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solarbirdDelphi corporation - the auto parts maker spun off from GM - just declared bankruptcy with intent to reorganise and continue operations. The plan is emerge in 2007.
Delphi management did this because they couldn't win the 74% total value giveback they were demanding from the union employees. You read that right: 74% total value giveback. This giveback was to be made up of a 63% pay cut (from $25-27/hour to $10/hour or so average), a near-quadrupling of the cost of participating in the company health plan, reduced retirement benefits, cut holiday and vacation time, and a bunch of other things.
Astoundingly, the unions wouldn't go along! Now, with bankruptcy protection, if management can get a court to approve it, they can just impose those changes and tell their employees to fuck off.
Meanwhile, on the same day, they announced severance package bonuses for their top executives worth an average of about $1 million each, in the event those executives are let go.
HAS EVERYONE (in management) GONE COMPLETELY INSANE?!
Are they trying to revive the worker's movement? Do they want some sort of Smoot-Hartley revival? Have they decided that with a cronyist Republican party in power, they can just get this kind of stunt rubber-stamped?
Have they forgotten every lesson of Henry Ford?
Look, people; if you want socialism to start to make sense to workers, please: go right ahead and live down to every Marxist stereotype about ruling-class economic warfare. Keep kicking them in the head, particularly while they're down. But isn't that, I dunno, deeply stupid? Isn't that playing against your own goddamn best interests, at least if you look further ahead than the next two quarters?
Aren't you worried at all about losing skilled workers to Burger King? Or is that okay now? Is it all just a big ploy to move everything to China in one fell swoop? Because even that makes more sense than this bullshit. Seriously.
I've been wondering exactly what would keep American capitalism in line after the fall of Communism as an even apparently-quasi-viable alternative economic system. Because while I am sure as hell no Marxist, I am deeply aware of the abuses committed by moneyed interests using the leverage of purchased government to further their aims. And I've wondered for more than a little while whether the threat - no matter how remote - of a different system kept the worst elements from behaving too badly. Not directly, of course; there wasn't going to be a serious Marxist movement in America, not one with any power - but the propaganda opportunities had to be prevented, so they couldn't be used in countries where such ideas were being taken seriously, leaving the Marxists to come up with such stupid ideas as differential economics - where it didn't matter if the overall standard of living went down, as long as the gap between rich and poor got smaller, you were okay. Or, as the Vietnamese put it, succeeding in "spreading poverty equally" mattered more than ending poverty for some.
I sincerely hope that the answer is not actually "nothing whatsoever." Because honestly, this is the kind of abuse that engenders thoughts of black-hat villains laughing maniacally as they twirl their mustaches. And if I'm getting images like that, what must the workers of Michigan be thinking?
----- 1 -----
Delphi files for bankruptcy
By Shawn Langlois, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:01 PM ET Oct. 8, 2005
Long Marketwatch URL elided
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Auto parts titan Delphi Corp., after months rife with speculation and volatile stock swings, filed for bankruptcy on Saturday, a move set to ripple throughout the entire auto industry.
----- 2 -----
Delphi execs get severance boost
October 8, 2005
BY MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/delphi-bar18e_20051008.htm
With reports circulating that Delphi Corp. could file for bankruptcy as early as today, the company promised about 21 of its top executives Friday that they'd get more money if they are fired or laid off.
The Troy-based maker of almost every part you'll find on a car, from brakes to satellite radio receivers, wants to encourage those leaders to stick with the company, even if it files for bankruptcy. Delphi is the nation's largest auto supplier and the fourth-largest company in Michigan.
But the richer benefits for top executives were just another insult to many of the company's blue-collar workers, who found out Thursday that the company wants to cut their pay as much as 63% and reduce health care and retirement benefits.
Delphi management did this because they couldn't win the 74% total value giveback they were demanding from the union employees. You read that right: 74% total value giveback. This giveback was to be made up of a 63% pay cut (from $25-27/hour to $10/hour or so average), a near-quadrupling of the cost of participating in the company health plan, reduced retirement benefits, cut holiday and vacation time, and a bunch of other things.
Astoundingly, the unions wouldn't go along! Now, with bankruptcy protection, if management can get a court to approve it, they can just impose those changes and tell their employees to fuck off.
Meanwhile, on the same day, they announced severance package bonuses for their top executives worth an average of about $1 million each, in the event those executives are let go.
HAS EVERYONE (in management) GONE COMPLETELY INSANE?!
Are they trying to revive the worker's movement? Do they want some sort of Smoot-Hartley revival? Have they decided that with a cronyist Republican party in power, they can just get this kind of stunt rubber-stamped?
Have they forgotten every lesson of Henry Ford?
Look, people; if you want socialism to start to make sense to workers, please: go right ahead and live down to every Marxist stereotype about ruling-class economic warfare. Keep kicking them in the head, particularly while they're down. But isn't that, I dunno, deeply stupid? Isn't that playing against your own goddamn best interests, at least if you look further ahead than the next two quarters?
