Tag: lay offs

And we all love trees.  I have four or five of them in my back yard and another in the front.  They produce oxygen, shade, they smell nice, I can burn them to stay warm if my heat ever gets shut off... errr...

In the 75 centuries or 869 quadrillion years this planet has been circling the sun (depending on your source, of course) Earth has managed to adapt and survive just about everything.  Colossal, global floods.  Meteor showers.  Ice ages.  Quasi-nuclear winters.   Human beings.  

Leave it to automobiles to signal the end of all that is, was or ever could have been.  Thank goodness we've got these brave environmentalist crusaders willing to fight pollution whatever the cost.  And thank goodness there are so many of them here in Michigan to enable the Granholm-Cherry administration as they join with President Obama in foisting these massive new CAFE standards on an automobile industry on the verge of permanent financial ruin. Without them we'd have negligibly dirtier air and 50,000 auto workers wouldn't be mapping the best route from their soon-to-be-foreclosed homes to the nearest unemployment line.  And who would want that?

I mean, except for the Michigan Left.  Because according to the Detroit News, that's precisely how many Big 3 jobs are expected to be killed by the Democrats new environmental red (or should it be green) tape.

Nearly 50,000 jobs could be lost in the auto sector as a result of President Barack Obama's decision to approve fuel efficiency requirements for the nation's cars and trucks, according to government documents and a former presidential adviser.

At the same time, the increased fuel rules could cause full-size truck sales to fall significantly without government help, a Wall Street analyst said.

Those trucks, by the way, have long been the last remaining cash cow for the Big 3.  Buh-bye marketability.  Hello pink slips.  

All of this thanks to our elected officials?  

Read on...

But really isn't it much more likely that the universe understands what we're going through as a state and figured it'd pitch in with the appropriate mood lighting and soundtrack?  

Even when there are glimmers that the winter is going to break and that sixty degree days are around the corner, things like the news that the UAW finally agreed to what passes for a concession or two with Ford we're reminded in the next paragraph that there isn't a deal anywhere close to done with GM and Chrysler.

Those "concessions," by the way... they're things like giving up one paid federal holiday, going without a Christmas BONUS at the end of 2009 and suspending annual pay raises.  

I don't think I've ever gotten an annual pay raise myself, but that's neither here nor there and I don't begrudge any employee anywhere in the state from getting whatever he or she can for his honest day's work.  You can get someone to sign on the dotted line, bully for you.  

But memo to Big Labor leadership: Don't lecture the rest of the nation about how rough you've got it at $73.50 an hour when hundreds of thousands of Michigan workers aren't pulling down that much a day.  Especially with work hours, pay and benefits being cut everywhere these days, not just in UAW shops.

Places like... well, read on...