Quit Blaming American Workers

Everyone has an opinion why the big three automakers are almost bankrupt. To those who think factory workers are overpaid and take the corporate CEO side, you are way off base and wrong. Working class people in factories and other grunt jobs have always been the backbone of this country. Those jobs in the factory were not isolated or held for a chosen few. The only requirement was a high school education, which was often waived, and to pass a physical.

Everyone had the opportunity for those jobs and thousands of Americans came from all over the country, including the South, to acquire them. Factory workers labored in shops in temperatures of over 100 degrees without air conditioning. They lived from payday to payday, paid their bills and saved to send their kids to college like millions of other Americans.

I grew up in a GM town and knew hundreds of GM workers. I didn't know one that was rich or overpaid for what they did in those hot, dirty factories. I didn't work one day in any shop, but I have been in them and the workers deserve every penny. The rise in cost of medical care and the lack of funding to contractually agreed retirement funds is what has led multi-million dollar CEOs to re-elevate worker estimates.

I can't believe that some CEO says autoworkers make $75 an hour and other Americans turn on them. That kind of support for corporate CEOs that blame American workers helped create the mess we're in now. You've actually helped the CEOs by spreading their propaganda.

To begin with, if the $75 an hour figure has any truth in it, the figure is the fault of the CEOs, not the workers. Wages and benefits were negotiated and accepted under contractual agreement by the CEOs. Why would anyone support someone who had given their word and were now crying because they didn't want to keep it?

Here is a flash for those who believe and think like the CEOs: All Americans deserve to make a living wage. The attack on American workers including those laboring in factories began eight years ago. At that time the country was in prosperity. Everyone was making and spending money and there was work for everyone. For eight years unions and working class people have been under that attack.

Corporations have received tax breaks to build factories in China and Mexico and exploit their cheap labor. Those so called overpaid factory workers were replaced by $5 a day foreign labor. At that same time, so was every other worker in American industry.

Televisions, radios, clothing, refrigerators and other items Americans use, including food, candy and your children's and grandchildren's toys, are now made by cheap foreign labor.

Here is another flash for those that support the CEOs over the workers: You still pay the same price for all those goods that you did before and that includes automobiles.

Now that most of the good paying jobs are gone, so is the American dream for millions of Americans. To those who helped verbally attack American workers for the CEOs, you got your way. Thousands of the alleged $75 and hour jobs have gone away, but so had their money that passed through a lot of hands.

If you believe factory workers that were replaced share any of the blame for the problems we face today, look in the mirror, you're more to blame than they are. It's already been tried your way and that's the real reason the last eight years has brought this mess.

The problem isn't that the American factory worker may be making $75 an hour; the problem is that thousands and thousands of them have been gone for four to five years and replaced by foreign workers at 1 percent of that wage. Those American wages are no longer spent and re-spent by millions of Americans. In short the marketplace of the world dried up and now Americans can't afford to buy the products made with the cheap labor some argued for.

What your support has done is help those overpaid CEOs make millions more. What did Americans gain for attacking other Americans because some CEO said Americans were overpaid? They got cars at the same price but now nobody can afford to buy them.