The big automakers labor costs, particularly in pensions, may be the deal-breaker. They clearly want to get out of past obligations. I've even seen the claim that they only make the big gas guzzlers and high-priced cars instead of cars people want to buy because their labor costs, especially pension payments, make them actually lose money on sales of small cars. (I don't know if that's true, but it's on the table.)

Any government bail-out of the auto industry is going to have to tackle mileage and size issues, and that is probably going to open the whole Pandora's box of wages, benefits, and especially pensions. A quick infusion of cash without reforming the whole industry seems likely only to put off collapse for another few years at best.

Labor, as usual, is going to be asked to give the most. The new team in Washington needs to use the powers of the purse at their disposal to ensure that saving the industry doesn't mean screwing current and former factory workers. Ultimately nobody is going to walk away happy from this one.

Does he really think that the problem with the economy is that we're all just dying to borrow more money so we can buy stuff? Granted, a number of businesses need credit to survive. And that should be addressed. But consumers are, IMHO, more worried about keeping what they've got - a job, a house - than they are about buying things.

Actually, Bill, it is commercial lending that Paulsen is talking about, not consumer lending. Credit cards are still being issued and consumers are still free to spend But unless banks make commercial credit available, things are going to get much worse.

The [Employee Free Choice] Act would make it easier for workers to force an election on union representation.

Actually, it allows unions to force representation on workers without a vote if they get enough signatures (collected without privacy and without the opportunity to hear arguments on the other side).

It is tantamount to providing that if Bill Sizemore or Kevin Mannix collect enough signatures on an initiative petition, the measure will become law without the nasty inconvenience of a vote.

"Actually, it allows unions to force representation on workers without a vote if they get enough signatures"

...otherwise known as a vote?

That's like saying if a majority of people elect Obama the President, the rest of the country will have to accept him as the President. The horror!

"Actually, it allows unions to force representation on workers without a vote if they get enough signatures"

It is estimated that 10% of jobs are tied to the auto industry.

Those of you who want them to just go bankrupt, are you ready for a 5-10 point hike in unemployment?

And Bill, Jack R. is right, you really do misunderstand the fundamentals of what Paulson is suggesting. This has very little to do with consumer debt. But if we are speaking of individual level debt, this is not about your credit card.

This is about your inability to finance a car, to get a mortgage, or if you are a business, to fund needed improvements. Credit has seized up and yes, we run on a credit economy. We don't barter any more and most people don't deal in cash transactions.

I confess I haven't read the legislation.

But I know there's a long history of sophisticated and violent efforts to defeat organizing efforts in the workplace.

Gallagher family lore has it that my paternal grandfather was roughed up by Pinkertons and sent packing from Philadelphia for trying to organize transit workers early in the last century.

Some labor leaders will concede that there should be secret balloting. They may go for a compromise that allows a vote but within days - rather than weeks or months - of enough cards being signed by workers.

Some labor leaders will concede that a secret ballot is desirable. They just don't like the fact that once enough workers sign the card to have a vote on union representation the employers delay the vote long enough to undercut the organizing effort with expensive, sophisticated and sometimes not-so-subtle campaigns.

DOH!

Either of those last two redundant paragraphs will work.

There are many ways to find out more about the Employee Free Choice Act, from the AFL-CIO site onwards. And many progressives have written compelling reasons why it's so important, from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to Progressive States Network's Nathan Newman.

To the contrary: Amnesty International last month released reports documenting an increase in human rights abuses in Colombia:

The Colombian government is painting a false picture of the state of human rights in Colombia, when in fact the situation is deteriorating, including increasing reports of forced internal displacement, attacks against social and human rights activists, and killings by security forces.

I have read the legislation. It requires union representation if a majority of employees sign cards saying they want a union, unless 30% of the employees sign cards wanting a secret ballot.

The problem, of course, is that neither the original signatures nor the signatures of those wanting an election is private. This measure responds to allegations of intimidation by employers by creating an invitation for intimidation (not to mention disruption in the workplace) by unions.

Bill, I'm afraid your family anecdotes about the Pinkertons is ancient history and of no relevance today. There have been complaints about overreaching by employers and frankly I think LT's comment about a new president appointing members to the NLRB may address some of these circumstances.

I think that is a far better approach to dealing with this issue than taking away workers' rights to a secret ballot.

Finally, last session the Oregon legislature passed a similar measure for public employee unions in Oregon. Does anyone have stories of public employer intimidation in Oregon (by use of the Pinkertons or otherwise) to prohibit unionization that would justify this bill?

Jefferson Smith could give you a good example of employer intimidation... if I remember correctly it was at Circuit City.

There are also plenty of confirmed incidents of such intimidation by employers all over the country every single year.

If the Big Three or any of them go through Chapter 11, a key thing that will happen is that they will default on their pension obligations which will then be turned over to an already strained federal pension guarantee fund. Just a different route to a different kind of government bailout.

EFCA is driven by a widespread pattern of abuses of current labor law by private employers that has gone on for decades, including "captive audience" coercive meetings by management and firings of workers who get involved in union organizing. The penalties for these violations have only partly and slowly been enforced under Republican administrations and not so much better under Clinton; in any case they are small enough compared to the strength of management's rabid anti-union ideology that many firms are willing to violate the law and pay small penalties as a cost of doing business. This violates workers' human right under international law to form and join trade unions.

As noted, delays in elections form part of this pattern. So too does failure to bargain first contracts in good faith, and dragging out unfair labor practice decisions and appeals (often with NLRB collusion under Republican administrations).

These are not just allegations, but well-documented, widely occurring facts.

In the 1950s the U.S. and Canada had roughly comparable union density (proportion of workers who were union members). Canada's has remained roughly stable. This has not caused the collapse of the Canadian economy. Much the same could be said of other highly industrialized countries whose living standards in many cases exceed those of the United States.

One difference that has a bearing on the question of competitiveness of U.S. firms is interestingly reflected in the pension issue. Most of those other countries have a much higher "social wage" than does the U.S., e.g. universal government-funded health care in one form or another, and government-organized pension systems more robust than U.S. Social Security.

In the 1950s U.S. capitalists in their wisdom decided that they wanted to avoid such means to provide for key elements of human needs and combined political opposition with bargaining with unions to provide "fringe benefits" rather than wage increases. When roughly 1/3 of workers were unionized in a manufacturing-centered economy those union negotiations to a substantial degree set standards for non-union workers as well, although this was not true in areas such as agricultural and domestic labor (excluded from the NLRA substantially for racist reasons) and was geographically variable, with unions weaker in the Southeast.

Now with changing age demographics and a decline in corporate community ethos leading to export of production, the chickens are coming home to roost in the private obligations that corporations negotiated to avoid public social wages, and they want out of those obligations. If they are to be allowed to do that, the whole "big deal" should be renegotiated, and the U.S. should institute a proper social wage regarding publicly provided health care and pension security.

The justification for a great many of the pro-corporate, anti-worker elements of our social system is that owners of capital take risks. The history of the last several decades show that workers do too. Both the level of risk that workers undertake, and the pattern of government actions in securing companies against failure, point to the falseness of the basic ideology about risk and point to a need to fundamentally rethink how we as a society handle risk and reward, in favor of greater common security against certain risks in basic human needs.