Helen Thomas: There are good reasons to bail out Detroit

[n2doc]

WASHINGTON -- At this time of year, do the Republicans really want to play Scrooge with the nation's beleaguered autoworkers?

Even President Bush -- still the top Republican -- sees the need to keep the U.S. auto industry alive and has been working for a compromise.

But a bevy of Republican senators from the South are trying to break up what the United Automobile Workers have struggled since the 1930s to achieve -- a middle-class life for union members.

It's no coincidence that many of the Senate Republicans in the lead on this issue -- Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. -- represent states benefiting from Japanese and German automobile plants that employ nonunion labor.

My family moved from Winchester, Ky., in 1924 to Detroit when my uncles reported the Ford factories were paying its workers a munificent $5 a day. My father never went on the assembly line but ran a small grocery store on the East Side of the motor city that served those who worked in the car plants.

The blue-collar auto workers led the way for other workers throughout the country and blazed a trail for labor in all industries to win decent wages and bargaining rights.

What would we be without the industry that has given so much to America?

more:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/392842_thomas19.html

[sallyseven]

1. he reason that we have Unions

is because of people like Corker, Shelby, DeMint. The industrialist wanted low pay and high profits. If it were not for unions you would all be on the bottom rung. They have to compete in order to make money. Republicans want two classes the rich and the working class. No middle class thank you.

[lib2DaBone]

2. We need those production lines and machine tool shops......

.. as we sink in the Great Depression-2.. China will no longer give us any credit. We can not offshore the parts we are going to need to rebuild.

Whether its fans for wind turbines or electric motors for cars... we ARE GOING TO NEED those production lines in Detroit.

At one time.... Detroit-Cleveland-Milwaukee-Chicago had the finest tool and die makers in the world.

Until the Bankster/Gangsters sent them away and cut eveyones pay.

This country is long overdo for a major worker strike.

[MasonJar]

3. Insightful article by the first lady of journalism. Do yourself a

favor and read it.