Rahm Emanuel's 'F--k The UAW': White House Pushes Back On Account In Rattner Book, UAW Prez Responds

This story has been updated

The White House is forcefully pushing back on former car czar Steve Rattner's upcoming book about his time in Washington, specifically the allegation that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once blurted "Fuck the UAW" when told that tens of thousands of autoworkers' jobs were at stake in the restructuring of the auto industry.

In "Overhaul", as first reported by Huffington Post on Thursday, Rattner offers an insider's account of the Obama administration's rescue of the auto industry, pulling no punches when it comes to describing the foibles of such heavyweights as Emanuel, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, economic adviser Larry Summers and FDIC chair Sheila Bair.

While not specifically denying that Emanuel uttered those words, a White House aide rejected the implication that the chief of staff wasn't looking out for workers toiling at GM and Chrysler.

"Throughout the entire process that saved the auto industry, Rahm tirelessly defended and advocated on behalf of the auto workers," the aide said. "Any suggestion to the contrary is simply ridiculous."

And UAW President Bob King doesn't seem to be offended.

"If it wasn't for Rahm Emanuel,... if it wasn't for President Obama and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, we wouldn't have an auto industry. Millions of more people would be out of work today," King told CNBC on Friday morning. (Watch at the 3:00 mark)

"They have done nothing but to help the middle class in America. I appreciate the Obama administration. I appreciate what they have done for workers in general. Did they do good for the auto industry?

"Yes they did. Did Rahm Emanuel play a role in that? Yes, he did. I appreciate him."

Comments

[osage]

10:23 AM on 09/06/2010

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION "NEEDED" TO DO BETTER; NOT MORE OF THE SAME

"The tale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is, at its core, the tale of two blowout preventers: one mechanical, one regulatory. The regulatory blowout preventer failed long before BP ever started to drill – precisely because Salazar kept in place the crooked environmental guidelines the Bush administration implemented to favor the oil industry."

"During the Bush years, the Minerals Management Service, the agency in the Interior Department charged with safeguarding the environment from the ravages of drilling, descended into rank criminality. When agency staffers weren't joining industry employees for coke parties or trips to corporate ski chalets, they were having sex with oil-company officials. But it was American taxpayers and the environment that were getting screwed."

"Employees describe being in Interior – not just MMS, but the other agencies – as the third Bush term," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal whistle-blowers. "They're working for the same managers who are implementing the same policies. Why would you expect a different result?"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0

Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers are bankers/wall street guys. Ken Salazar is an oil guy. David Petraeus is a George W. Bush Iraq war guy. Alan Simpson is a George H. W. Bush guy. Where are the guys and gals whose loyalties lie exclusively with WORKING-CLASS AMERICAN CITIZENS?

[SAGMUN]

09:56 AM on 09/06/2010

We pick advisors on what we WANT to be advised on.

[susanlno]

09:31 AM on 09/06/2010

Golly gee whiz, only a dedicated Obama-hater would interpret Emanuel's "F--k the UAW" comment as meaning that he didn't CARE about the auto workers. Obviously, he meant that he was concerned about their sex lives.

Does anybody remember that, in bailing out the financial institutions, the Obama administration insisted that their executives HAD to be paid their obscenely huge salaries because they had contracts that were absolutely sacred? However, when it came to the auto industry, those union workers' contracts were made to be broken, and the first things they had to agree to were pay cuts and job losses.

[BocaMom]

09:15 AM on 09/06/2010

I love Rahm! He's the only intelligent and honest person on Obama's team.

[Americans For Change]

08:48 PM on 09/06/2010

No wonder we're screwed.

[ajh3]

08:32 AM on 09/06/2010

the whole administration are far more criminal than nixons ever was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sistahfriend]

12:21 PM on 09/06/2010

Are you kinding?

[kmackenz]

06:38 AM on 09/06/2010

I believe that Obama has a union-bashing, union-busting administration. Arne Duncan is after the teachers union in his haste to privatize the public schools, so his corporate buddies can make a dime.

