No goalpost moving, Woodrow. It’s called intellectual dishonesty, something about which you know precious little. If Jim R is going to include retired employees in his comment – which is the source of that number – then he should define it as such. I called it for the bullshit it is.

Unions destroy businesses. I wouldn’t waste a minute declaring bankruptcy just to void the union contracts to allow the company to compete against non-union foreign manufacturers.

Yes, there are mistakes from both management and labor. Management at the auto companies have made some terrible decisions (which doesn’t include private jets). Some of the management failures really couldn’t be avoided. But, I always resented unions strking for pay and benefits for its members in excess of their productivity and world market wages. Unions slowly suck the life out of companies until the companeis die. They never give back.

Want to know where the domestic auto industry is going? Follow what happened to Bethlehem Steel (Selections).

Well before that revamping, (Bethlehem’s president) Art Homer did something more drastic: He lowered executive pay.

Confronted with what was happening to its business those many years ago, Bethlehem should have been tirelessly trying to unload its steel plants on some buyer. Today Walter Williams, 75, one of four former Bethlehem CEOs FORTUNE interviewed (he was No. 6 in the nine who followed Grace), says ruefully that the course of events at the company, and throughout most of the country’s integrated steel industry, seems to have been almost inevitable: “We were all stuck with our basic steelmaking–just too much to write off and too much to shut down.”

The single piece of good news for the company as it burrowed was a gain in productivity–that is, reductions in the man-hours required to make a ton of steel. But this progress was impeded by both anachronistic work rules that the United Steelworkers of America defended tenaciously and capital expenditure needs that exceeded what Bethlehem could afford. Meanwhile the company’s per-head employment costs rose irrepressibly, not only because of the steelworkers’ tough demands but also because Bethlehem regularly extended whatever benefits labor won to its white-collar battalions.

Grace did get an early taste of union power. He was forced in 1941 to let the steelworkers union into the company. Thereafter, Bethlehem, typically joining in industrywide bargaining, grimly settled into triennial negotiations in which the union worked unbendingly at keeping the maximum number of its members employed at the highest possible pay. That vault in wages shows how well the union succeeded. Worse–this is an industry in which that word is persistently relevant–the industry let itself be locked into work rules and narrow job descriptions that protected workers whom automation and efficiency should have made superfluous.

The point is driven home stunningly by the contract changes that International Steel Group wrung from the steelworkers for those six Bethlehem plants it began operating in 2003. ISG’s CEO, Wilbur Ross, who characterizes Bethlehem’s contract as “terrible,” got the union to allow the cutting of job categories in his plants from 32 to five! As just one example, there is no longer a job category called electrician, which means that when a light bulb needs changing, a machine operator doesn’t have to call such a specialist in (perhaps from the far reaches of a plant) but can screw in a new bulb himself.

The ultimate error was the steel industry’s approach to pension and health benefits.

What it had instead was this colossal burden called “legacy” costs. Legacies are usually good when they come from a kindly spinster aunt. They are colossally bad when they are handed down by corporate hierarchies that both overpromise and fail to plan for the day that payment comes due.

From 1980 on, Bethlehem had five CEOs who, on the one hand, agonized about the legacy costs they inherited and, on the other, created new ones by plant closings and layoffs and even by labor settlements that added to the benefit burden. It was a never-ending, expanding mess.

Once in a while Bethlehem’s brass seemed to recognize that those rocks meant ruination. As early as the mid-1980s, the board considered putting Bethlehem into bankruptcy.

You may reasonably ask whether the steelworkers should not have, for their own long-term benefit, eased off on Bethlehem way back when. One answer is that unions don’t care for “givebacks.”

FORTUNE asked Ross and a number of other informed people whether they thought some really great businessman–say, a Jack Welch–could have come into Bethlehem maybe 40 or 50 years ago and saved this company. All thought the question intriguing, but unanswerable.

So we asked Jack Welch himself. As a buyer of steel at GE, he knew Bethlehem. So, how about it, Jack–could you have done it? He immediately responded that he wouldn’t dream of being so “presumptuous” as to think so. Then he puzzled a while longer and finally said simply, “I don’t think Christ could have done it.” Amen.

If what’s good for GM is good for America, then GM needs to dump its union obligations, as do other American businesses. It may be too late.

A friendly suggestion: Dig a little deper next time.

Mr. “ per hour union labor costs compared to per hour non-union labor costs” Larry “The focus has to be on the economy, not about UAW contracts” Gettlinger.

The American Auto Industry Execs won’t give up their jetset ‘benefits’ and neither will Labor Execs. Talk about spoiled-assed Americans.

