Francene's "open letter to the Angry Ford Worker"

After the flurry of letters in the C-J on the same topic, Francene weighs in with an excellent piece on the Big Three in LEO-- and in particular, the response of the public to the auto workers (and vice versa)...

I understand why you’re upset. You feel attacked. The protected position your union provided you is being publicly dissected. The source of your employment hangs in the precarious balance. You lack the power to determine your own fate....

You claim you are misunderstood, maligned by what you believe is a jealous public. Let me clear up the confusion. The truth is, I don’t care how much money you make....I also don’t care about how hard you say your job is. And the reason I don’t care is because you chose to work in the automotive industry....

Nobody promised you the job would be a cakewalk. You knew manufacturing jobs are physically taxing and can be irreversibly debilitating. Still, you felt the salary and benefits were desirable and therefore consciously accepted the job, whatever the tradeoff....

As for your generous U.A.W.-negotiated benefits...that a ridiculously princely, lie-around-and-suck-up-money-for-nothing Jobs Bank exists — hey, if you can get ’em, God bless ya. Only I’m not going to pay for all that. And I’m certainly not going to advocate loaning money, especially $25 billion, to companies that do....

I wish you well, but you’re on your own.

Whatever was negotiated between your union and your employer, whatever concessions the U.A.W. made in the past have absolutely nothing to do with me. I have zero obligations to make sure your life is lived with relative financial security....

Big Auto can’t save money by cutting back on quality. That won’t sell cars and trucks. So all forms of compensation, at every level of employment, and all contractual obligations, must be reduced, postponed or eliminated.

Is that fair when dealing with people? Families? No. But this is business. It’s not personal.

Actually, it's business-- and it's government. And that's what ultimately decides what's fair.