The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler, along with the President of the UAW, all came to Washington to let everybody know how incredibly broke they are. In classic Marie Antoinette fashion, each of the three CEOs flew to Washington on a separate corporate jet, which probably burned enough fuel to get a Lincoln Navigator to Jupiter and back (or something like that). Nice going, guys. The head honcho of the UAW displayed his own flair for public relations by announcing that there would be absolutely no concessions on the part of his membership to help these companies get out of the quicksand they’re in. To be fair, the UAW membership and retirees have made a lot of concessions over the last few years, but most of the public doesn’t know that, so it still probably wasn’t the brightest thing to say at the time.
The basic nut is that GM and Chrysler will tank really soon if something doesn’t go their way. Ford is in better shape (if you follow this stuff, you may recall that a year ago everyone thought Ford was in the worst shape of all), but that is kind of like saying that a guy who has been hit over the head with a pipe wrench is in better shape than someone who has been hit with a sledgehammer—it is a matter of degree that is meaningless in the long term.
A large number of the mesothelioma cases pending in the courts have GM, Ford and Chrysler (and sometimes import companies too) named as defendants. This is because many red-blooded Americans of a certain age range worked on their own cars, and those cars had asbestos brake and clutch components, as well as asbestos containing engine gaskets. In the case of a career mechanic who gets mesothelioma, the car companies will be the primary defendants.
If the big three go under, this will all, naturally, stop. Bankruptcy is not a good option because of the complexity of all the relationships these companies have with workers, creditors, retirees, suppliers, dealers et cetera, all of whom have legally enforceable interest (not to mention asbestos victims). It would take the better part of a decade or longer for these companies to come out of bankruptcy, if they ever came out at all.
