2015 is only 15 days away, which means new contract negotiations between the Detroit Three and the United Auto Workers are coming, the main focus being the elimination the two-tier wage system implemented in 2007.
The Detroit News reports the UAW’s hourly members are calling for the abolition of the system, which has done nothing but “cause a divide” up and down the roll “on both sides of the aisle,” per Local 2209 president Brian Hartman.
There may be trouble within, however, as Tier 2 employees receive bonuses and profit-sharing checks in lieu of being on parity with Tier 1 workers. The former may not be so willing to see lowered or disappeared bonuses just to level up to those making more, while the latter would like to not only see the system die, but to gain a raise in pay — including the restoration of holiday and cost-of-living adjustment payments — in so doing.
Other issues on the table for 2015 include securing overtime pay after eight hours per day — instead of overtime after 40 hours per week — ensuring all employees receive a defined pension scheme, and hiring temporary employees for permanent positions after 90 days.
The environment for the negotiations will be different compared to those held since 2007: UAW workers at General Motors and Chrysler Group will be able to strike for the first time since 2011, while non-union employees now have the right to remain as such via Michigan’s right-to-work law. UAW president Dennis Williams hasn’t focused too much on the right-to-work situation, believing that if one does their job in representing those under their care, the people would give their undying support to the leadership.
Just give them all the lower tier wages…..
The union wanted 2-tier so the old farts could keep their money at the expense of new hires. Now they complain….
@HerrKaLeun…Wonderful proposal. All that’s needed now is an elected UAW leader to stand up at the ratification meeting. It can’t be that hard to tell all them folks, that a 50 percent cut in pay, will be for the betterment of all. All favour, raise your hand.
They were able to tell new hirees that 50% is good.
It was easy for the union to sacrifice someone else’s money.
@ HerrKaLun…If only it were that simple.
It is that simple and that true. But I can understand why you wouldn’t want to own up to it.
I’m not from Detroit and I’m not a member of a union, although I do work in a unionized organization (I’m management). I certainly don’t have any positive thoughts when UAW comes into the discussion.
I think we should assume that this is simply the UAW’s “wish list” – it will be interesting to see what they’re willing to concede. I hope they demonstrate more flexibility than they suggest in their “overtime after an 8 hour day, instead of after a 40 hour week”. If I need my guys to stay one hour later on Tuesday, but tell them to knock off an hour early on Friday, why should I have to pay overtime for the hour on Tuesday? It’s ideas like this that frustrate me and seem to heighten the unnecessary work rules-related tension.
Does the flexibility work both ways? If they need to go somewhere on Tuesday can they make up the hours on Thursday?
Perhaps on occasion, but generally no. Maybe it’s my farm upbringing, but work comes first and you don’t leave until the job is done. I think asking for overtime on a daily basis is just building in a layer of rules that will hasten the arrival of future problems.
What you are asking for is something for your convenience but that provides no benefit to your employees. Why should they grant you something you won’t allow them? If you hope to get you also have to give.
One of our call center managers was grousing about his inability to find any of his staff who would stay past their normal quitting time. The reason that he couldn’t is they they all had children to pick up from childcare. Asking someone to stay late, especially on short notice, can be very problematic, particularly for families since in most households, both parents work, and most childcare arrangements aren’t flexible.
“If I need my guys to stay one hour later on Tuesday, but tell them to knock off an hour early on Friday…”
In my experience on both sides of the aisle the take rate on this offer would be over 50%. Trading an hour extra worked paid @ straight time Tuesday night in order to cut out an hour early on Friday? Done deal.
The reason the 40 hour OT rule was put in was to prevent abuse by UAW workers. Lets say that I’m a guy working on the line with FMLA. I take Monday off every week, but because the plant is working 6 days I get Saturday at time and a half. With the 40 hour rule, I can still take Monday off, but if I work on Saturday, it’s for straight time. I can’t have my cake and eat it too. You know its a big problem if they make a new rule in the contract to prevent it!
O.T after 40, vs O.T after 8, Won’t be a show stopper. The other issues?? Somebody said “wish list” yeah that’s a good call.
Cue the trolls who are typing away on TTAC rather than working.
Money is so intertwined into human emotion and the warts of the B&B preach it.
The UAW won’t go very far in wage hikes. The wage parity between my line workers and the ones I last worked with in KCAP is almost 50%. It’s well over $40/hour (benefits inclusive) for our temporary workforce who makes up the majority of our floor. OEM line workers only need to see the nationality of the parts they screw together in order to see the hand writing on the wall. Adapt or follow suit.
Same can be said for every other profession except for the service industry.