[dawlishgal]

08:15 AM on 09/06/2010

Obama has a fantasy of a unified country of which he is the leader, and he doesn't care who Rahm Emanuel has to bully, defame or marginalize in order to do that. If Obama had chosen somebody who actually wanted change as his chief of staff, somebody who wasn't the biggest grabber of crooked financial company funds, perhaps the Democrats wouldn't be in danger of losing congress, we AND the Democrats would be a lot better off now. But Obama must have had a reason for chooseing so many plutocrats. No matter how many times his minions whine about progressives and how they are spoiled and impatient and unrealistic, the simple truth is that we are responding to the choices that Obama made to run the country. A Republican would have made the same choices, so why should we trust Democrats enough to campaign for them this fall.

I can't man a phone bank and advocate with any enthusiasm...not after the Emanuel presidency. And nothing is going to get done about it because Republicans have exactly what they want...... a guy who knuckles under to big business and doesn't defend himself from their slurs. What good will it to for me to spend weekends and evenings phoning people to try to convince them to vote for a party that seems to be in the main stream OF THE OPPOSITION and still gets treated by them as traitors. We are SO screwed.

[kmackenz]

09:35 AM on 09/06/2010

Obama may have fantasies about governing a unified country, but the truth is that now he has no one's allegiance, and no one's trust.

Unless Palin wins the Republican nomination, Obama will not get a second term. I won't vote for him again.

[vonbek]

03:37 PM on 09/06/2010

Exactly, if Obama would of acted more like FDR then the 3rd Bush term, the Dems would be sitting pretty instead they are trying to spray air freshener to cover up all the bull crap.

[jsgaetano]

09:01 PM on 09/05/2010

Rahm needs to go... and this is, quite honestly, the least of all the reasons.

When we talk about why Obama's been a failure, Rahm and his ConservaDem ideology is a big part of it. But let's face it, Obama's just as much of a ConservaDem.

[dawlishgal]

11:04 PM on 09/05/2010

I agree totally. Obama didn't event pretend to be a liberal from the nanosecond the vote count was in. To choose the guy who accepted the most money from crooked big finance as his chief of staff was like a joke on those of us who worked to elect him.

I am getting sick of being treated like a spoiled brat who didn't get what she wanted.....we contributed to, worked for, and voted for a man who promised change. And his first act as elected president was to pick every conservative, reactionary, Wall Streeter, Harvard school of selfishness and failed Clintonista in the phone book. He choose people who not only don't want change, but wouldn't have the fainted idea of how to do anything except retreat the the past.

And now Emanuel covers their collective *sses by blaming progressives for not being thrilled with the government that he created and Obama endorsed.

[calindi]

01:07 AM on 09/06/2010

'I have a record, Senator McCain has a record, and he has a speech he gave in 2006' - Hillary Clinton. Don't pretend you weren't warned.

Also, President Obama's first act in office was signing the Lily Ledbetter Equal Wage Law.

As for picking alot of Clinton people, who else had any experience in running an administration? I think Hillary has been a bright spot for him, actually.

[Marianne TB]

06:37 PM on 09/05/2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcCf9mzuLd4&feature=sub

[Tyger79]

04:10 PM on 09/05/2010

The whole barrel of these apples is just rotten. Not a progressive in the whole bushel.

[SDH283]

05:10 PM on 09/05/2010

So is it a bushel or a barrel?

[scottymac11]

09:15 PM on 09/05/2010

A bushel in a barrel full of millionaire conservaDems.

[Tyger79]

05:47 PM on 09/28/2010

well my family are farmers. there are bushel barrels. enjoy your volvo.

[GoDogGo]

03:44 PM on 09/05/2010

As in every controversy surrounding sound bites, context is everything:

"F [that particular union]" is a lot different from "F [those workers]." If it's the former, most Americans, including many here, would stand up and clap. Regardless of our feelings about organized labor, that particular union's management has failed to recognize a changing world, wielding its power with ruinous effect on a strategic American industry.

