GM layoffs' dirty secret
November 22, 2005News & Politics
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Jonathan Tasini isn't happy with reporting on the 30,000 layoffs recently announced by General Motors.
In addition to poor management and poor engineering, mentioned prominently in most articles, Tasini writes:
"But, staring you right in the face are the billions of dollars in health care costs that GM carries on its balance sheets. It is still startling to me that companies like GM, looking straight into the financial abyss, can't shake off an ideological straight-jacket that prevents it from shouting loudly, 'we need to extend Medicare to every person in America.'"In addition to the moral imperative, he argues, there's an economic one, in order to compete in the global marketplace:
"Even with the rise of the multi-national corporation, which care not a bit about national identity, most corporations still have a home-base of operations. And where that home base provides health insurance as a matter of national right, those companies have a competitive advantage over their counterparts...well. mostly their American counterparts because we seem to be the only significant economic player on the planet that can't shuck off the nonsense about the 'free-market' and solve our health care crisis in the only way it can be solved: EXTEND MEDICARE TO ALL."(WorkingLife)
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