@tresmonos – money and emotion is intertwined but then again so is everything else. We like to tell ourselves that we are logical creatures but socio/neurobiology says otherwise.
People do not search for a logical truth, they search for validation of their beliefs.
War exists for virtually no other reason than to validate belief.
Deep, man.
tresmonos – thanks
War also exists for certain parties to profit.
@28-Cars-Later – “War also exists for certain parties to profit.”
Profit at any human cost is also ideologically driven.
slave trade anyone?
I agree but to your point I say, man seeks to enslave man.
I can remember when this was a BIG DEAL.
UAW had 1.5m members and a lot of other workers’ pay was influenced by the contract.
Now it’s something chatted about about on narrowly focused websites.
Indeed. I wasn’t alive then. I do remember most of Flint getting shuttered.
80000 GM jobs to almost none…
“80000 GM jobs to almost none…”
Holy God, I am simply numbed by that. I’ve personally experienced an industrial town going from about 19,000 direct employees to 400-ish over a decade.
I’ll betcha those of us who escaped have an unusually low reproduction rate. Getting nuked would have been more merciful and resulted in the same thing.
I am in Flint often for work. It is beyond broken. There is nothing that city can ever do to replace that much income, wealth, and revenue. Detroit has hope because people/businesses (with money) care about it, it’s still Michigan’s largest city, and the Metro area is still a good size. Flint and Saginaw are beyond post-apocalyptic.
Like the Dayton Family said:
“Flint, Michigan’s a prison and we all are locked up”
80,000 to almost none ? When you think about it, its mind boggling.
heh, Dayton family.
I remember blaring that from our cars as we cruised to fraternity parties in the middle of the blight. Unfortunately, that town hardened me. When my friends were splitting a case of Red Dog, watching Buick City get torn down, we didn’t realize the significance of it, nor did we predict how quickly the automotive landscape was moving towards globalism.
I would have picked a different career had I known. However, I don’t imagine myself in something besides manufacturing.
Mikey-
The devastation is mind boggling. I remember visiting my dad working at Buick City when I was a kid (he poured the concrete floors in the plant that built the Bonneville/Lesabre). I was in awe of the size and scale of the place. Now, it is another depressing reminder of what was.
GM used to make 1.2 million spark plugs a day at Flint East. Now those jobs are in Mexico.
Effing unbelievable if I hadn’t already seen its like elsewhere… googled Buick City images and beheld another iteration of what much of Milwaukee looks like only more thorough and systematic.
It’s like those Cold War era fictions where an oops happens that nukes one superpower’s city so the other one agrees to have a city of its own destroyed to prevent all-out war.
Except in economic warfare it happens to an entire region and the rest of the country is like.. meh.
Kind of the polar opposite of a neutron bomb; flatten the infrastructure but leave the inhabitants alive as abandoned zombies.
petezeiss – well said metaphor
Though the backdrop to the negotiations is much different with looming bankruptcy and the great recession now behind us, the story is remains the same.
The UAW says that they want to see the two tier wage system die. I am sure that is a possibility but it may mean that raises and cost of living adjustments, etc may have to be kicked down the road. As we saw in the last round of negotiations, the current tier 1 UAW worker will care absolutely nothing about the tier 2 workers if it means they have to give up anything from their own income or benefits or even forego future income or benefits. The Tier 1 sold out Tier 2 so as to avoid taking a haircut then, and they will do it again if given the opportunity.
That’s solidarity for you. Some union members are more equal than others.
Should be interesting to see what develops although in my view if they truly succeed in *everything* they ask for they will simply accelerate their own obsolescence. I could see a reasonable compromise taking place.
Ah…28-Cars-Later….Always a much needed voice of sanity.
Yes their will be lots of nashing of teeth, and idle threats, and bluster, throw in a little grand standing, and some brinkmandhip
At the end of it all, it will indeed be “a reasonable compromise”
Exactly. UAW knows its a numbers game, demand too much money and then the beancounters start to crunch numbers on how much it costs to offshore more production of those existing plants/product lines and acts accordingly if the costs are less than the demand. If UAW demands little or nothing it faces political consequences in its ranks. Cooler heads will prevail.
The UAW has always known that getting rid of two-tier pay was the top priority. It was obvious that having one person making half the person next to him/her would undercut the solidarity that unions depend upon. The problem was, when two-tier was implemented it was because the union knew it didn’t have the votes to get the concessions from the older members that were necessary to get a deal done. They had to rob Peter to pay Paul. To have a chance to get better, you have to stay alive. Two-tier was the UAW’s method of staying alive.
