DETROIT — Opponents of a Congressional bailout for Detroit auto companies and the United Automobile Workers union traded charges Friday over who was responsible for the defeat of legislation that would have provided temporary financing until the automakers restructured.þþSenator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee, suggested the fault lay with the U.A.W.’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, whose union declined to agree to allow wage concessions in 2009 as part of a deal. þþBut at a news conference Friday morning, Mr. Gettelfinger said the union feared that it was “being set up” by Mr. Corker, who he said was asking the union for concessions that were not sought from other participants in the talks.þþMr. Gettelfinger called on the Treasury and the White House to release financing and “prevent the imminent collapse of the automakers and the devastating consequences that would follow.” Until now , the White House had resisted such a move, but said Friday morning that it would consider using money from the $700 billion financial bailout to help the automakers.þþLate Thursday, the Senate did not take up an assistance measure passed by the House, after hours of negotiations between Senate Republicans with the auto companies and the U.A.W. The sticking point apparently was the union’s refusal to agree to lower wage and benefit rates as soon as next year. þþRepresentatives for the union, which had already accepted a series of cuts in its current contract, sought instead to push any more concessions back to 2011, when the U.A.W.’s contract with Detroit auto companies expires.þþIn a statement Thursday night, the union said it was “prepared to agree that any restructuring plan should ensure that the wages and benefits of workers at the domestic automakers should be competitive with those paid by the foreign transplants. But we also recognized that this would take time to work out and implement” using programs like buyouts and early retirement offers to bring in new workers at lower rates.þþ“Unfortunately, Senate Republicans insisted that this had to be accomplished by an arbitrary deadline,” the statement said. “This arbitrary requirement was not imposed on any other stakeholder groups. Thus, the U.A.W. believed this was a blatant attempt to make workers shoulder the lion’s share of the costs of any restructuring plan.”þþIn an interview Friday morning on CNBC, Mr. Corker suggested the union, not Republicans, bore the burden for the measure’s failure.þþ“I offered them a solution,” he said of discussions with union representatives. “Our caucus was 100 percent behind it. Do we own it, or does the U.A.W. own it?”þþMr. Corker said he spoke with Mr. Gettelfinger on Thursday morning and suggested he participate in the discussions. “I asked him to come to the table, not assign somebody to come back and forth. It didn’t work out,” Mr. Corker said.þþMr. Gettelfinger, at a news conference Friday, said he was wary of Mr. Corker’s offer to join the talks. þþ“We wondered if we were just being set up,” Mr. Gettelfinger said. “We did not know who Senator Corker was representing on the Republican side, and if he could deliver votes.”þþHe said Mr. Corker admitted to the union’s representatives that discussions over wages were “largely about politics in the G.O.P. caucus.”þþMr. Corker said he proposed that wages and benefits of U.A.W. members be competitive with lower rates at American plants run by foreign rivals — Toyota, Honda, Nissan and B.M.W. — during 2009, and offered the union the opportunity to pick the date next year when the changes, which would be certified by the Labor Department, could be put in place.þþWithout that agreement, Mr. Corker said he could not sell a compromise to other Republicans.þþ“We just could not get a date,” Mr. Corker said of his discussions with the union. “It was an amazing thing to me.”þþMr. Gettelfinger said Friday that there was no way to tell what Mr. Corker meant by competitive wage and benefit rates, which differ depending on the company and the location of the automakers’ plants. He went on, “The G.O.P. caucus was insisting the restructuring had to be done on the backs of workers and retirees rather than have all stakeholders come to the table.” þþ“We could not accept the effort by the Senate G.O.P. caucus to single out workers and retirees for different treatment,” he said.þþIn 2007, the U.A.W. agreed to sharply lower starting wages and benefits for newly hired autoworkers at the Detroit companies, as well as for workers in jobs away from the assembly line, like janitors and maintenance personnel. þþBut the cuts did not affect most long-time union members, whose hourly pay and compensation is about $55 an hour. The figure ranges above $70 an hour when the automakers’ costs for future health care and retirement benefits is factored in.þþBy contrast, workers in plants run by foreign companies in the United States earn about $45 an hour, and the non-union companies do not have the hefty burdens for future “legacy costs” that are faced by the Detroit companies. þþGov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan expressed anger Friday morning at the failure of the Senate to act on the bailout package. “It’s such an unbelievable stab at workers across the country,” she said in an interview on WJR-AM in Detroit.þþWashington gave a bailout to the financial institutions, and did not ask a single question, the governor said, “then lay the blame for the auto industry, which is a victim of this financial meltdown, on the backs of the people who are working on the line.”þþNick Bunkley contributed reportingþþ
Source: NY Times
