Auto Bailout - a regular american logical viewpoint

There's something very suspicious about all this car company bailout business that's going on right now.

I'll put aside, for the moment, whether i think that the government should ever have their hand in corporate business to begin with. Does it make sense to anyone out there that car businesses are going under? Do you have a lot of friends who have decided to stop buying cars? Is anyone turning, for environmental reasons, back to the horse and buggy method? No, of course they're not.

Here's my concern. Ford, GM, and Chrysler are not going out of business because they can't sell cars. Ford, GM, and Chrysler are going out of business because the unions are out of control. I understand that the labor unions were very important in the early 1900s. At first, unions represented the common blue collar worker's right to earn a living and to be paid his worth. I commend the American spirit that birthed that movement, and I'm proud of it. But now the labor unions, specifically those associated with the auto industry are doing just the opposite.

The problem with the auto makers is not that they can't figure out how to continue their business in modern times. It isn't that they don't know how to make adjustments in order to survive the current economy. The auto makers would know just what to do if they didn't have to battle it out with the union leaders every time they wanted to try to survive. Entire auto plants in Michigan have been completely shut down simply because the union leaders refused to agree to any compromise solution the corporations suggested in order to keep the plant open and the employees working. I have a feeling that sensible workers, eager to support their families, would have accepted some compromises if it meant that they could continue to work for a living. The problem, it seems to me, must be that the union leaders are getting a take. And they don't like the take they'd get if the auto makers made some sensible decisions in order to get through the current turbulent times. And they don't have to worry about the every day, in your face, consequences that the average Joe has to worry about.

Here's what I say: don't bail out the auto makers. Just limit the power of the unions. Let the workers make their own decisions for a change, and see if the auto makers can do what business people do and come to a solution that actually works without taking our tax money and putting it into a private corporation.

I don't want my fellow-Americans in Michigan to suffer any more than anyone else, but I'm pretty sure that the solution here will not be found in billions of tax dollars loaned to the auto makers unless we first muzzle the union leaders.