>> The union was a creditor. The largest one in fact. So yeah, they were first in line.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
The union was a creditor, but an UNSECURED creditor, with no claim, whatsoever, against corporate assets. So, NO, they were NOT first in line.
It doesn't matter who the largest creditor is. What matters is the liquidation priority of the debt. And the unions claims were dead last, lumped in with ALL unsecured creditors, just one nanometer higher than shareholders. The unions had no more right to be paid than the electric company or the city landfill.
But the unions got theirs and more. And that, more than anything else, is the reason it was corrupt: It was clearly, without the slightest question, a political payoff by Obama to the unions for their political support.
Bankruptcy ALMOST ALWAYS ends up with union contracts renegotiated with payments dropped to MARKET levels. UAW members are probably the most highly compensated unskilled laborers in the United States. Well beyond any reasonable market rates.
The money owed the unions was a product of decades of the unions sucking the company dry. So, there is no business or moral case for the unions getting their money ahead of anyone else, particularly when they had no meaningful claim against assets. Unions who were and continue to be vastly overpaid for what they deliver. Workers who should be making market rates today but who Obama instead gave the company to.
It is pathetic. It was corrupt. And it was Chicago Democrat politics that did it. A shameful event in American business. |