So as salty as it may sound, I'm not sure it's that far off the mark.

[hypnotoad72]

04:20 PM on 09/05/2010

http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2008/11/greedy-american-union-auto-workers-and.html
(there's a great political cartoon toward the top of the article, which is a good read)

And what is the 'changing' world? Using lower-cost workers and forgetting our economy, which isn't as completely supply-sided as certain unfortunate people tend to want to believe it is. Trickle-down voodoo economics is an epic FAIL.

[GoDogGo]

06:44 PM on 09/05/2010

You'll see no argument from me about trickle-down economics. But the changing world involves supply and demand on a global scale which did not exist in the UAW's post-war heyday. The benefits they negotiated and the expectation of continuous prosperity were based on an economic anomaly, when America was the lone industrial superpower standing and riding the wave of a huge head start. It was simply unsustainable.

Cut to today: Lower cost workers, more efficient manufacturing techniques and global supply, as little as we may like them, are an economic reality for a more level global industry. A well-intentioned trade policy to protect our workers only risks a trade war, damaging US exports and further undermining the domestic industry. The UAW's inability to remain even a bit flexible in changing times led to a legacy of unsustainable cost structures that made US competitiveness very low.

It's no coincidence that US domestic manufacturers are starting to make seriously good vehicles again, something they've claimed but not achieved in my lifetime. That is a direct result of a number of decisions. But first on that list was forcing the UAW to compromise on unsustainable demands, reducing the industry's unsustainable cost structures.

It's unfortunate but true.

[jsgaetano]

09:04 PM on 09/05/2010

It's always hilarious how conservatards say we need to pay bankers and CEOs multi-billion dollar bonuses for destroying their companies, "because of their contracts" they always say.

Yet look at how sacred those same conservatards view contracts when it's working class people who are just trying to get paid a living wage.

As if we need any more examples of how conservatives are wealth fetishists who think we should all be begging to drink from the mules of the wealthy like they do.

[GoDogGo]

09:48 PM on 09/05/2010

If you're confusing me for a conservative, the Republicans in my family will be laughing heartily tonight! I wouldn't for *one second* defend the pay of bankers and CEOs, and my comments on HP clearly reflect that.

I think you may also be confusing political ideals with economic reality. As I said, we may not like the circumstances we live in (I certainly don't) but they are what they are and our national competitiveness in manufacturing is measured by a different yardstick than yesteryear.

If you disagree, shelve the pejorative dismissals and make an economic case.

[George Hanshaw]

02:29 PM on 09/05/2010

If he didn't, he should have......

[dbrett480]

01:27 PM on 09/05/2010

The Obama Administration wants to screw over autoworkers, but bend over for banks.

[fxtrade]

02:50 PM on 09/06/2010

To be fair, auto people know that President Obama save their jobs by having a surgical bankruptcy...the GOP wanted to ki ll the autos so I would never never vote GOP.

[seachild]

12:23 PM on 09/05/2010

so what...it's Rahm...and stop it with this 'holier-than-thou' B.S.....no news here

[Tulsaslim]

10:31 AM on 09/05/2010

Maybe Rahm's tutu was too tight.

[Elderlady]

07:56 AM on 09/05/2010

What is amazing to me is that the Obama administration continues to tolerate the type of distraction caused by the big, foul mouths of Rahm Emanuel, Alan Simpson, and Robert Gibbs.

Not only are they causing destruction and division within the Democratic Party..they are dividing the country.

It's time for it to be bought to an end. Sooner, rather than too late.

[joeinvt]

11:59 AM on 09/05/2010

Emanuel's and Gibbs' destruction and division of the Party began with throwing Howard Dean under the bus. Where is the 50 state strategy now that we really need it?

[SDH283]

05:09 PM on 09/05/2010

Do you have even a tiny clue as to what you are talking about??? You're getting your sound-bite talking points all confused here, joe