I share the question Lee poses above. The sense I get is that Corker was originally willing to accept a plan where the word “competitive” is in the bill, but the question of whether “competitiveness” has been reached is left up to Obama’s next Labor Secretary to decide. Then, Senate Republicans said “we won’t accept a bill that leaves it up to someone else to decide when ‘competitiveness is reached — we want the workers to accept pay equal to Nissan, etc.”

Corker glosses over this when he says (as quoted above) “We had everything worked out except for one thing and that is that the UAW had to be competitive. Now, that’s a loose term. And if Deb Stabenow is right that the UAW actually gets paid less than Nissan and Toyota and Honda, then it seems to me it’s a no-brainer.”

The “no-brainer” is that if the American auto workers get paid less than the Nissan, etc. workers, then there’s no clear reason for the American auto workers to refuse to accept a plan that forces them to accept equal wages.

I’ve argued in the past that it is unfair (albeit necessary) for the feds to spend billions bailing out one group of workers while another group get no bailout — Lee’s post “The ‘Other’ American Auto Industry” makes a strong argument that the government gives financial help to businesses all the time and has helped the foreign auto makers in a big way, so it wouldn’t be unfair to help the American auto makers also – but I still think this sense that the unions are being unreasonable in demanding government help is at the crux of opposition to the bailout among most Americans, and in fact most Democrats. Some who oppose the bailout say they’re concerned that we’re just throwing good money after bad, flushing money down the toilet in an effort to avoid facing the truth that the American auto workers can’t succeed — but I think that behind this supposed enthusiasm for free-market capitalism is just a sense of resentment that some people get bailed out and others don’t — which, again, Lee’s post addresses.

This is the question that needs to be answered if supporters of the bailout hope to win public support: If the American auto workers get paid about the same as American workers for foreign auto companies, then why wouldn’t American workers be willing to accept a plan that forces them to accept “equal” compensation?

If this question can’t be answered, then the pro-union, pro-bailout position sounds fishy, as Corker indicates when he calls his proposal a “no-brainer” after Stabenow says American workers’ pay is the same. My sense is that the answer has to do with the fact that worker compensation can be divided into various categories — wages, benefits for current workers, benefits for retired workers, and benefits being set aside to pay for the benefits of current workers when they retire.

It may be complicated, but as David Mamet once wrote, “If you can’t say it in a sentence, they can’t put it in TV Guide.”

I believe TV Guide is almost bankrupt, by the way.

The question I am left with is this:  there seem to be two accounts of the Senate Republicans’ response to the Corker-UAW agreement.  One, related by Corker, suggests that they were willing to accept the vague language of “competitiveness.”  The other suggests that they wanted specific language demanding wages comparable to what auto workers in foreign plants in the South make.