Let the reality of bankruptsy perform the attitude adjustment on these four clunkers. After these hearing in Congress, and Gettlinger’s dumbass ‘fuck you’ statements, it is the ONLY way tio save workers their jobs in the long run. Mrs. “never run even a lemonaid stand in my life” Pelosi is just not a substitute.

If those fossilized assholes BB set “agenda”, we’re fucked.

Frank Del Olmo must be rolling in his grave.

Unions destroy businesses. I wouldn’t waste a minute declaring bankruptcy just to void the union contracts to allow the company to compete against non-union foreign manufacturers.

Yes, there are mistakes from both management and labor. Management at the auto companies have made some terrible decisions (which doesn’t include private jets). Some of the management failures really couldn’t be avoided. But, I always resented unions strking for pay and benefits for its members in excess of their productivity and world market wages. Unions slowly suck the life out of companies until the companeis die. They never give back.

Want to know where the domestic auto industry is going? Follow what happened to Bethlehem Steel (Selections).

Well before that revamping, (Bethlehem’s president) Art Homer did something more drastic: He lowered executive pay.

Confronted with what was happening to its business those many years ago, Bethlehem should have been tirelessly trying to unload its steel plants on some buyer. Today Walter Williams, 75, one of four former Bethlehem CEOs FORTUNE interviewed (he was No. 6 in the nine who followed Grace), says ruefully that the course of events at the company, and throughout most of the country’s integrated steel industry, seems to have been almost inevitable: “We were all stuck with our basic steelmaking–just too much to write off and too much to shut down.”

The single piece of good news for the company as it burrowed was a gain in productivity–that is, reductions in the man-hours required to make a ton of steel. But this progress was impeded by both anachronistic work rules that the United Steelworkers of America defended tenaciously and capital expenditure needs that exceeded what Bethlehem could afford. Meanwhile the company’s per-head employment costs rose irrepressibly, not only because of the steelworkers’ tough demands but also because Bethlehem regularly extended whatever benefits labor won to its white-collar battalions.

Grace did get an early taste of union power. He was forced in 1941 to let the steelworkers union into the company. Thereafter, Bethlehem, typically joining in industrywide bargaining, grimly settled into triennial negotiations in which the union worked unbendingly at keeping the maximum number of its members employed at the highest possible pay. That vault in wages shows how well the union succeeded. Worse–this is an industry in which that word is persistently relevant–the industry let itself be locked into work rules and narrow job descriptions that protected workers whom automation and efficiency should have made superfluous.

The point is driven home stunningly by the contract changes that International Steel Group wrung from the steelworkers for those six Bethlehem plants it began operating in 2003. ISG’s CEO, Wilbur Ross, who characterizes Bethlehem’s contract as “terrible,” got the union to allow the cutting of job categories in his plants from 32 to five! As just one example, there is no longer a job category called electrician, which means that when a light bulb needs changing, a machine operator doesn’t have to call such a specialist in (perhaps from the far reaches of a plant) but can screw in a new bulb himself.

The ultimate error was the steel industry’s approach to pension and health benefits.

What it had instead was this colossal burden called “legacy” costs. Legacies are usually good when they come from a kindly spinster aunt. They are colossally bad when they are handed down by corporate hierarchies that both overpromise and fail to plan for the day that payment comes due.

From 1980 on, Bethlehem had five CEOs who, on the one hand, agonized about the legacy costs they inherited and, on the other, created new ones by plant closings and layoffs and even by labor settlements that added to the benefit burden. It was a never-ending, expanding mess.

Once in a while Bethlehem’s brass seemed to recognize that those rocks meant ruination. As early as the mid-1980s, the board considered putting Bethlehem into bankruptcy.

You may reasonably ask whether the steelworkers should not have, for their own long-term benefit, eased off on Bethlehem way back when. One answer is that unions don’t care for “givebacks.”

FORTUNE asked Ross and a number of other informed people whether they thought some really great businessman–say, a Jack Welch–could have come into Bethlehem maybe 40 or 50 years ago and saved this company. All thought the question intriguing, but unanswerable.

So we asked Jack Welch himself. As a buyer of steel at GE, he knew Bethlehem. So, how about it, Jack–could you have done it? He immediately responded that he wouldn’t dream of being so “presumptuous” as to think so. Then he puzzled a while longer and finally said simply, “I don’t think Christ could have done it.” Amen.

If what’s good for GM is good for America, then GM needs to dump its union obligations, as do other American businesses. It may be too late.