Whats Obama's First Priority

[DesertDom]

Does anyone perhaps think it odd that Democrats would support a bailout (handout) to auto industries and Republicans are resisting?

Why would the party that supposedly in is bed with 'evil' businesses not want to hand out money and the party that claims to want to reform business is in favor of giving away more money ?

The background is that our auto industries are heavily unionized, the per hour cost to a car company for a union worker is in the $70 - 75 dollar range approx. Similiar costs for japanese car companies are $30-40 per hour.

One of the Democrats major backers and we are talking millions of dollars annually from the various regions are labor unions, relevant to this issue is the Auto Workers Union.

Car companies have been desperately trying to cut costs for years, having done so through automation, out sourcing of parts and assembly, etc. One of their remaining cost issues is labor costs. Due to union contracts, they haven't been able to make much headway.

Car companies would like to declare bankruptcy (similiar to what airlines have done) and redefine the labor cost structure as much as possible. If they get handouts from the government, it will make it that much more difficult to declare bankruptcy and the government would then have a yes / no say into what changes are made.

One reason obama was urging Bush to support this handout during their meeting, to try and take care of his labor union support.

I do believe in the theory of labor unions, but in some industries here, labor contracts have made the entire cost structure untenable. Hence why there has been a lot of movement to outsourcing of mfgr'ing parts by large companies.

[mkemse]

Does anyone perhaps think it odd that Democrats would support a bailout (handout) to auto industries and Republicans are resisting?

Why would the party that supposedly in is bed with 'evil' businesses not want to hand out money and the party that claims to want to reform business is in favor of giving away more money ?

The background is that our auto industries are heavily unionized, the per hour cost to a car company for a union worker is in the $70 - 75 dollar range approx. Similiar costs for japanese car companies are $30-40 per hour.

One of the Democrats major backers and we are talking millions of dollars annually from the various regions are labor unions, relevant to this issue is the Auto Workers Union.

Car companies have been desperately trying to cut costs for years, having done so through automation, out sourcing of parts and assembly, etc. One of their remaining cost issues is labor costs. Due to union contracts, they haven't been able to make much headway.

Car companies would like to declare bankruptcy (similiar to what airlines have done) and redefine the labor cost structure as much as possible. If they get handouts from the government, it will make it that much more difficult to declare bankruptcy and the government would then have a yes / no say into what changes are made.

One reason obama was urging Bush to support this handout during their meeting, to try and take care of his labor union support.

I do believe in the theory of labor unions, but in some industries here, labor contracts have made the entire cost structure untenable. Hence why there has been a lot of movement to outsourcing of mfgr'ing parts by large companies.

Part of the reason the Repubilcans are leary about helping out the Big 3 is that they already Borrowed $700 Billion form us and have no clue what to do with that, 1st it was to bail out Mortages, then they pull the rug out on that, they have all this money borrowed from us Taxpayers and have No Clue where to use it