plus 4, Ford's mantra of difference was taken to heart by its UAW workers - Detroit Free Press

Ford's mantra of difference was taken to heart by its UAW workers - Detroit Free Press
Market Mover - American Reporter
CAROLINE BAUM: Government porkfare is no way to end recession - Asbury Park Press
Brasch Words - American Reporter
Things looking up for Ford, but automaker not in clear yet - Detroit Free Press

Ford's mantra of difference was taken to heart by its UAW workers - Detroit Free Press

Posted: 01 Nov 2009 01:23 AM PST

UAW workers to Ford Motor Co. and Chief Executive Alan Mulally: "We think we're OK where we are."

That's the clear message in a decisive rejection by Ford hourly workers of the Dearborn automaker's latest plea for concessions on pay and work rules to match what Chrysler and General Motors gained in bankruptcy.

And it's proof that words can come back to haunt you.

Remember Mulally's statement of Nov. 18, 2008, testifying before Congress?

When asked whether he would work for $1 a year during the auto industry crisis, Mulally replied, "I think I'm OK where I am." (He made $4.9 million last year in salary bonus and benefits, and was awarded stock options valued at $8.7 million.)

You can bet the rank-and-file workers remember.

They also remember Ford management's repeated use of the word "different" over the past year, intended to set Ford apart from crosstown rivals GM and Chrysler.

If Ford is so happy being different and better off than GM and Chrysler, the workers are asking, what's wrong with us being better off, too?

Ford was different, its executives said, because it didn't run out of cash like GM and Chrysler.

Different because it didn't take taxpayer money to survive like GM and Chrysler.

Different, different, different. Pounding the drumbeat of difference clearly has helped Ford's public image, its car and truck sales and its stock price.

But when it comes to the wages, benefits and work rules of its UAW workforce, Ford doesn't want to be different. It wants the same labor cost savings that GM and Chrysler achieved in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

It's easy to understand, in that context, the defiance so many Ford UAW workers have shown in recent days toward coughing up another round of contract givebacks.

They're OK with being different.

That doesn't mean, however, that Ford is wrong to ask for more concessions.

Indeed, Ford must keep insisting on cost parity with GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and every other major competitor if the company is to survive and prosper.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Market Mover - American Reporter

Posted: 01 Nov 2009 01:37 AM PST

Market Mover
DEAR ANDREW: THERE'S THIS GUY NAMED OBAMA
Mark Scheinbaum
American Reporter Correspondent
Panama City, Panama

Back to home page

Printable version of this story

PANAMA CITY, Panama -- After hosting my own election night party I awoke with a slight hangover, vaguely recalling this dream that a black guy had been elected President of the United States of America.

Then I switched on Voice of America news and realized it was not a dream, and realized among others that I never said good-bye to Andrew Goodman when we hurriedly threw our stuff together to leave the room we shared with two other summer camp workers at Camp Kitattinny in Dingman's Ferry, Pa., which was really in Layton, N.J.

How could I know that a few months later Andrew would be murdered with two other civil rights workers in Mississippi and dumped in a mucky clay grave. Who knew?

There is so much I want to say, so little I can say.

~ ~ ~

In the international spirit of spirits on election night we settled into the tony lounge at the English-owned Bristol Hotel because it was one of the few public rooms not closed by Flag Day in Panama. Knowing that a Barack Obama victory would have international repercussions, I started the evening with Canadian whisky, moving on to French cognac, and then finishing with by then pre-dawn Nicaraguan dark rum.

About 20 American health care professionals who worked with a missionary group wandered in to watch the results. I had spread the word where I'd be hanging out and for the doctors and nurses working with clinics in poor Panama neighborhoods the clean bathroom, fresh linen towels, and quiet Bella Vista neighborhood street were welcome relief.

My first clue that stereotypes are, well, stereotypical, was after listening to pockets of conversations about the sanctity of life; role of the church in society, family values and structures, and the morass of health care in the United States, a uniform cheer went up when the networks awarded an Obama victory to Michigan from where many of the visitors hailed.

~ ~ ~

Earlier in the day the exclusive, member-segregated Union Club (which allows black, mixed-race, indigenous, Jewish, and other "guests" who would be denied actual membership) hosted a room filled with multi-culturalism gone wild. Sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce in celebration of Panama's 105th Independence Day, Lions, Rotarians, Kiwanians, Soroptomists and others gathered to pledge continued work for the poor.

One speaker as if mocking defeated GOP candidate John McCain's recent mantra of Sen. Obama wanting to "spread" wealth and "give away money belonging to rich people" reminded the audience that "even a small country is judged by how we treat the least among us. How we care for abandoned kids and uncared for elderly." It was the Panamanian equivalent of "a rising tide raises all ships."

