Jerry White — At Michigan auto factory, Obama says more “sacrifice” needed for economic turnaround

In an appearance at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama pointed to the “sacrifices” the White House demanded from auto workers during the 2009 restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler as the model for resurrecting manufacturing and the US economy as a whole…. 

In fact, the manufacturing sector has only added 650,000 jobs since 2010, far shy of the 2.3 million jobs shed in the preceding three years. Those jobs predominantly pay low wages and lack the benefits and conditions won by industrial workers in the last century. Manufacturing jobs were traditionally the highest paid private sector jobs. More than 1.5 million manufacturing workers—one out of every four—earn $11.91 per hour or less, and 600,000 earn $9.60 per hour or less. 

As for the state of Michigan, which once had among the highest living standards for workers in the country, it now ranks in the bottom 10 for per capita income in the US, barely ahead of Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and other traditionally poor states.… 

“America’s resurgence is real,” Obama insisted, saying no one should convince workers otherwise. Now that the US was in “calmer waters and the worst of the crisis is behind us,” the president said, it was “time that everyone pitched in so that the rising tide is lifting all boats not just some.” 

This was a passing reference to the fact that 95 percent of all economic gains under the president’s tenure have gone to the richest 1 percent… 

Obama recounted how his administration decided to use the crisis in the auto industry to ram through concessions in wages, benefits and working conditions long sought by the auto bosses and Wall Street. Pointing to the precarious state of the industry following the financial meltdown, with plunging sales and one out of five workers losing their jobs, Obama said, “We could have given billions in taxpayers dollars to the corporations without accountability or change, but that would have just kicked the problem down the road.” 

“The alternative was to do nothing and let the companies fail,” the president said, but this would have had the cascading effect of wiping out suppliers, communities and stronger auto companies like Ford. “So, in exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We told the auto companies ‘you have to change with the times.’ Plants restructured. Labor and management worked together, settled their differences and everybody made sacrifices; it was not just the workers who gave something up. That’s when America works best. We rejected the false choice that either the unions or the businesses could succeed but not both…. We believed in shared sacrifices and that leads to shared prosperity.” 

In fact, the Obama administration collaborated with the United Auto Workers to make sure that the corporations and the UAW apparatus succeeded—at the direct expense of the working class. The UAW agreed to cut in half the wages of new workers, freeze the pay of traditional “legacy” workers, eliminate the eight-hour day and tear up other long-standing job protections and working standards. In exchange, the UAW was given control of billions of dollars in corporate shares and other assets as part of the union’s takeover of the companies’ retiree health care obligations.… 

This is Obama’s new “middle class,” working for half the wages of their grandparents and barely keeping one step out of a homeless shelter.

More words of wisdom from the bullshitter in chief.
WSWS
At Michigan auto factory, Obama says more “sacrifice” needed for economic turnaround
Jerry White