Tax Lawyer's Blog

Ron Gettelfinger is the President of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW).

Here’s what he said in an NPR interview in November 2008 when the auto industry was begging for a handout from U.S. taxpayers:

We’ve been through enough of these bankruptcies that I can tell you, that is the worst possible path for this industry to go in. Filing for Chapter 11 protection would lead to Chapter 7, which is liquidation. I firmly believe that.

Two weeks later he said the same thing under oath to members of both houses of Congress. 

Based in part on Mr. Gettelfinger’s testimony, Congress voted to “bail out” the auto industry to the tune of $30 billion.

Now fast forwarding to last Friday, here’s what Automative News reports Gettelfinger said in anticipation of GM’s Chapter 11 filing:

The UAW will emerge from a General Motors restructuring as the second-largest stockholder in the reorganized automaker and with a more direct stake in its success.

Obviously we have an interest in the company, we always have an interest in the company. Now we will be more of a stakeholder in it and just try to move forward with the process.

Less than six months after telling Congress that Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceedings would destroy the auto industry if American taxpayers did not “lend” $30 billion dollars to the Big 3 (GM, Ford and Chrysler), the UAW under Gettelfinger’s leadership has acquired a substantial stake in GM to allow it to initiate those same ruinous bankruptcy proceedings.

Why couldn’t this deal have been brokered by Gettelfinger back in December before he demanded that taxpayers become stakeholders in the failing industry?

Do you think Gettelfinger was lying when he testified to Congress that bankruptcy would destroy the industry?

Or when he said that American consumers wouldn’t buy cars from an auto company that was in bankruptcy proceedings?

And if you answer either of these question in the negative, doesn’t that make his move to have the UAW own 17.5% of GM insane?

Why would you want to own a major stake in a company you knew was going to fail?

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