The speaker was millionaire Panamanian Sen. Felipe Ariel Rodriguez who made his money in the auto parts business. He has refused urgings to run for president because he can't decide which political party is less corrupt, and after the hoopla of being named legislative "ombudsman" of the cleptocracy if former Pres. Mireya Moscoso he quit in disgust when it turned out Her Shoppingness only wanted to use his trusted name to lend righteousness to her cash "disappearances" and state visits to the Town Center Mall in Boca Raton, Fla.

The listeners above age 50 were white and mostly male. The listeners under 50 were black and brown and had Chinese and Hispanic surnames, and were women club presidents and board members in significant numbers.

The tall black priest who gave the invocation, Father Oscar Martin, could have been right out of an Obama playbook. The Spanish flowed like poetry and in the room, in the moment, in the frozen humid tropical time it defied precise English translation. But it included an inner glow and eye contact with every one of the 50 or 60 civic leaders, and the slow prayer: "Lord. For many of us let your Son Jesus be the rich coffee of our high lands whose aroma and strength flavors a people. And, Lord, let the people of all religions, and cultures, and histories who fled so much oppression elsewhere to settle here, be the cream which blends the coffee into a magnificent texture."

~ ~ ~

On local radio today the news "readers" bantered ad lib comments in between the reaction of world leaders to the Barack Obama's victory. Comments included:

"It might be that the United States which was born in an age of slavery, and institutionalized racism, for the first time has stood tall as the leader of nations, for all people, of all origins."

"It would be hard for some child anywhere in Asia, or Africa, or Latin America to feel that there is something they could not achieve because of their skin color or family background, when you think of who was just elected in the most powerful country."

"World leaders really want North American to lead. The U.S. and Canada, but mostly the U.S. and to show lots of experts were wrong, and change is possible,"

"Fidel Castro of Cuba issued a comment which was positive about Obama, and it was the usual stuff, but it sort of has some resonance in the defeat of John McCain and a signal that a string of years which seemed to relish the 'politics of war' could be behind us."

~ ~ ~

It was 1976 on a muddy country road in a trailer park near Havana, Florida which is pronounced Hay'-vah-ner and was about four years before I ever set foot in the other Havana, the one in Cuba.

Near the Leon Co.-Gadsden Co. line was in one of the most concentrated "Black Belts" and poverty belts of the Old South, and the Williams family was preparing the Independence Day goat roast. The day before we had taken a truck up to Thomasville, Ga., to their longtime butcher to pick up the dressed-out "half goat" ready for the spit and hot coals of the front yard.

My dad was visiting from New York, and we were incidentally the only white folks there, but we were with family nonetheless. This was my American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees organizing "family" and three generations of the Williams family were centers of influence and respect on both the campuses of huge Florida State University and historically black "FAMU" Florida A&M University.

As day faded to evening, and goat barbeque, baked beans, cole slaw, sweet potato pie, and 'nilla bread puddin' was washed down by Old Milwaukee and later hot coffee and "sweet tea" we talked of where we were and why we were.

"Good Ole Boy rednecks' like Jim Cushing had slapped aside their "upbringin'" and led other rural whites to integrated union organizational meetings, and Sunday covered dish rallies in small wooden black churches with names like "Missionary Baptist," or "Ethiopian Ezekial," or "Mount Zion Tabernacle" and moved pockets of the Deep South ever so slowly into the "New South" which in many ways eclipsed the pseudo-liberal rhetoric of New York or Philly.

A black president of a local union would be a great thing.

A black president of the United States was never mentioned.

~ ~ ~

It was 3PM on an October afternoon. The Bums of Brooklyn were facing the mighty New York Yankees. It was the sports version of David v. Goliath and as usual Goliath would win. The dad in the waiting room two blocks from Ebbets Field was listening to the game on radio because the New York Daily Mirror had promised a then-huge $100 U.S. Savings Bond to any baby born in Brooklyn, during the deciding game of the World Series, if and only if the Dodgers won the game and the Series.

It was Jackie Robinson's first season as the first African-American officially allowed to play in Major League Baseball.

Someone smacked me on the butt and I was born.

Third out, Dodgers lost, no Savings Bond.

~ ~ ~

The United States of America at times is a very, very, very strange and wonderful place.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

CAROLINE BAUM: Government porkfare is no way to end recession - Asbury Park Press

Posted: 01 Nov 2009 01:16 AM PST

(2 of 3)

Uncle Sam handed out your hard-earned tax dollars to prod people to scrap their old cars for more fuel-efficient models. The "Cash for Clunkers" program sent auto sales on a roller coaster ride — first up, then down — in August and September. Some of those buyers would have purchased a new car or truck anyway. Others used the $4,500 rebate as an inducement to strike while the iron was hot.

Pay to spend

Just to recap: The government is paying people to do what they would have done at some point anyway.

Then there's the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, a program that failed to heed the lessons of the no-questions-asked mortgage lend-o-rama earlier this decade. Some 74,000 claims may have been ineligible for the credit, including one from a 4-year-old boy, according to a report from the Treasury's inspector general.

No one would dispute the idea that people respond to incentives: A temporary, one-time tax credit brings demand forward.

But it will take an increasingly large tax credit to get the same bang for the buck, according to Andy Laperriere, a managing director at the ISI Group in Washington.

Using estimates from the National Association of Realtors on the number of home sales that were borrowed from the future, Laperriere calculates that home sales will drop 11.5 percent next year even this an extension of the $8,000 tax credit. That's better than the 29 percent decline he predicts if the credit expires, but the sign is still negative.

Expanding the eligibility beyond first-time home buyers — no toddlers allowed — would alleviate some of the decline, Laperriere says.

Less with less

Between the spending on houses and cars, the third quarter won't look too shabby. The problem is that all these government actions designed to create a short-term economic boost have long-term implications.

For example, not all spending is created equal. Investment in the future, whether it's the government improving roads or the private sector building a plant, is a plus for future growth.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Brasch Words - American Reporter

Posted: 01 Nov 2009 01:37 AM PST

Brasch Words
THE MEDIA AUTO KNOW BETTER: FUELING THE FIRES OF ANTI-UNIONISM
by Walter Brasch
American Reporter Correspondent
Bloomsburg, Pa.

Back to home page

Printable version of this story

BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Our local newspaper editor, as he does regularly, once again attacked unions as the problem in America. This is the same editor who once said "all the laziest goof-offs and goldbricks in the newsroom" where he began his career were union officials - and that the unionized New York Times editorial writers are nothing more than "limousine liberals."

For this most recent attack, two days after Thanksgiving, he combined the economy with what he believes are greedy unions.

"[L]abor unions and their leaders are ... distorting the truth about the American workplace," wrote the editor. First he set up Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, who said that "Tens of millions of Americans are working harder than ever just to stay afloat. The latest Census Bureau report shows that wages are dropping and more people lack health insurance ... a greater percentage of the economy is going to profits than to wages."

Then, he cut apart Stern's statement by gleefully citing data from the pro-business pro-management U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber said that wages, adjusted for inflation, for workers rose 30 percent from 1967 to 2007. Now, 30 percent seems good - unless you do the math. That's about three-quarters of one percent per year, far less than any executive compensation. The editor then added in about 30 percent for benefits. Of course, these benefits also include federally-mandated deductions, like social security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes.

As an afterthought, the editor claimed the "poverty rate dropped from 22.4 percent in 1959 to 12.5 percent in 2007," mysteriously trying to connect a reduced poverty level with reduced union influence. What he didn't point out was that 1959 was a recession year, and that between 2000 and 2007, according to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate actually increased from 11.3 percent to 12.5 percent. About 37.3 million Americans are living below the federal poverty level; about 40 percent of all Americans fell beneath the poverty line at least once in the past decade.

Sounding the alarm, the editor tied together Democrats and unions. "[T]he plight of the American worker will grow more dire in the new year, as Democrats push to pass their legislation. ... The danger is that their union-friendly legislation will hurt rather than help the American economy." To wrap everything up, the editor of a newspaper with the median circulation of all dailies in America concluded by asking his readers to "consider the current state of the once mighty American auto industry, and ask yourself: What role did the powerful United Auto Workers play in its downfall?"

It's the workers and those pesky liberal Democrats - who the editor blames for America's economic crises. Unfortunately, this editor isn't alone in his contempt for the workers.

Dozens of columnists and TV pundits spread the myth that the average auto worker at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler earns $70 an hour - about $146,000 a year. That figure, supplied by executives at the Big Three, reflects every cost associated with labor, including "legacy costs," which are are costs of pensions and health benefits for retired workers. Thus, the automakers added up every conceivable cost and divided it by hours worked (pensioners, of course, don't work) to get the inflated numbers.

The reality is that the average UAW member earns about $28 an hour (about $58,000 a year), according to the impartial Center for Automotive Research. What the news media fail to report is that the UAW made significant concessions over the years, including wage cut-backs at Chrysler and a 2007 contract for all three auto makers that created a "second tier" wage level of $14.50-$16.23 per hour ($30,160-$33,763 per year, still below U.S. average wage of $40.405, according to the Census Bureau), reduced benefits, and a retirement plan now administered by the UAW not the Big Three.

Others who attack organized labor claim that UAW worker earn far more an hour than their counterparts at non-American non-unionized auto manufacturers in the U.S., and that's a reason why the Big Three are failing. However, the reality is that the average wage at the international automakers is estimated at $24-$25 an hour, less than a $3 differential an hour for UAW first tier workers, according to Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic. Even the most casual observer understands that it costs more to live in the Detroit area than the rural areas where foreign auto makers established their plants.

