Via Atrios, Hilzoy gets at the sentiment I was expressing the other day following the announcement of an auto industry bailout with strict concessions required from the United Auto Workers.

Honestly: what sense does it make to stick it to a bunch of auto workers while letting the financial executives off scot-free? How can Richard Shelby get all upset about the fact that some blue-collar workers have, gasp, health care, and not about the fact that financial executives, on whom we have spent a lot more money than the Big Three ever asked for, get financial planners and chauffeurs? Just imagine the furious oratory we might have heard had the UAW succeeded in negotiating benefits like the ones people get at Goldman Sachs. (I’ll bet chauffeurs would help auto workers concentrate more on their jobs…)

For the reasons given above, I think that we should stick it to the bankers and hedge fund managers, and not to the UAW. However, I’d be happy with a single standard uniformly applied.

This is really the point – that there is no uniform standard being applied and the group that is facing the stricter government consequences are union workers and not Wall Street financial tycoons. While I can’t say that I’d be happy in a scenario that involved bankers, stock brokers, and auto workers being judged on a “single standard uniformly applied”– as there is no logical scenario where one can put skilled workers making about $30 an hour in the same box as white collar workers making hundreds per hour (plus huge bonuses) — Hilzoy is right that the government should, at minimum, seek to extract the same measure of concession from each cohort.

But Hilzoy’s point, and mine last week, is clear: the GOP is seeking to use the auto bailout to break the UAW. To screw the American labor movement. They never thought of putting the screws to bankers and hedge fund managers because they never would do anything to let their campaign contributors and country club pals suffer the disquieting burden of having to, say, go work a factory assembly line to make a living.

What’s most shocking is that as far as I can tell Democrats in Congress do not grasp how odious the auto loan requirements on American workers are, particularly in the absence of any similar requirements from the finance industry. Hopefully the Obama administration and a few Democrats on the Hill wake up and realize that they’re sleep walking through an assault on the America’s working families.