every auto manufacture in this country. Some much worse than others. That is the very reason that we have tirelessly. These officers, our board, our local union leadership, our membership, have worked tirelessly to try to bring a successful conclusion to this.

Question 3
Reporter: If they do go bankrupt what will you do?

Gettelfinger: If they go bankrupt, let me tell you, they won’t just go bankrupt, they will go into liquidation. We have said that. We have bankruptcy practitioners made it inequity clear to us. I think that’s one thing that Senator Corker truly understands that bankruptcy is not an option here.

Question 4
Reporter: Ron you mentioned the White House statement when you started out your conference here. I’ve been told by my station that while you talking that more bulletins have been running on the wires, including one that says the Treasury Department is ready to prevent the collapse of the Detroit 3 automakers because rescue efforts in Congress have failed. And that is coming from Treasury Secretary Paulson. So my question is two fold, what’s your reaction to that? Does that mean everything that has happened in Congress and in the Senate last night is now mute and your starting fresh?
2. Does that mean you have to be in a position to negotiate with the White House and the Bush administration over terms that are acceptable or do you fall back on the agreement that Democrats and the White House had yesterday before all this new business with Senator Corker?

Gettelfinger: Well first of all I don’t think that we would be in negotiations with the White House. We’re not in negotiations with the House of Representatives. It was only the Republican caucus in the Senate that forced us into negotiations with the Senate. Secondly, I think it’s great news. The response that we’ve been getting out of the both out of the White House and out of Treasury. So we’re prepared to move forward. That still means there’s a lot of work to be done here. I’m not even sure what this means, how much their talking about, any terms or conditions that are associated with it. But I do know this. It’s important for the White House to exert it’s influence to get this money released as quickly as possible. We cannot afford for there to be a run on the banks, if you will, at these companies. And that means simply the trade credits, the suppliers are shortening their terms, are wanting cash on delivery.

Question 5
Reporter: Just by way of follow up: If the White House says we want to negotiate some terms, you would facilitate that?
Gettelfinger: I, I tried so hard. I don’t believe the White House would ask that. That’s my personal opinion. I think that the White House recognizes that we’ve been very responsible from the stand point of organized labor. And look, every company that testified in front of the Congress talked about the competitive agreement that we had negotiated with them and it was a matter of phasing things in. But what they were saying to us last night would be like saying to General Motors in your plan you say your going to take out X number of dealers, you have to take those dealers out by this date and that’s it. It ludicrous. So it’s a very complicated process and I think the White House understands that and Treasury does. But we’ll just have to wait and see what comes in front of us and we will try as I indicated earlier we going to work tirelessly to make sure that this happens and we recognize that we’re going to have to go with additional restructuring.

Question 6
Reporter: Are wage cuts an option here with talks with the White House and with Congress, again, even though you’ve got parity? with the non union shops.
Gettelfinger: Well, When we say parity, I’m not even sure what that means to be honest with you. And that’s one of the discussions that I had with Senator Corker. You’ve got different facilities working under different agreements. What do we say? And oh by the way, if we could, let me just divert a minute. You heard the term viable out of the Congress a lot. Lets take Volkswagen, Volkswagen right now is asking their government to give them assistance. Our government has already given them over 500 million, ya, 500 million dollars to locate in the state of Tennessee. So their going to get money from their government to help them. Now how does that help our industry for us to subsidize our competition? What about health care? What about Free Trade Agreements? What about lack of an industrial policy? What about is having the most open market in the world. How do we, how do we as a nation compete? And the sad thing here is in these discussions it appears that there are those on the Republican side, and I say those because it certainly doesn’t apply to all of them, and we know who they are, that believe workers are expendable, that wages mean nothing and oh, by the way, they are going to be getting a raise by January the 1st. But they used tax payer dollars to subsidize our competition. We can’t, we can’t operate this way as a country.