In contrast to the concessions given up by the workers, Big Three executives still earn multi-million dollar incomes. Alan Mulally at Ford earned $2 million last year, plus additional compensation totaling about $21.7 million, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ford lost $2.72 billion last year. At GM, Rick Wagoner earned $15.7 million last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, while his company lost $38.7 billion. Chrysler's Robert Nardelli earned $1 in salary last year, but has significant compensation package that is not publicly disclosed. Chrysler lost about $2.9 billion last year.

But much of the media and the American public still blame workers and liberal Democrats who are favorable to the union movement for the economic crisis that led the Big Three to rev up their corporate jets and descend upon Congress to beg for a $25 billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

Are the workers and those liberal Democrats to blame for car sales being down 45 percent in October for GM, 35 percent for Chrysler, and 30 percent for Ford from a year ago?

Are they to blame for the auto industry going for the quick profit by pushing gas-guzzling minivans, SUVs, and trucks, while foreign automakers began looking at more energy-efficient cars?

Are they to blame that demand for autos has fallen off because Americans were unable to get financing in an economic crisis caused by greed of investment companies, banks, and almost every corporation that issues public stock?

Are they to blame for the auto industry executives opposing public transportation and alternative energy cars?

Are they to blame for auto executives being wrong about just about everything and for spending too much on everything from golf club memberships to private jets?

Are they to blame for the 100,000 factory layoffs in the past three years that also meant more work and no pay increases for every remaining factory worker?

Are they to blame for the auto industry outsourcing its work to countries where labor is paid pennies an hour - and then reaping huge profits by downsizing America's workforce?

Are the workers and liberals to blame for the auto industry cutting health care and retirement benefits in order to maximize profits?

Finally, are the workers and those liberal Democrats to blame because Big Three executives failed to understand that they needed to cut corporate costs when maximizing profits so they could reduce their losses during a recession - or for when their own bad business judgments would cause a catastrophic melt-down?

It may be in the best self-interest of non-unionized media to perpetuate the myth that the economic problems of America are because of the worker. However, such sloppy and inaccurate reporting isn't in the best interest of the people.

Dr. Brasch is the author of the recently-published Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, available at amazon.com, bn.com, and numerous independent and chain stores. He is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. You may contact him through his websiteHREF> or by email at brasch@bloomu.edu.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Things looking up for Ford, but automaker not in clear yet - Detroit Free Press

Posted: 01 Nov 2009 02:06 AM PST

(2 of 2)

Cash remains key

Cash remains a concern at Ford -- namely because Ford isn't generating any. Ford ended the first half of the year with $21 billion in automotive cash.

While that is about $5.6 billion less than it had during the first half of 2008, the automaker has considerably slowed its use of cash reserves, even during the suffering economy.

Still, "Ford continues to face the possibility of falling below the necessary levels of cash to run its automotive business -- but not in 2009 in our view, given the progress it has shown in the first half of this year," S&P said. "We currently assume Ford's automotive operations will continue to show cash losses for at least the next several quarters."

Eric Selle, a credit analyst with JP Morgan Securities, estimates Ford consumed an excess of $1.9 billion during the third quarter, and he and other analysts will be closely examining the amount of cash Ford used when it releases its financials today.

"It's a huge deal," Selle said. "If there is one number to know about when it comes to Ford, it's the cash burn."

Sales and products

Through September, Ford sales are down 22.3% while the overall industry is down 27.4%. That better-than-industry performance has helped Ford gain 1 percentage point of market share in the key U.S. market.

It also managed that performance by spending less on discounts. For the first nine months of this year, Ford has spent an average of $2,792 per vehicle on incentives in the United States, or 27.7% less than last year, according to Autodata Corp. That helped the company raise its average transaction process.

Those improvements are essential, said Bruce Clark, a vice president with Moody's Investors Service.

"The initial signs have been encouraging, but it is important to see that kind of progress sustained," Clark said. "What you ultimately want to see is for a consumer to look at a Ford midsize car and a comparably equipped Asian midsize car and view them to be equal in value."

Ford hopes to keep its momentum going with new products. Next year, Ford plans to bring the European version of the Ford Focus compact car to the United States as well as the Ford Fiesta subcompact.

But while Ford's "new product pipeline is stronger than at any point in the past decade," Clark wrote in a report Moody's published earlier this month, S&P remains concerned that Ford's product lineup "is still skewed toward light trucks, which include pickup trucks, SUVs, crossover utility vehicles ... and vans."

While trucks are highly profitable, their sales have been volatile in recent years and cars are growing in popularity. That is helping Ford's new family vehicles -- the Ford Flex and Taurus -- pick up steam.

But S&P wrote, "Until Fiesta arrives, Ford will not have a subcompact model in the U.S. to compete with the" Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, Nissan Versa or Chevrolet Aveo.

This content has passed through fivefilters.org.