Right. Let’s have it. I’m going to ask a simple question, and I’m honest-to-God ready, willing and able to hear some new information. What concessions has the United Auto Workers (UAW) ever made to the American automakers? Forget the much-ballyhooed “two tier” wage system. All that means is that new hires don’t get paid as much as the old hires. As there are no new hires, and the theoretical new hires aren’t “conceding” anything they already had, and I’ll bet the UAW’s not cutting their union dues to compensate for the reduced wage structure, I reckon that simply doesn’t qualify. Layoff? Layoffs aren’t concessions– especially when UAW members are paid 85 percent of their salary for not working. Buyouts? Not a concession. The only genuine concession I can think of: the new-for-’07 health co-pay, which stands at $252 in annual premiums for family coverage and another $500 in total annual deductibles. AND there’s a company (not union) fund to cover workers who can’t afford it. The idea that the UAW will concede anything without compensation raises all the usual questions about leopards and spots. But if you’d like to see how the game is played, make the jump for the Detroit News’ properganda [sic].
“The Bush administration’s restructuring targets include reducing debt by two-thirds via a debt for equity exchange, requiring the UAW to accept half of the health care trust fund payments payable to the union from the automakers in 2010 in stock rather than cash, and new factory work rules and wages that are competitive with foreign automakers by the end of 2009.”
Well, one out of three might happen: stock into the eminently lootable Health Care VEBA superfund instead of cash. But probably not, as GM retirees aren’t as stupid as the UAW bosses and GM would like them to be. They’ve already made noises that they don’t want no stinkin’ shares in General Motors. But I reckon Big Ron Gettelfinger could shove that one down their collective throats (so to speak).
But never mind that. If I wasn’t writing this blog, this Robert Snell insight would be my Quote of the Day: “Talks with the UAW could be tricky, and any concessions GM gets will be sought by rivals Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler.”
Although the scribe does get to the meat of the matter: “UAW President Ron Gettelfinger has vowed to work with the Obama administration to remove terms of the loan deal that require GM and Chrysler to drastically cut wages and benefits.”
So the UAW is going to make concession that President Obama will then dismiss? I don’t think so.
My question has always been the timing of the concessions.
The Detroit 3 are nearly broke NOW.
The UAW claims they are giving concessions in 2010.
Why the wait?
What part of “broke NOW” doesn’t the UAW understand?
The “Batman angle” is also called the Dutch angle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_angle
That whole caption was freaky because I watched the 1966 Batman movie with my son over the holiday and took note at all the Dutch angles in it.
Well, Rick Wagoner basically told Congress that GM needs taxpayer money to keep doing what it has always been doing, because none of this is really GM’s fault.
The surprise is that we expect the UAW to say anything different.
OK you asked, I can’t speak for the UAW but I know what the CAW coughed up.We signed a rollover 3yr deal in Sept 05, nothing gained nothing lost .Five months later we opened it up and traded our cleaners,sweepers and truck drivers for the flex plant.Feb 06 that was, the Camaro and the new rear wheel drive Impala and Buick.Insert laugh here.We also allowed them to hire 900 temp/contract workers at 65% of union wage.
Poor sales translated to thousands of layoffs. The union has no say in that.We don’t have the job bank program here.Workers recieve 1 year of employment insurance topped up from the Suplementry unemployment Benifit fund [SUB]When the fund starts to slip so do payouts.Then workers get SFA.Thats that myth put to bed.
Aug 07 the truck plant dumps the 3rd shift.800 more jobs gone.Feb 08 the American axle strike decimated us.April 08 gas prices kill pickups we go down to one shift.The SUB fund is strained to say the least.
June08: GM comes to the union again, open it again boys and girls.We did, one week of holidays gone, wages and pensions froze for 2yrs co pay on drug benifits.We also let them bring outside vendors into the plant We gave them a thing called Global Manufactoring Systems GMS it lets them rewrite
the plant rules and work practices.Hey there goes another myth.We believe it means jobs Going to Mexico Soon.First day GM and the CAW are at the table, were shutting down Windsor transmission you guys OK with that?
We agreed to everything they wanted.We asked for and got a commitment to keep the truck plant alive for the life of the agreement.
2 weeks later the Rick W killed the truck plant
The union launched a breach of contract and took
over the parking lot at head office.
! AT NO TIME WAS PRODUCTION IMPACTED!
It would of been too easy to have a strike,but even the hotheads knew ,now was not the time.
We settled out of court but not without the judge ripping GM a new one.
