The Cost of the UAW-Big Labor Bailout

Investors.com continues to dig into the true costs of President Obama's self-proclaimed success story -- the taxpayer bailout of the UAW and the car companies: The administration claims to have saved the U.S. auto industry. What it really saved was the industry's dominant union — and it weakened capitalism in the process. Michigan is one of those light-blue states where Mitt Romney just may have a chance on Nov. 6. Don't be surprised, then, if Barack Obama's re-election campaign carpet-bombs it with ads noting that Romney once said the auto industry should go bankrupt, and that the Obama administration found a better way. In fact, two of the Big Three automakers did go into bankruptcy under Obama. But it was a bankruptcy like no other before and, we hope, no other to come. Washington not only used taxpayer money to buy control of General Motors and Chrysler, but it also rewrote the rules on the treatment of creditors. Superficially at least, the intervention worked, but it hasn't been cheap. GM is back to making a profit, though it is struggling in Europe and once again has lost its No. 1 market share to Toyota. And the perennial problem child Chrysler is now in Fiat's lap.
US Treasury Trove?

US Treasury Trove?

[media-credit id=7 align="alignleft" width="300"][/media-credit]President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout, the Daily Caller reports. Observers expect the documents to be a treasure trove of information on how the administration used the bailout to reward their big labor buddies at the expense of taxpayers and workers. The Caller continues: Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout caused 20,000 non-union workers from Delphi to lose most of their pensions. Delphi, a GM company, is one of the largest automotive parts manufacturers in the world. Its workers lost their pensions when the government bailed out GM. While those non-union Delphi workers lost nearly their entire pensions, United Auto Workers union members’ pensions were topped off and made whole. While Feldman, Bloom and Wilson have maintained they think no preferential treatment was given to the unions during the bailout, emails The Daily Caller obtained in June 2011 show senior officials corresponding with senior GM officials on how to make certain decisions regarding who was going to win and who was going to lose.
NLRB'S Overreach

NLRB'S Overreach

[media-credit id=7 align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]In their aggressive overreach to help the union bosses, the National Labor Relations Board has a devastating string of courtroom losses that are putting them back into place.  The House Education and Workforce Committee looks at their grasp for more power: This week, the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suffered yet another defeat in federal court. On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg – appointed to the federal bench last year by President Obama – rejected the board’s recent ambush election rule. During the final days of 2011, the Obama labor board jammed through the regulatory process sweeping changes to long-standing rules governing union elections, changes that undermine employer free speech and worker free choice. As Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline noted: The Obama board’s rush to enact this rule before it loses its quorum confirms what my Republican colleagues and I have suspected all along – this board is not fighting for the best interests of our workforce, but instead is determined to advance an activist, pro-union agenda at any cost. Yet in their haste to adopt a flawed rule, board members Mark Pearce and Craig Becker neglected to follow the law. Citing Hollywood icon Woody Allen, Judge Boasberg writes: Eighty percent of life is just showing up. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that. Indeed, it is the only thing that matters – even when the quorum is constituted electronically. In this case, because no quorum ever existed for the pivotal vote in question, the Court must hold that the challenged rule is invalid.
NLRB'S Overreach

NLRB'S Overreach

[media-credit id=7 align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]In their aggressive overreach to help the union bosses, the National Labor Relations Board has a devastating string of courtroom losses that are putting them back into place.  The House Education and Workforce Committee looks at their grasp for more power: This week, the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suffered yet another defeat in federal court. On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg – appointed to the federal bench last year by President Obama – rejected the board’s recent ambush election rule. During the final days of 2011, the Obama labor board jammed through the regulatory process sweeping changes to long-standing rules governing union elections, changes that undermine employer free speech and worker free choice. As Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline noted: The Obama board’s rush to enact this rule before it loses its quorum confirms what my Republican colleagues and I have suspected all along – this board is not fighting for the best interests of our workforce, but instead is determined to advance an activist, pro-union agenda at any cost. Yet in their haste to adopt a flawed rule, board members Mark Pearce and Craig Becker neglected to follow the law. Citing Hollywood icon Woody Allen, Judge Boasberg writes: Eighty percent of life is just showing up. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that. Indeed, it is the only thing that matters – even when the quorum is constituted electronically. In this case, because no quorum ever existed for the pivotal vote in question, the Court must hold that the challenged rule is invalid.