Aren't you worried at all about losing skilled workers to Burger King? Or is that okay now? Is it all just a big ploy to move everything to China in one fell swoop? Because even that makes more sense than this bullshit. Seriously.
I've been wondering exactly what would keep American capitalism in line after the fall of Communism as an even apparently-quasi-viable alternative economic system. Because while I am sure as hell no Marxist, I am deeply aware of the abuses committed by moneyed interests using the leverage of purchased government to further their aims. And I've wondered for more than a little while whether the threat - no matter how remote - of a different system kept the worst elements from behaving too badly. Not directly, of course; there wasn't going to be a serious Marxist movement in America, not one with any power - but the propaganda opportunities had to be prevented, so they couldn't be used in countries where such ideas were being taken seriously, leaving the Marxists to come up with such stupid ideas as differential economics - where it didn't matter if the overall standard of living went down, as long as the gap between rich and poor got smaller, you were okay. Or, as the Vietnamese put it, succeeding in "spreading poverty equally" mattered more than ending poverty for some.
I sincerely hope that the answer is not actually "nothing whatsoever." Because honestly, this is the kind of abuse that engenders thoughts of black-hat villains laughing maniacally as they twirl their mustaches. And if I'm getting images like that, what must the workers of Michigan be thinking?
----- 1 -----
Delphi files for bankruptcy
By Shawn Langlois, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:01 PM ET Oct. 8, 2005
Long Marketwatch URL elided
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Auto parts titan Delphi Corp., after months rife with speculation and volatile stock swings, filed for bankruptcy on Saturday, a move set to ripple throughout the entire auto industry.
----- 2 -----
Delphi execs get severance boost
October 8, 2005
BY MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/delphi-bar18e_20051008.htm
With reports circulating that Delphi Corp. could file for bankruptcy as early as today, the company promised about 21 of its top executives Friday that they'd get more money if they are fired or laid off.
The Troy-based maker of almost every part you'll find on a car, from brakes to satellite radio receivers, wants to encourage those leaders to stick with the company, even if it files for bankruptcy. Delphi is the nation's largest auto supplier and the fourth-largest company in Michigan.
But the richer benefits for top executives were just another insult to many of the company's blue-collar workers, who found out Thursday that the company wants to cut their pay as much as 63% and reduce health care and retirement benefits.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:02 am (UTC)Coprorate United States has really gone off the deep end.
Makes me wanna start a revolution.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 06:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 07:06 am (UTC)Basically, his point was that all the concessions that capitalism had made to keep the masses from trying the stroll down the yellow brick road toward the Worker's Paradise were going to be rolled back, inveitably, faster in some countries, slower in others, as soon as the perception that there was no alternative became widespread.
I feel more sad for you guys that us here in brazil, though. We've always been wading through shit, after all. But to see something that was once so great (almost a Great Society, too... if it wasn't for the Vietnam war....) start crumbling...it's damn tragic.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 07:47 am (UTC)The only thing that could possibly keep them in line is a vibrant domestic workers' movement. Precisely the sort of thing that you don't seen keen to have happen...
there wasn't going to be a serious Marxist movement in America,
Well, that wasn't inevitable, but it is how history turned out. If people like Debs, Cannon and Browder had made different choices, who knows.
Or, as the Vietnamese put it, succeeding in "spreading poverty equally" mattered more than ending poverty for some.
Bloody hell, that's actually an anti-Marxist concept! Marx himself warned specifically that redistribution of poverty was no boon to anyone, and that therefore socialism was only feasible in an already-advanced capitalist economy. Although Stalinism got everything else about Marxism ass-backwards, so it shouldn't surprise me that the Vietnamese bureaucrats tried that.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 04:27 pm (UTC)A strong worker's movement could be valuable. A strong Marxist movement is typically a disaster. The two are not necessarily the same. There are several Marxists on my friendslist, all of whom probably think I'm anti-worker, but I'm actually not. At least, unless you consider "Marxist" and "worker" to be an identity relationship.
Bloody hell, that's actually an anti-Marxist concept!
Yeah, well, so are so many other products of notionally-Marxist states. I think that's because while Marx made some legitimate and valuable observations about the nature of capital, his proposed solution set is grounded permanently in defective 19th century ideas about psychology and, as a result, make no goddamn sense at all.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 06:03 pm (UTC)Our fate, whether we consider ourselves liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, social democrats, anarchists, whatever, is to figure out some solutions. Nothing utopian--just an alternative that improves upon capitalism. Capitalism itself needs the threat of an alternative to adopt innovative reforms, and as alternatives go away, so do the reforms. Capitalism without a social check is frightening, and becomes a threat to itself. Free markets and financial speculation in the absence of liberal reforms spawn an elite financial aristocracy, cronyism and nepotism, and finally the death of the economic freedom and dynamism that make capitalism appealing in the first place.