We ended up with a decent buyout[kind’a why I got the time to sit here and type this]GM gave us a so called promise for another car for the Flex line.Nobodys holding thier breath.
Jan 09 GM and the CAW will once again return to the table.Who to F— knows what we give up this time?
To sum it up Mr Farago stating that the union gave up nothing might be somewhat inacurate.
Michael former UAW and CAW worker [retired]
I feel this is an appropriate place to repeat one of Karl Denninger’s predictions for 2009.
General Motors and Chrysler will fail to meet their targets and it will be labor that sinks the deal. At least one and probably both will wind up in some form of bankruptcy in 2009. The UAW is insane; Gettlefinger needs to be strung up by his genitals and pelted with rotten tomatoes by his union “brothers”, and if they had a lick of sense they’d have already done it. They obviously don’t. I give this mess six months tops, with Ford as the only possible survivor. The recent GMAC games show exactly how desperate they are; 0% 5 year loans to people with 620 FICO scores are flat-out insane and the default rates on those loans are going to wind up in economics textbooks five years hence.
I agree completely and know one UAW leech that still thinks Ford is “flush” with cash and that he’s poorly paid at $60k/year screwing dashboards into Ford Ranger pickups, that is when he is working.
I pay $252 per MONTH to my share of health insurance premiums for my wife and me, no kids. UAW guys only pay that per YEAR for the whole family?
I also fund my own retirement by socking away 6% in the 401k program. There’s no government slush fund to guarantee my money. I don’t belong to a deep-pocketed interest group able to influence and empower government on my behalf.
These guys need to step into the real world, and learn to live like the rest of us, on an island fending for ourselves.
I pay $252 per MONTH to my share of health insurance premiums for my wife and me, no kids. UAW guys only pay that per YEAR for the whole family?
At my employer it’s over $300/month for family coverage. This is exactly why the UAW doesn’t “get it” and why the public is outraged at them. I don’t hate blue collar workers, but I think their collective stupidity is going to cost them their jobs, and for that I have no sympathy.
@mikey:
While I feel for you and current workers in a way, I cannot support you. I am an engineer and will always be under at-will employment that can be terminated whenever. I (and most of the world) get no absolute job security like the UAW (and to an extent the CAW) get.
As someone who is currently on private insurance, my healthcare costs are over $1000 per year just for premiums, yet I’m expected to be up in arms because someone making more money than me has to pay a fraction of that? When I was on group coverage, my costs were about $500 a year.
I don’t get a pension, and there’s so very few companies that offer it anymore that I doubt I ever will. I have to put 10-15% of my weekly pay into a 401k and hope that it grows faster than inflation.
Sorry, but as an above commenter said, it’s time for the UAW to come live in the real world like the rest of us.
Hey UAW members:
I pay $600/month to cover myself, wife and child for medical insurance (no dental, no vision), and that’s with a deductible of $2500. You guys need to pull your heads out.
Mikey –
Thanks for the frank and honest assessment listing the concessions that the UAW/CAW is making.
Personally, I believe that more of Bign 2.5’s problems lie in the design specs and quality than in build quality or labor expenses. However, I have to say that like most Americans I believe that the UAW worker has had it very good indeed and wasn’t above abusing things even if they were already good.
Here’s a little article that stuck in my mind back in 2005. For me, it’s an example of why people aren’t so sympathetic to the UAW:
The Detroit News reported Thursday that management at the company’s Michigan Truck plant in Wayne, Mich., issued a memo in which it said too many of the factory’s 3,500 hourly workers are spending more than the 48 minutes allotted per shift to use the bathroom. … “It’s an excuse by upper management to gloss over some of the real problems we have out here,” Jody Caruana, a worker at the plant and a committee member for United Auto Workers union Local 900, told the paper. “This might be an issue in one zone or another. But is this causing a quality or productivity problem? No.”
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/27/news/fortune500/ford_bathroom_breaks/
By the way, in looking for that 2005 article, I stumbled across this video from January 2008…
and, frankly, I don’t think it’s going to help the UAW workers’ image:
http://www.clickondetroit.com/video/10235271/index.html?taf=det
And hey, here’s one link more from September 2007 – you can skim over the article, but note the comment at the end – which sure seems to lend credence to what’s being said the two links above:
http://www.autoobserver.com/2007/09/uaw-big-three-talks-the-clock-is-ticking.html
The UAW is just employing a delaying tactic till the new administration is sworn in. Only a couple more weeks and the UAW will receive the payback for all those millions they donated to the Dems.
