I Am Hearing Precious Little About Pensions And Healthcare For Retired GM & Chrysler Workers

Why the fuck is that???

I'll listen.

They're trading their health care fund for stock in GM, basically. More to it than that, this is a pretty good article, for the current plan.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902009,00.html

...of cash into the health-care fund--but GM doesn't have the money, so they're giving them GM stock instead?

I'd like to hear more about this, because that sounds like the worst deal I could ever imagine.

Most of the time DU supports workers having ownership in their company.

...but it's my understanding that GM was supposed to infuse a massive amount of cash into a health fund, that
would provide GM employees with money for their healthcare.

GM doesn't have the money.

So, instead GM is giving these workers GM stock.

You don't see the problem here? GM stock could be worth pennies. Worst-case scenario--the company
completely fails and ceases to exist. The company has no major plans to reinvent themselves, and the economy isn't
exactly stellar right now--which means the conditions for growth barely exist in the near term.

So, which would be better for these employees who have been promised healthcare?

--A big pile of cash to pay for that healthcare OR
--A bunch of stock that could be worthless or worth very little.

I can't imagine anyone wanting to trade their paid healthcare for GM stock.

This seems horrendously risky, with the employees taking all of the risk and GM getting let off the hook.

Honestly, people praise the idea of worker ownership around here all the time. Then when the downside comes along - it's employees taking all the risk?? How come nobody ever thinks of that when they're praising collectives?

GM spent $103 billion in 15 years according to that Time article. The Employee Benefit Association has $9.4 billion in assets which would only last 3 years. GM owes it $20 billion. Instead they are taking a 17% stake and a seat on the board. If GM goes totally bankrupt, the health care goes too. This seems like a good deal to me. I just hope the workers are making sure the union stays accountable to them with the profits.

Shares of stock in a company are only worth what you can get if you can find someone to buy your shares. If no one wants to buy your shares, they are worthless.

The REAL "owners" of a corporation are the executives who control the company. They are the insiders who manipulate the company so as to increase the share price long enough for them to sell their personal shares at a large profit. Enron executives "cooked" the books to make it seem like Enron was making huge profits. Then the suckers (excuse me, company owners) bought the shares at inflated prices driving the share price up. The insiders dumped their shares before the facts came out making the insiders millions in "capital gains".

When the truth about Enron came out, a lot of big corporations adjusted their income statements and balance sheets. In other words, they were playing the same shady game.

The bank bailout money wasn't to save the failed banks. It was to boost the now worthless share prices (worthless because no one was willing to buy the shares) to save the profits of the crooks.

If a person "owns" common stock, they only own pieces of paper, which are only worth what they can get someone else to pay for them. If a share holder can't sell the stock, like Enron stock, it becomes worthless. Corporate shareholders don't own the company. That is a fiction that makes the giant Ponzi scheme known as the stock market possible.

The workers would have had a little more access to those books and a way to make sure they were being honest.

A union rep would be given access only to the "cooked" books. The accounting firm Arthur Anderson either didn't catch on or, more likely, they looked the other way, when auditing Enron.

The workers should have asked the government to fund worker healthcare, rather than pour money into the company to shore up the stock price. A few billions put in a fund to be used for health care would earn interest and be there for many years.

The value of the stock is only worth what someone else is willing to pay to buy it. The value of the stock to be used to pay for health care could be worth nothing (i.e., nada, nil, zilch, zero) in six months.

For the workers, this is a horrible deal. If union management signed on to this fraud, they are either incompetent or powerless.

As I have written in other posts, the ONLY policy that will save jobs AND the economy is to make it less profitable to ship jobs offshore. That means getting rid of NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, and all the other corporate schemes for controlling trade, as well as rewriting the tax laws that allow corporations to hide profits in offshore dummy corporations.

I'm a retired GM worker Trying to learn whats behind all this crap I keep reading. Where can I go to find out the truth? Who can I listen to? I'm a retired white ex union radical alternate safety rep from a Willow Run plant. Looking for whats really going on behind all the union bullshit. What's happening with the average retired worker. Please someone tell me where to find the truth. Thanks for reading me.

see more of the information you are looking for.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=367

...monumental subject.

What is going to happen to these GM and Chrysler workers who have been promised healthcare
for life and who counted on pensions.

I think most of this will go up in a puff of smoke. The corporations always get their way, with
our bought-and-paid-for Congress members ready to kow tow to their every whim.

There has been information out there about this, but you are right--not enough.

There's a lot of lip service and generalities, but not a lot of substance.

LTV Steal went under in bankruptcy. Steelworkers health care, and retiree health insurance were eliminated the next day. You could buy COBRA for over $1,000 per month for yourself and spouse.

But, it was kind of hard to do, since the PBGC took over the pension plans and many had cuts, by as much as two thirds. So basically you had a pension, but it didn't pay enough to buy health insurance.

"Steal" seems appropriate to me.


K & R this thread.

Who knows, in the long run.