Obama: Fight for auto workers not over
WASHINGTON – President Obama told communities in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan that he can’t "promise you there isn’t more difficulty to come" as GM and Chrysler struggle, but he committed to help with job-creation, new-business development, retraining and other yet-to-be-identified programs.
"There are jobs that won’t be saved. There are plants that may not reopen," Obama said Monday as he outlined his plan for General Motors and Chrysler. But "we cannot and must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish."
Obama said he created a new post – director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers – "to cut through red tape and ensure that the full resources of our federal government are leveraged to assist the workers, communities, and regions that rely on our auto industry."
The White House said a program typically reserved for workers who lose their jobs or take pay cuts as a result of increased imports will be expanded to auto workers.
The program, Trade Adjustment Assistance, provides training for another job or career; weekly cash payments for a year after unemployment compensation ends and while the worker is retraining; money to cover job-search expenses in another community; and a relocation allowance.
The White House also said the program, headed by Edward Montgomery, a member of the auto task force and an official in the Clinton administration Labor Department, will send a "rapid response" unit to communities where plants are closing; help the Midwest attract defense, research and green industries; channel training grants to the region; and work with governors and members of Congress.
Obama stressed the financial mess is not the fault of auto workers or the communities where plants and suppliers are located.
Even so, he said, "there’s little I can say that can subdue the anger or ease the frustration of all whose livelihoods hang in the balance because of failures that weren’t theirs."
Although his speech was short on details about how the federal government will help auto workers who have lost their jobs or taken pay cuts, Obama said he understands their pain.
"Many of you have been going through tough times for longer than you care to remember. And I won’t pretend the tough times are over," he said. "I can’t promise you there isn’t more difficulty to come. But what I can promise you is this: I will fight for you.
"You’re the reason I am here today. I got my start fighting for working families in the shadows of a shuttered steel plant. I wake up every single day asking myself what can I do to give you and working people all across this country a fair shot at the American dream."
Obama noted that in the past year, 400,000 auto workers, parts suppliers and employees at car dealerships have lost their jobs
"Towns and cities across the great Midwest have watched unemployment climb higher than it’s been in decades," he said.
Indiana’s unemployment rate last month hit 10.1 percent. In some counties, the rate was even higher. In Elkhart County, for instance, nearly one in five adults is out of a job, largely because of the implosion of the RV industry.
But Obama struck a chord of optimism.
"Remember that it is precisely in times like these – in moments of trial, in moments of hardship – that Americans rediscover the ingenuity and resilience that makes us who we are," he said.
"If we can tap into that same ingenuity and resilience right now; if we can carry one another through this difficult time and do what must be done; then we will look back and say that this was the moment when the American auto industry shed its old ways, marched into the future and remade itself, once more, became an engine of opportunity and prosperity, not only in Detroit and not only in our Midwest, but all across America."
NEW YORK — It was a night in early November during the infancy of the Cold War when the anti-communist dissidents were hustled through a garden and across a gully to a vehicle on a dark, deserted road in Budapest.