June 11, 2008

Janesville's Second Line

By George Lightbourn

Leave it to New Orleans to concoct its own eccentric funeral tradition.  Most notable to outsiders is the second line; the parade back from the cemetery full of lively music and dancing. 

The Midwest has its own peculiar funeral tradition which was on display in Janesville last week when General Motors announce the demise of the car assembly plant.  The Midwestern version of the second line is decidedly angrier than its New Orleans counterpart. 

At the Janesville funeral, it was easy to spot those in the first line, those directly affected by the death.  They were the men and women with faces unable to disguise the shock of the closing.  They would be the people living in the homes with lights burning well past midnight – worrying and wondering about their future.  Those in the first line really had little in common with those in the second line.

The ranks of the second line at the Janesville funeral were filled with politicians and union leaders.  The second line displayed little pain or grief.  No, this second line blared invective-soaked epitaphs aimed at the heartless bastards who set the date for padlocking the plant gate.  They reviled, belittled and cursed “the man” at GM who did this terrible thing.

Leading the second line was Governor Doyle who said it, “felt like a kick in the gut,” and vowed, “to get even.”  And to show he was serious he demanded GM repay the $10 million the state had given the company.

The implication of the Governor demanding repayment was obvious; GM had duped the Governor and the Janesville workers into thinking the plant was somehow invincible and would be pumping out vehicles for generations.

Playing to the crowd, the Governor noted that GM management had somehow missed the fact that people were reluctant to buy SUVs with gas prices twice as high as anyone had imagined possible.  “Now we stand here carrying the burden of those bad corporate decisions,” the Governor grumbled.  “Bad corporate decisions kept these lines turning out gas guzzlers as fuel prices went from two dollars to three dollars and now to four dollars per gallon.”

Of course the Governor knew it wasn’t bad corporate decisions at all that killed the Janesville plant.  It was poor sales of SUVs.

And that $10 million the Governor gave to GM – it was intended to help build those gas guzzlers.  When he wrote the last check to GM in 2005, the Governor’s press office told the world that Janesville would be producing, “full-sized SUVs.”  He knew what he was doing.  He just didn’t know where gas prices were headed.   Along with GM management, he was wishing that gas would remain affordable and SUVs would continue to sell.

Let’s talk about bad decisions.  While it’s tough to celebrate the business acumen of General Motors, it is equally difficult to understand the thinking behind the Governor’s decision to prop up GM’s SUV strategy by putting $10 million of Wisconsin taxpayer dollars into the production of those full-sized SUVs that he now finds so distasteful.   

Actually, our Governor might just as well have taken our $10 million to the baccarat table in Las Vegas.  For all of the talk of growing the state’s economy and investing in the future, he chose to invest in what he surely knew was the past.  It was a gamble with no odds at all.   The raw reality is that the State of Wisconsin enabled what our Governor is now calling GM’s bad corporate decision.  We slipped $10 million to GM knowing they’d use it to build SUVs.  So, we are left to commiserate with political leaders in Canada and Mexico who made the same mistake and are now seeing their plants closed.  We and our NAFTA partners might have delayed the funeral a few weeks or months, but we all knew that the end was near.

So let us hope that we have learned a lesson from the sadness of Janesville.  As we lend a hand to those workers, we need to call on this Governor and the next Governor will to think twice before placing their bets on yesterday.   There’s no future in it.  If we are serious about growing the economy, we must commit to investing in tomorrow and only in efforts that promise a return on precious taxpayer dollars.  It’s a good bet for Wisconsin’s economy and ultimately, it will be a good bet for Wisconsin’s workers.