NBC On Auto Pilot Backs Union, Ignores Carmaker
News show relies on UAW
president, former autoworker and labor expert to tell a one-sided
business story.
by Megan
Alvarez
July 12, 2005
NBC took viewers for a ride with a one-sided story on the battle
between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and General Motors. The July
11, 2005, NBC Nightly News story was about the rising cost of the
healthcare plan of the UAW and how it is affecting GMs ability to
compete in the global marketplace only no GM spokespeople were
interviewed.
An onscreen graphic showed the problem GM was facing:
in 1955 GMs market share of the U.S. auto market was 95%, today its
share is 58%.
The story featured UAW President, Ron Gettelfinger, a
member of the UAW, Jerry Allen, and a labor relations expert,
Robert Bruno. Missing in this report was any representative from GM.
Reporter, Anne Thompson reported that GM was in a
billion-dollar hole and one problem that remained unsolved in
climbing out of that hole was the rising healthcare costs GM must
pay in union contracts. Thompson noted that the cost is expected to
be at $5.6 billion this year. According to an April 14, 2005,
Reuters report, this averages out to $1,500 per vehicle. Thompson
called the UAWs healthcare plan, the Cadillac of healthcare
plans, noting that UAW members pay no premiums and a maximum of a
$10 co-pay on prescriptions.
According to Thompsons report, renegotiating this
healthcare plan was not on UAWs agenda. UAW President Gettelfinger
criticized the company, To say that General Motors is in a crisis
mode today when they have $20 billion in cash reserves, when they're
paying shareholders dividends, I'm not sure that that's the right
term that anyone would want to use. A GM retiree then noted, If
they take a little today, six months on down the road they'll get a
little bit more, a little bit more. Where does it end?
Thompsons report did not include any interviews with a
GM spokesperson who could have represented the companys position on
the issue. Instead, the only attempt at outside comment came from
labor relations expert, Robert Bruno, who essentially reiterated
the UAWs stance when he said, Given the importance of health care
to the UAW, this is a seminal moment in their history, in--and for
the labor movement nationwide.
Bruno would have been better labeled as a labor
expert. He is a professor at the University of Illinois and is a
co-chair of the Chicago Center for Working Class Studies, an
organization supported by numerous unions, including the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, United Food and
Commercial Union, and International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as
well as many others. According to Brunos curriculum vitae, found on
his university faculty page, Bruno presented a teaching workshop
titled, Politics of Confusion: the Rise of the New Right at a
United Association of Labor Educators/AFL-CIO Education Conference
on April 12, 2002.
According to the March 7, 2003, issue of the Chicago
Reader, Bruno released a study criticizing the Chicago Tribunes
labor coverage as having an anti-working class bias hampers the
newspaper's reporters and editors' efforts to more accurately
describe unionized worker activity.
The story added that The Chicago Tribune was selected
because its editorializing on labor relations has routinely
communicated a conservative point of view and its assaults on
organized labor have a long pedigree.
Thompsons attempt at balance then was no attempt at
all. However, by using a vague title like labor relations expert,
she presented Bruno as a neutral figure even though he was not.
The article Foreign Makers, Settled in South, Pace Car
Industry by Micheline Maynard, which was featured in a BMI article,
Times Brings Balance to Outsourcing Coverage,
covered the reasons
behind the latest growth in foreign automaker factories in the
South. One key factor that led automakers to locate in the South,
which Maynard pointed out, was that many Southern states do not
require workers to unionize. Due to this, the foreign owned
factories locating in the South have not been buried beneath
impossible union contracts with overwhelming benefit packages.
According to the article, actual salaries were only slightly lower
in the foreign owned plants. However, when health care and other
benefits were taken into account, union workers earned about $55 an
hour, nearly 15 percent more than nonunion workers.
