By Andy Szal
WisBusiness.com
The president of a Milwaukee-area auto dealers association urged Congress to approve a bailout of the Big Three automakers, saying “there wouldn’t be anything left” if the manufacturers succumbed to the national economic crisis.
Don Hansen, from the Auto Dealers Association of Mega Milwaukee, joined Sheboygan labor leader Dan Graves and Kenosha City Administrator Frank Pacetti in a conference call with reporters to draw attention to the automakers’ impact on local jobs.
“They really do drive a large part of the economy,” Hansen said. “I can’t even comprehend (bankruptcy). It would be disastrous.”
Hansen said the organization represents about 125 new car dealers in the Milwaukee area, which generate $3.5 billion in sales and employ about 8,000.
Graves, the shop chair of UAW 2376 at Sheboygan’s IAC North America plant, said his employers would not survive without a bailout. He noted that his plant, which supplies automotive components and systems to primarily domestic car manufacturers, is already struggling with a 35 percent decline in their workforce due to slowing car sales.
“As the Big Three goes, the parts suppliers will go also,” Graves said. “Most of us suppliers aren’t going to stand a chance.”
Pacetti said autoworkers and related companies are more worthy of a bailout than bankers and urged Americans to think in the long term with regard to another bailout.
“There needs to be changes in the industry, and they need this money to affect those changes,” Pacetti said. “They have to be allowed to succeed.”