“US asks Arab nations for $300 Billion to fund auto bailout”
http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/us-asks-arab-nations-300-billion-fund-auto-bailout
The 2nd link is a good one for sure.I’d be full of shit if I said that never happens.There is no way these guys work on the line.I would guess line
mantainence[they only work when something breaks and they got thier radios and pagers on]Possibly sub assembly people.That would be a high seniority
person with a job that allows you to work faster than the line you get ahead and you got a couple
of hours to yourself.A guy on the line would be missed in minutes.
A couple of things come to mind,first would be wow what a slack superviser don’t tell me he don’t know those guys are missing.The second would be where’s the cops?The guys are whaling back Tequilas and beer for an hour and a half?
In Ontario you wouldn’t be at a bar you would be behind em.
There is no excuse for thier behavior.Sometimes it feels good to call myself a FORMER autoworker.
The good thing is i can choose not to support the UAW by the purchases i make.I have been on their website and avoid doing business with any products
they endorse and frankly i do this with all unions
mikey :
Good comments from a former CAW worker. You show commitment to your cause and your company and for sure have made a good case for the concessions from the CAW. I disagree with your points, but for sure the CAW needs more people like you talking on their behalf and not some of the clowns that show up regularly.
“We signed a rollover 3yr deal in Sept 05, nothing gained nothing lost .Five months later we opened it up and traded our cleaners,sweepers and truck drivers for the flex plant….We also allowed them to hire 900 temp/contract workers at 65% of union wage.” Question: were these new fellows willing to work for just 65% of the union salary? If they actually worked well, that could raise some alarm at CAW about salaries well above average…
“We agreed to everything they wanted.We asked for and got a commitment to keep the truck plant alive for the life of the agreement.
2 weeks later the Rick W killed the truck plant
The union launched a breach of contract and took
over the parking lot at head office.”
Wasn’t that truck plant the one that was “saved” by Ottawa and Ontario giving hundreds of millions to GM (basically an extorsion scheme by GM)?
They moved the pickup production from Oshawa to Silao, Mexico.
Thanks, Mikey. It’s always a pleasure to read your comments.
Strange, though, that in union-oriented Canada the CAW has a much rougher time with GM than the UAW does in the States. I guess the Wagner Act really did give the unions life-and-death power over the auto industry.
There’s also the issue of leverage.
CAW is an important part of the labor force, but they don’t have quite the steely deathgrip on GM’s short hairs that the UAW does.
Mikey –
Just for the record, I don’t think that those links represent all or most UAW workers… and I would certainly never suggest that you even know anybody like that.
However, the problem is that this stuff is the public perception now.
Personally I don’t think it matters whether the cars are built by Martians if the product is good and the prices are reasonable.
Maybe the people whose medical coverage costs $$$$$$ per month should be fighting to get more coverage as opposed to making UAW workers pay more.
I will only buy UAW/CAW built vehicles from now on.
I will only buy UAW/CAW built vehicles from now on.
Where were you when they needed you Davey49?
Anybody can buy one for almost nothing now….. hurry while they’re still around.
We the UAW have gave up much. We have gave away Health care and pensions in the last contract. We now work under Japanese work ethics. We agreed to profit sharing and in return GM spent all their monies on Fiat and Hughes aircraft in order to not have profits to share and then lost billions trying to avert giving us anything. This is not about GM. Chrysler,Ford or any other American company. This is about GREED. The BIG BOYS have decided that they are going to put the USA into a DEPRESSION by moving industries out of USA and then also shipping in foreign goods. This one two punch will bring the USA to its knees because the common american doesnt understand the fact that if you dont have business then there is NO JOBS, Also if you have a job it will be UNDERMINED by foreign interests for cheaper wages no matter what your function.AMERCA will continue to sink in the QUICKSAND until someone wakes up the American people to their stupidity. In the end no matter who you are and what your education is in the USA if you are from the USA you will be seen as inferior by foreign counterparts. THUS if our so called GOVERNMENT does not put a stop to this,our country is headed for a third world status. We will then be an agricultural based country. Yes and guess who now owns most agricultural farms in USA and also owns rights to all HYBRID plants to feed the growing and affluent masses in china and abroad. YES the BIG BOYS.If WE as AMERICANS ever needed a UNION it is NOW and we should all UNITE to keep EMPLOYMENT in the USA. WE can only do this by SUPPORTING ourselves not DEGRADING each other.