Question 7
Reporter: So wage cuts is not an option?
Gettelfinger: I’m very careful what I say. There are other ways within our contract to be very competitive. These Vice Presidents behind me have all been working extremely hard. We gave a commitment, we gave a commitment to these companies, to the
people of America what we were going to do. We have all been sitting down working immediately to get out from under the jobs programs. We have already engaged our team on the VEBA because we would stretch out the payments. But then when the Senate got involved we didn’t even know if we needed to keep that commitment any more. So for me to, it’s premature for me to say what it is we would do as a Union. But I can say this quality, safety, productivity, we’re there. We’ve got some plants that we need to up grade, we’re going to do that. We have been working hard forever. It’s just easy to take the Union and blame us for everything. And as you can see, some of those in the Senate who were quick to scuttle this plan want to say that it’s the fault of the UAW. All they want to do is say wait a minute, workers shouldn’t have a voice in their work place. You know Union is the only instrument that gives working men and women any form of equity and justice in the work place. It gives them a voice at the table. And it’s very clear that there are those who would do away with that tonight if they could.

Question 8
Reporter: Do you have any indications from the companies on how long you have? I mean we don’t hear something from Treasury by the end of the day or the Federal Reserve by the end of the day, does some balls start get rolling?
Gettelfinger: I’ve had discussions with both Mr. Wagoner this morning and Mr. Lasorta. The bigger concern right now is we need to
get the commitment, they know when they make their payments. But we need to satisfy the suppliers that there is going to be a tomorrow. I think the run on the banks is a much bigger issue than anybody here realizes. If suppliers believe that they can’t operate, what are they going to do? Their not going to deliver the goods. If they don’t deliver the goods then the plants go down. We can’t have that so the urgency of the situation is to hit the supply base. General Motors have made it very clear they can not make it out of the month of December. And Chrysler, their very close with General Motors.

Question 9
Reporter: Is it within a week with General Motors? What are they telling you?
Gettelfinger: Some of the conversations I have with General Motors obviously is confidential. We have creditability, we’re going to protect that. Let me just leave it at this we need action sooner rather than later.

Question 10
Reporter: Is there anything the UAW can do to help them limp into January if they have to?
Gettelfinger: We did our research department if we work for nothing. You got to remember we’re 10% of the labor cost. If we worked for nothing it wouldn’t help them limp into January.

Question 11
Reporter: Is there a point in time that with the two tiered wages that you would reach parity with the foreign transplants down the road 2010 or at some point and what point do you reach that? In other words if you were just quiveling over months with the Senators, the Republicans last night at what point do you reach that point of parity?

Gettelfinger: With the down turn in the economy right now vehicle sales fallen from 16% to 10.8% or two months in a row, it’s kind of difficult to answer that and the reason is we have 3,000 entry level workers at General Motors who will all be laid off on February the 1st. Those 3,000 entry level workers were helping to level that playing field immediately and that’s one of the complex things about the industry that I don’t believe a lot of the folks in the Senate really understood.

Question 12:
Reporter: Would you say this was anything said in Congress this week to come back. Was there any talk about that? Is there any window of opportunity there where something could be done?

Gettelfinger: You see. What’s was going to have to happen here if I understand it correctly we needed 59 votes for cloture. We didn’t have it in the Senate but we did have the majority in the Senate but since the new bill, er, amendment had been introduced that would have meant the House would have to come back and end up going into a compromise committee. So in effect, the minority in the Republican party that put up a wall here made it very, very difficult for everybody involved. And oh by the way, you know it’s the Christmas holiday season coming up and I don’t think they were real happy about having to come back to Washington anyway cause I did hear a lot of talk about flights back home and all of that. So I think the President working with Treasury will now need to decide what it is that their going to do and how long they want to tied the companies over. I think the White House demonstrated by working with Senator Reed and Speaker Pelosi that they wanted to have this thing worked out. They did not just want to pass it off to the next administration. And I think they demonstrated that by their actions. It’s just unfortunate that the Republican minority decided that they wanted to go against their own President, that they wanted to go against what had been compromised in a bill that would have been good for all of us involved.

Question 13
Reporter: Ron, About the letter you shared, er the e-mail that you showed from the Republican Congress, in your view to what extent was this political payback for Democratic support historically, or UAW support of Democratic candidates? Do you think they were getting even?

