General Motors (GM) received $20 billion in U.S. government loans and might need another $50 billion to survive.
GM plans to close a number of U.S. plants and lay off thousands of workers. The UAW has agreed to eliminate or reduce employee benefits to drop the average wage, including benefits, from around $75 per hour to near $45 per hour, which is the average wage of U.S. auto workers at foreign plants in the U.S. Hopefully, GM will cut management staff and reduce executive salaries. These actions should make GM cost competitive and save thousands of American jobs.
However, to my astonishment, GM plans to increase imports from Mexico, South Korea, Japan and China from 15 percent in 2009 to 23 percent by 2014. Approximately 50,000 cars will be imported from Communist China by 2014.
Evidently the U.S. taxpayers are loaning GM $20-$50 billion to stay alive so it can close U.S. plants, lay off U.S. workers, transfer some production to foreign countries like Communist China and import inferior cars to the U.S. so more U.S. workers can be laid off. And our insurance rates and health care costs will increase from accidents as the wheels falls off the Chinese made vehicles.
We don’t need imported cars. We need fuel efficient, reasonably priced cars manufactured in the U.S.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, NH
The Pennsylvania State University
Class of 1963