Blue-collar work with a white-collar pension will bankrupt an industry.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s articles had become boringly repetitive during the waning years of the Bush Administration.  It was as though in every column he felt to urge to demand the administration adopt his various favored green policies, as though doing so would encounter no political opposition or economic costs.

Well.  Now Mr. Friedman is starting to make sense today.  Now that incoming leadership at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is dominantly Democratic and thus aligned with the interests of labor unions and archaic wage and pension scales, GM is now in the position of seeking a government bailout for its long-mismanaged state.  “The market is too tough!” Detroit cries.

Friedman has little patience:

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it.

….

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being more than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.”

When Detroit auto companies claim that it is simply impossible to manufacture cars economically in North America, they further a notion belied by the mere presence of foreign car companies in Ontario and various southern U.S. states.

Honda in Ohio, Toyota in Kentucky, Mercedes and BMW in the south.  These foreign manufacturers prove that realistic pay scales and a model line that people actually want to buy does not a bankrupt automaker make!

Friedman notes:

Not every automaker is at death’s door. Look at this article that ran two weeks ago on autochannel.com: “ALLISTON, Ontario, Canada — Honda of Canada Mfg. officially opened its newest investment in Canada — a state-of-the art $154 million engine plant. The new facility will produce 200,000 fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines annually for Civic production in response to growing North American demand for vehicles that provide excellent fuel economy.”

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.

Indeed!  But with the Democratic Party ascendant in American politics, how much do you want to bet that auto bailouts will be coupled with dissolved labor contracts and stricter environmental standards?  Don’t hold your breath: the Michigan delegation and the UAW hold sway in the Democratic Party enough to scuttle any realistic restructuring of American automakers.

If the GM palliative bailout goes through, one must worry that American taxdollars will be put at risk with few concessions from Big Labor and no environmental standards to suit the public good.  We will be throwing good money after bad, enabling an incestuous, luxurious, and unrealistic GM-UAW corporate-social welfare contract, and we will prolong the inevitable death of auto dinosaurs that should have rightly perished long ago.