Greg Shotwell is my kinda guy. He’s a GM employee, United Auto Workers member and the founder of the Soldiers of Solidarity pressure group. I don’t agree with half of what he says, but man does he know how to say it. “When the tantrums are over, President Bush will appoint a ‘Car Czar’ to strong arm the ranks into a marching band for martyrdom-layoffs, plant closings, bank-ruptured dealers,” Shotwell writes in an advance copy of his next polemic, attained by TTAC. “It’s uncanny how heavy handed politicians are with irony. A Russian title for the federal agent assigned to dictate demands to the auto industry? What next? Hammers and sickles for hood ornaments? But don’t worry, Wagoner, Nardelli, and Mullaly won’t be hawking their options at the low end. They’ll fleece the cons and field dress the union. Before you know it, they’ll be bitching about taxes and regulations and clearing their nostrils with Ben Franklins.” Shotwell is just warming up his rhetorical Howitzer. And the jobs’ bank is in the crosshairs..
“The Center for Human Resources [CHR] is a non profit, tax exempt corporation funded by General Motors. [Ford and Chrysler have similar s-corporations that pay off UAW office rats.] Approximately thirty percent of appointed UAW-GM staff salaries, benefits, and expenses are reimbursed to the UAW International by the CHR. On May 18, 2001 the Detroit Free Press published an investigative article about joint funds: ‘A Shroud of Secrecy Surrounds Joint Funds.’
“UAW-GM told the Internal Revenue Service that $85.6 million of the $186.9 million it spent in 1999, or 46 percent, was for ‘management,’ or ‘overhead, expenses.’ Which sounds excessive, but ‘Union officials say there are adequate checks and balances within the centers: No money can be spent without the approval of both union and corporation.’
Management and overhead exceeds 40% because they place two people, one union and one management, on every job. And they like to party. ‘Joint-funds business also takes hundreds of UAW officials to the Riviera Resort and Racquet Club in Palm Springs, Calif. Hotel officials say UAW members and auto company representatives fill the 475-bed hotel every January, and at least one week a month through March.’
The reason that Gettelfinger can dismantle the Job Bank without the approval of the members is because joint funds was never ratified by the members. Joint funds is “a contract within the contract” between the companies and the UAW Staff.
In 2006 the president of UAW Local 2151 was approached by the plant manager and the personnel director. Management wanted to put all the local union appointees into the Job Bank. Since they would be paid out of a different set of books, it would make the plant’s bottom line look better. To his credit, the Local Union President, Robb Betts, refused. He didn’t think it sounded ethical. At which point he was informed that ‘everybody else is doing it.’ Robb said, ‘That doesn’t make it right.’
If we are going to eliminate Job Bank, we should concede all the joint funds and dissolve the CHR and its counterparts at Ford and Chrysler. The entire jointness apparatus with its thousands of appointees should be dissolved. UAW staffers can be funneled down the Job Bank Drain with the rest of the rank & file.”
We could really use a Greg Shotwell in Canada.I know I sound like on oldtimer, but really.I remember when the union reps worked on the line.
Today they have pagers,company paid cell phones,and premo parking.6 figure incomes were quite commom untill recently.
If a radical managed to get elected they were quickly bought off.If you tried to rock the boat they would throw you overboard.
My guess now, is that the party is just about over.If we come out of this mess{and that ain’t looking too promising}it’s gonn’a be a whole different company and a whole different union.
Good ridance to the fat,overpaid, uselees,appointees.
I have been reading Shotwell for ever since the Delphi bankruptcy. The one good thing I can say about him is that he sees the upper union management for what it is….a corrupt good ole’ boy network….equivalent to GM, Ford & Chrysler’s upper echelon.
Funny to see a socialist like him cutting at the bailout though….strange world
The Communism-as-critique might work if Greg were not employed by the largest Communist government outside Asia and the Caribbean.
Sounds like the joint funds are there to make the big 2.8 look ?better? than the recent pile of suck. -Why else would one obfuscate any part of the finances? (they should just offshore the entire thing, like Global Crossing, for comedy points alone)
I mean, if Gustav Stickley insists on showing the bolts, pins and connectors in his furniture…
—
Otherwise:
As far as politicians and their irony.
-GS himself probably petard-hoist-qualifies for the ‘Inured-and-Wrong-Headed-as-Lenin Hero of The Soviet Union Medal’.
Gettelfinger still gets the Stalin-at-the-end Door-Prize, though.
-Workers’ Paradise, indeed.
Shotwell continues the legacy of solidarity. Reuther warned of union leaders making more than the average worker and spoke clearly to management saying “you close one plant and we’ll close the rest”. leadership is lacking today but mostly from an inability to recognize such. I see it in SOS and it’s Shotwell showing the way.
This situation reminds me of Animal Farm when the pigs begin walking on two legs, turning into what they ostensibly fight against.
Question regarding Jet-Gate, how did Gettelfinger get to the hearings? Did he hitch a ride on one of the corporate jets, have his own corporate jet, fly coach on Southwest, what was his arrangement there?
He makes the best argument yet for not giving them a dime.
Not one workers job will be saved, taxpayer money will just go to the organized crime like management – UAW structure.
One news report said Gettelfinger flew to both hearings on commercial airlines. It didn’t say what class, first or coach.