Gettelfinger: Were they getting even? I don’t know. I think two factors come into play here and I think one is, more than they fact is, or maybe there coupled together. One of them is we are an effective political organization. But more importantly were Union. And you know, the right wing in this country had basically painted the word Union to be a very negative word. We’re also up against the National Right to Work Legal Defense Organization who we don’t even know who they are because we can’t find out who their contributors are. So all of that comes into play. But there’s no question and I think at the end of the day who was the minority in the Senate representing? Regardless of their motivation? They thought perhaps they could have a twofer her maybe, you know, pierce the heart of organized labor while representing the foreign brands. And if you just look at Alabama we went through this before. And by the way, our country, our tax payers have put over $3 billion that we know of, and this is money on the top, to subsidize the foreign brands to come here. They weren’t asked to pay a penny of that money back and the tax payers actually weren’t asked to approve it. And again that’s state by state. I once again want to go through Alabama here. If you look at Hyundai they got $252 million dollars Toyota got $229 million and Honda got $158. million and Mercedes got $253 million dollars. That’s what we know. And I want to go back to the Peter Carmelis (sp?) editorial he put out in addition to the $259. million dollars, they trained the workers, they cleared the land, they put in the utilities, they agreed to buy 2,500 automobiles and on top of all of that they gave them land worth the value of the plant they were going to be building. So these are just numbers we know. So I think, I think enough said on that. It’s pretty clear to us what’s going on here. And by the way, we’ve received a lot of calls from the workers at the foreign transplants operations who are very worried about what was going to happen here because they appreciate the UAW. They may not be organized and they may be afraid to sign a Union card but they see what’s happening to us and they know it’s going an impact on them. And as I indicated to you Toyota has already introduced in one of the papers here, had quite an extensive article in it a 5 year plan talking about how they were going to reduce their costs. Ok, anything else before we finish up here real quick?

Question 14
Reporter: Did you say that was $253 million

Gettelfinger: Yes

Question 15
Reporter: Ron, let me ask you about one final question about the Bush administration. Even though they were in support of the bipartisan bill they were stead fatly opposed to using any of the TARP money. Now they appear to be doing an about face on this. Do you think that’s because this President doesn’t want to leave office with a legacy of letting the auto industry and the manufacturing base fall under his watch, that he’d rather leave office with a legacy of I did the right thing and helped them out in my final days? What are your thoughts on that?

Gettelfinger: Well I’m sure that’s part of it. But I also think the other piece of it would be that he recognized that Speaker Pelosi was willing to agree to get off of TARP and go into the Section 136 money and that was what he wanted done. She attempted to do that. And I think he recognizes also that it was the minority in his party that went against his negotiated legislation if you will, compromised legislation. So I think all of that comes into play. But this is an opportunity for the President to step back, take a second look that’s why I started this press conference off with saying how pleased we were with the positive statements that were coming out of the White House. So with that I thank you very much for being here this morning and I’m sorry we’re a little cramped here but we’ve got some other activities going on in the other auditorium and have a great day. Thank you.

http://www.wxyz.com/mostpopula…..JoCag.cspx

The GOP Senators stupidly figured (stupid and GOP are synonyms) that the only plants that the big 3 had were in Michigan, which is Democratic. I guess they never thought that the big 3 had other plants, especially in their states.

What a bunch of rubes.

WXYZ) Sources tell Action News that the White House and U.S. automakers have reached a deal that could prevent a collapse of the industry.

IN THE VIDEO PLAYER ON THE RIGHT, ACTION NEWS REPORTER TOM WAIT SAYS THAT A DEAL HAS BEEN REACHED BUT THAT AN ANNOUNCEMENT WILL NOT COME FRIDAY NIGHT

Our source says the agreement with the Bush administration will mirror the bill that passed the House.

We do know the White House and officials from GM have been in talks for several hours. The negotiations may also involve the Federal Reserve.

President Bush is back in Washington after a trip to Texas and an announcement could come at any time.

Bush also released a statement today saying “The economy could not handle the collapse of the car industry.”

Congress is now out of the game after talks in the Senate broke down last night.

http://www.wxyz.com/news/story…..vIEhQ.cspx