What's the real agenda here?

(Via truthout)

Over the past several weeks, it has become clear that the Republican right hates the UAW so much that it would prefer to plunge the nation into a depression rather than craft a bridge loan that doesn't single out the auto industry's unionized workers for punishment. (As manufacturing consultant Michael Wessel pointed out, no Republican demanded that Big Three executives have their pay permanently reduced to the relatively spartan levels of Japanese auto executives' pay.) Today, setting the terms of that loan has become the final task of the Bush presidency, which puts the auto workers in the unenviable position of depending, if not on the kindness of strangers, then on the impartiality of the most partisan president of modern times.

Republicans complain that labor costs at the Big Three are out of line with those at the non-union transplant factories in the South, factories that Southern governors have subsidized with billions of taxpayer dollars. But the UAW has already agreed to concessions bringing its members' wages to near-Southern levels, and labor costs already comprise less than 10 percent of the cost of a new car. (On Wall Street, employee compensation at the seven largest financial firms in 2007 constituted 60 percent of the firms' expenses, yet reducing overall employee compensation wasn't an issue in the financial bailout.

In a narrow sense, what the Republicans are proposing would gut the benefits of roughly a million retirees. In a broad sense, they want to destroy the institution that did more than any other to raise American living standards, and they want to do it by using the power of government to lower American living standards - in the middle of the most severe recession since the 1930s. The auto workers deserve better, and so does the nation they did so much to build.

It seems that the Republican party can only understand the plight of those most able to absorb losses (management), while those living on the edge get disdain (labor). Let's be clear here: they positively HATE unions, or anything that cuts into management's power over the workers.

Oh, and another point:

In 1949, a pamphlet was published that argued that the American auto industry should pursue a different direction. Titled "A Small Car Named Desire," the pamphlet suggested that Detroit not put all its bets on bigness, that a substantial share of American consumers would welcome smaller cars that cost less and burned fuel more efficiently.

The pamphlet's author was the research department of the United Auto Workers.

Who's forward thinking now?