LA Times: Auto bailout's death seen as a Republican blow at unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-gopunions13-2008dec13,0,7065427.story


Matthew Cavanaugh / EPA
Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, chief Republican negotiator for the bailout, leaves a news conference. In the final hours of negotiations, Republicans insisted that United Auto Workers cut wages by a set date; the union and Democratic allies refused.

For some Senate Republicans, a vote against the bailout was a vote against the United Auto Workers, and against organized labor in general.
By Jim Puzzanghera
December 13, 2008
Reporting from Washington -- The congressional push to help U.S. automakers was generally cast in terms of protecting the reeling national economy from another body blow -- the collapse of one or more of Detroit's Big Three.

But in killing the stopgap rescue plan worked out by President Bush and congressional Democrats, conservative Republicans -- many from right-to-work states across the South -- struck at an old enemy: organized labor.

"If the , which is perceived as one of the strongest unions in the country, can be put under control, that may send a message across the whole country," said Michigan State University professor Richard Block, a labor relations expert.

Such antipathy to unions was an undercurrent through the weeks of negotiations leading up to Thursday's Senate vote rejecting the plan.

Handing a defeat to labor and its Democratic allies in Congress was also seen as a preemptive strike in what is expected to be a major battle for the new Congress in January: the unions' bid for a so-called card check law that would make it easier for them to organize workers, potentially reversing decades of declining power. The measure is strongly opposed by business groups.


FULL story at link.

[midnight]

1. I hope that organised labor kicks their A##.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. I think it is "seen as a Republican blow at unions" because that is what it is!!!!!!!

[gristy]

3. Terrific article. Need more like these.

[knowbody0]

4. they are glib now

but this is the straw that breaks their backs. bye bye,