Cerberus offers stake to unions

[Jack Bone]

Source: Detroit Free Press

Firm seeks to exit the auto business
BY JEWEL GOPWANI • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER • December 20, 2008

Cerberus Capital Management LP, Chrysler LLC's majority owner, said it plans to give its stake in the Auburn Hills automaker to unions, debtholders and other stakeholders in exchange for concessions, paving the way for Cerberus to exit Chrysler's automotive business -- though it is unclear if labor and banks would want the company.

Cerberus' announcement came as the Bush administration announced plans to lend Chrysler as much as $4 billion, a loan expected to require stakeholders across the board to make sacrifices.

The administration expects Chrysler to cut its debt by two-thirds and persuade the UAW to cut its wages and change its work rules to be more in line with foreign-owned automakers operating in the United States.

"Cerberus believes that concessions by all relevant constituencies will be required to facilitate a full restructuring and recapitalization of Chrysler," the New York private-equity fund said in a statement Friday.

"In order to achieve that goal Cerberus has advised the Treasury that it would contribute its equity in Chrysler automotive to labor and creditors as currency to facilitate the accommodations necessary to affect the restructuring."<snip>

Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20081220/BUSINESS01/812200...

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I didn't see this posted elsewhere..if it's a dup, sorry.

[jody]

1. Unions should take over Chrysler and operate it. That would eliminate the management-union conflict.

[Jack Bone]

2. I believe we could do a better job of it....

I am concerned about a possible conflict of interest, being the UAW represents Ford & GM workers as well.

The UAW might get a minority stake, w/ the suppliers & dealers being a majority..that too might pose problems...we'll see.

[jody]

3. I assume a merged Ford, GM, Chrysler would be wrong from a monopoly perspective so wouldn't a merged...

labor force via UAW as you point out also be wrong from a monopoly perspective?

[Jack Bone]

5. Other unions represent at auto factories as well.

IBEW, I know represents workers at a plant in Ohio..can't remember @ which of the Big 3's factory.

I was speaking in terms of a product development standpoint. It might give them an unfair advantage. Can you expect GM or Ford to negotiate terms, in a labor contract, w/ their competitor?

somehow I can't see this happening.

The article didn't specify the UAW assuming an ownership stake, could it be some other union?

[Idealism]

4. Conflict of Interest is moot

If any of the Big Three fail, as Ford pointed out, they will bring down the other two with them due to a crumbling in the supply chain to each manufacturer. What is good for the Chrysler workers is good for GM and Ford workers.

[Lucky Luciano]

7. The conflict could be resolved (and must be in this event)

by having the Chrysler employees splitting off from the UAW. I see no other way around it. It would weaken the UAW though.

[alfredo]

6. Control the means of production

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1931/31...


The first question that arises in this connection is: Can we picture workers’ control of production as a stable regime, not everlasting, of course, but of quite long duration? In order to reply to the question it is necessary to determine the class nature of this regime more clearly. Control lies in the hands of the workers. This means: ownership and right of disposition remain in the hands of the capitalists. Thus, the regime has a contradictory character, presenting a sort of economic interregnum.

The workers need control not for platonic purposes, but in order to exert practical influence upon the production and commercial operations of the employers. This cannot, however, be attained unless the control, in one form or another, within such and such limits, is transformed into direct management. In a developed form, workers’ control thus implies a sort of economic dual power in the factory, the bank, commercial enterprise, and so forth.

If the participation of the workers in the management of production is to be lasting, stable, “normal,” it must rest upon class collaboration, and not upon class struggle. Such a class collaboration can be realized only through the upper strata of the trade unions and the capitalist associations. There have been not a few such experiments: in Germany (“economic democracy”), in Britain (“Mondism”), etc. Yet, in all these instances, it was not a case of workers’ control over capital, but of the subserviency of the labor bureaucracy to capital. Such subserviency, as experience shows, can last for a long time: depending on the patience of the proletariat.

The closer it is to production, to the factory, to the shop, the less possible such a regime is, for here it is a matter of the immediate, vital interests of the workers, and the whole process unfolds under their very eyes. workers’ control through factory councils is conceivable only on the basis of sharp class struggle, not collaboration. But this really means dual power in the enterprises, in the trusts, in all the branches of industry, in the whole economy.

[floridablue]

8. Ford was once vertical

From mining the iron ore to assemblying the auto. To bad they can't get back to that.