GM’s Pain is America’s Pain

GM’s Pain is America’s Pain

November 22, 2005

Workers across the country got some bad holiday news this week when General Motors announced plans to cut 30,000 manufacturing jobs – 25,000 in the U.S. – and close a dozen plants. This news comes on the heels of Ford Motors announcing 4,000 more job cuts. The GM layoffs are the largest rounds of layoffs in almost three years. These layoffs are the latest signs of a shift away from an “opportunity society” where all hard-working people can realize their goals through education, decent work and fair wages. Replacing it are the tough realities of job uncertainty, lower wages, higher health care costs and a shrinking middle class. This current reality is a result of specific policy decisions that have left American workers and businesses unprepared for the changes occurring in the global economy.

• The American worker is facing a disappearing opportunity nation. General Motors, once a symbol of America’s industrial power, is now struggling to stay afloat and the American worker is finding out that the once solid promise of blue-collar factory work being a path to the American dream has faded as well. These problems are not unique to GM. As the Los Angeles Times notes, “economic risks [like] unemployment and health costs once broadly shared by business and government are being shifted directly onto the backs of American working families."
  
  
• The Bush administration continues to undercut the American worker. As American workers face greater problems, the Bush administration continues to cut programs designed to help them find new employment opportunities. President Bush sought to chop half a billion dollars out of federal job training funding, he neglected the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, one of the primary safety nets in place for workers displaced by trade, and he has pushed to privatize or cut vital programs like Social Security and Medicaid when they are more important than ever.
  
  
• One of the underlying causes of GM’s woes is the rising cost of health care. GM is the largest provider of health care in America, and the enormous price of health care benefits is one of the reasons GM is facing its financial crisis today. And the problem isn’t that GM employees have great health insurance, it's that "most Americans have had too bad a deal." One possible solution to GM’s problem: health care for hybrids. American Progress has proposed a plan, now embraced by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), that would "offer automakers the following deal: If they invest substantially in fuel-efficient technology, Congress will relieve them of the health insurance burden of their retirees." American Progress also has a systemic plan to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans.