December 13, 2008 - Senator Bob Corker, Spring Hill TN

GM's Hourly Workers Losing Edge Over Salaried Ones

As the workers and residents of this small town that launched the Saturn automobile see it, there are several villains in the collapse of the automakers' rescue plan.

But what stuns many in this place defined by the General Motors auto plant and its 4,200 workers is that no person played a larger role in the demise of autoworker hopes than their own Sen. Bob Corker (R), who is now regarded by some here with the kind of disdain reserved for traitors.

Corker emerged as one of the leading critics of the rescue plan passed by the House. He lashed into the carmaker chief executives when they came to Washington looking for help. And it was Corker's alternative proposal, which was a plan that would have been tougher on union workers, that ultimately failed.

In a dozen interviews with workers here, many suspected that he only feigned interest in rescuing Detroit's Big Three. Instead, they say, he wants to crush GM and its union to benefit foreign automakers, such Nissan and Volkswagen, who have opened or are opening nonunionized plants in the state.

"We're deeply disappointed in Senator Corker -- that's the official statement," said Mike Herron, union chief at the GM plant here. "But actually my members want to choke him."

The anger of the workers and the harshness of their words reflect the larger tension between the old Detroit-based domestic auto industry, with its unionized workforce, and the new transplant industry in the nonunion South. Emotions were stoked by the fact that GM, citing the economic downturn, had just announced that it will halt production at the plant for January and the first week of February.

Corker "has somehow ignored the fact that there's a major GM plant in his own state," said Ben McFarlane, who retired from the plant this summer and opened a local bar where many workers go. "And if this plant goes, then my business goes, this whole town goes, and the effects cascade across the country."

At a news conference and in interviews yesterday, Corker, a millionaire real estate developer, took pains to depict himself as sympathetic to workers and responsive to his state's interests.

"I was a member of a union as a young man, a card-carrying union member," he noted at a Capitol Hill news conference. "My company that I started when I was 25 employed large numbers of union workers -- carpenters, laborers and others."

He said that while he initially thought the best route for the struggling auto companies was to go into bankruptcy, he changed his mind and drafted a plan for a federal rescue intended to help make the companies more competitive by bringing average union salaries in line with those at nonunion plants.

In an interview, he dismissed theories that he was trying to help foreign automakers. Those companies would also suffer if one of Detroit's Big Three collapsed because of the stress it would cause in the automakers' supply chain, he said. He added that none of the e-mails and other contacts he had received from foreign automakers urged him to block a rescue.

"Anybody that has any knowledge of the industry knows that that idea is farcical," he said in an interview. "These guys [foreign and domestic automakers] are interdependent on each other."

But Herron, like many here, pressed the idea that the foreign automakers had been involved in stalling the plan.

"It's in their best interest to see us not succeed," Herron said. "Who were the two biggest critics of the rescue? Senator Shelby from Alabama and Corker -- and both preside over states that have given hundreds of millions to have foreign automakers to open shop here."

Corker's rescue plan required the automakers to lower their wage packages so that they were "competitive" with the foreign plants here. He said in the interview that the wording was intended to give the incoming Obama administration wiggle room to define it.

"Competitive is a subjective word," Corker said.

Of the GM plant here, he said, "I want it to flourish."

This small town was barely a crossroads when the plant first opened here in 1990 to build Saturns. The factory now builds Chevy Traverses. For a while, there were more GM workers than residents.

Spring Hill is home to 25,000 people, and many of them work at the plant or work in one of the affiliated businesses.

"The plant built the city," said Mike Dinwiddie, a city alderman and a Republican. "If it goes away, we will certainly suffer. I like Sen. Corker, but I have to say I am very disappointed."

The other large automaker in Tennessee is Nissan, which has two large plants here with more than 5,300 workers. Neither is unionized. The average worker makes $25 an hour and has "competitive" benefits, according to a company spokesman.

By contrast, the wages of the GM plant are in two tiers -- with far lower rates for new hires. Older workers make about $28 an hour; newer workers make as little as half that.

"Our pay is nothing like what people say it is on the news," said Barbara Walker, who works at the plant, as does her husband. "I think Bob Corker stinks, I really do. I even sent an e-mail to him. He never responded to me at all."

"What Bob Corker is is a union buster, plain and simple," said Brian Kerr, 46, who has worked 28 years for GM. "We set the wage rates for the other plants in the state. Without us, they will be making $10 an hour."

He uttered a vulgarity and said "that's the nicest word I can use about him."

"Anyone who calls himself an American and wants to get rid of American jobs isn't worth much in my book," said Tim Kinjorski, 50, a plant worker. "He's been blinded by his own hatred of the unions."

Original Story - Washington Post

Update January 14, 2009

Corker flies coach to brave Michigan critics at Detroit auto show

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and nemesis of Detroit automakers and UAW workers in congressional hearings, came to the Detroit auto show for an up-close look Tuesday at the industry he's reluctant to rescue.

And he got a taste of the kind of confrontational grilling that he laid on auto company chief executives and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger in Washington.

"I realize that I'm not popular here," said the trim, 5-foot-7 Corker, a tiny figure buffeted in a sea of microphones, cameras and jostling journalists as he walked the floor of the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Center.

"But I'm proud of the effort I put forth," Corker said of his attempt to forge a Senate deal for auto industry rescue loans that foundered when Gettelfinger balked at Corker's demands for immediate wage reductions and other contract changes. After the Senate rejected a bailout deal, President George W. Bush approved $17.4 billion in bridge loans to keep General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC afloat.

Corker, not unlike the Detroit CEOs after the hearings in Congress, admitted Tuesday that he felt a bit misunderstood. "I don't know how people perceive me," he said.

The feisty first-term senator wasn't apologetic for his vote against the Detroit bridge loans or rattled by the questioning on the auto show floor as he made his way from the GM exhibit to Volkswagen's (Volkswagen is building a manufacturing plant in Tennessee) and later to Chrysler and to Ford.

"I wasn't born yesterday," he said. "I've been in a rough-and-tumble business all my life." Corker, 56, founded and ran successful construction and real estate businesses before becoming mayor of Chattanooga in 2001 and winning election to the Senate in 2006.

He said he drove mostly Jeeps during his years in construction, had a Chevrolet Tahoe before his election to the Senate and now owns a Ford pickup.

After Corker spent his first hour at Cobo meeting with GM President Fritz Henderson, touring the GM exhibit and sitting in the sleek Cadillac Converj electric concept, he had not been asked an obvious question by anyone in the media gaggle.

So I piped up: "How did you get here, Senator?"

"I came Northwest Airlines," he replied, "and my flight was right on time."

"Coach?"

"Yes, I did ride coach," he said, smiling.

The Detroit auto CEOs, of course, got skewered for flying to the first round of Washington hearings in separate private jets, as they pleaded for cash from taxpayers to keep their companies alive.

During their second visit, the CEOs all drove in some of their companies' greenest, most fuel-efficient vehicles.

Despite the attention on the auto industry rescue, no non-Michigan politicians or federal officials made plans to come to Detroit for the annual auto show, until Corker decided Monday to swoop in for a visit.

He was prompted by a column in Monday's Washington Post written by Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, inviting every member of the U.S. Senate to attend the show.

"I'm glad he's here," Cox said Tuesday of Corker's visit. "He obviously has a beef with Big Three labor, but he's also getting an eyeful of the innovation and the changes going on in the industry." Cox, a Republican eying a possible run for governor in Michigan in 2010, met up with Corker and chatted at the Chrysler exhibit.

Updated Story - Detroit Free Press