Two tier was a way for the UAW to give without actually giving up anything. While everyone and their uncle was taking a haircut (bondholders, salary employees, creditors, taxpayers, municipalities), the UAW gave absolutely zero! OK, maybe a 15 minute break, their bi weekly massage benefit and some other token perks.
Their pay and benefits were absolutely protected, everyone else, including the taxpayers and future tier 2 guys would pay for them. To think that tier 1 guys care one bit about the tier 2 guys is a farce. Tier 2 will get only so much as it serves tier 1. If bringing up tier 2 to the same pay means no wage increases or other raises, it probably wont happen.
Now there’s a real truth talker.Two classes of workers under the same “union”.
Thank goodness for RTW and the ability to opt out.
It is a rare occasion that I find myself agreeing with the UAW but the two tier wage systems is a farce. You should be paid by what job you do and how well you do it and not by when you joined the company.
Not wanting get paid based on the work you do and how well you do it is the reason that unions exist today.
Don’t go giving the UAW to much credit.They are the one’s that adopted that agreement.
Staying Alive is more than a BeeGee’s song. A few decades ago I read an article where the fellow referred to the Automotive Big 3 as Retirement Trusts masquerading as car companies. He predicted the industry collapse and the need for restructuring union wage/benefit packages.
One reason why the UAW wants to get rid of 2 tier wages is because as the upper tier retires there will be no new upper tier workers left. It is hard to rationalize the need for a union and union dues when wages and benefits are less or on par with non-union transplants. Another reasion is the fact that Union dues tend to be a percentage of wages (at least in the organizations I’ve worked for). You drop wages you drop dues and therefore unions have less money to work with.
The answer is to move more UAW jobs to Mexico. At least in Mexico they are grateful for the jobs.
@ HDC…If I can go by some of your previous comments, your quite happy, and content, with your Texas built Tundra ? Would you prefer that your next Tundra was assembled south of the border?
Keeping in mind, of course, that Toyota USA pays a fair wage, and benefit package to the American workers. I’m confident that Toyota pays such an expensive package out of the goodness of their corporate heart.
One would be cynical to think, that Toyota would fear the nasty UAW knocking on their door.
Mikey, I can’t muster any sentiment or compassion for the UAW leadership.
For them it is all about union dues. The “worker representation” guise is just a figment of the workers’ imagination. Were many of the rank and file workers not collectively bargained out of their jobs as recently as 2009?
I understand about the time you spend on the factory floor and you have my respect. But I do not respect what the unions, and the UAW in particular, have done to their employers. The Hostess debacle also comes to mind.
In short, I am very happy with my Tundra and hope to buy a 2016 model as my last and final truck of my driving life.
Toyota and the UAW were in a joint venture at NUMMI in California, and we all know who was left holding the bag there. It wasn’t the UAW or GM.
And I find it plausible that Toyota pays a fair wage to keep the UAW meddling out of their business, having been there and done that before with NUMMI.
@ HDC..The NUMMI plant? Where they ran the Vibe/Matrix. Someone correct if I’m wrong, but isn’t the Toyota made Vibe, the only GM vehicle with a UAW worker installed, Takata air bag ? I know in the past, HDC that you have inferred that GM was out to kill their customers with the faulty ignition switch. Was Toyota, and Honda, out to kill their customers also ?
mikey, anyone that markets bad gear is out to kill their customers, regardless of OEM.
But with GM, buying one of theirs should give one pause as to what awaits them 5, 10, 15 years into the future. I am certain that the early buyers who bought GM products with the faulty ignition switch had no idea they were driving a car that could kill them.
Ditto with the people who bought makes with the Takata airbags only to find out it wasn’t the crask that killed them, it was fragments from the Takata airbag.
Yes, the NUMMI plants was a joint venture between GM and Toyota and all the workers were UAW. Two people we know used to work at NUMMI, are still unemployed, and until recently resided in the San Jose homeless tent village, until the authorities knocked all that down. That’s why my assistant Nguyen had to go back to San Jose to see how they could help his family members.
mikey, anyone that markets bad gear is out to kill their customers, regardless of OEM.
But with GM, buying one of theirs should give one pause as to what awaits them 5, 10, 15 years into the future. I am certain that the early buyers who bought GM products with the faulty ignition switch had no idea they were driving a car that could kill them.
Ditto with the people who bought makes with the Takata airbags only to find out it wasn’t the crash that killed them, it was fragments from the Takata airbag.
Yes, the NUMMI plants was a joint venture between GM and Toyota and all the workers were UAW. Two people we know used to work at NUMMI, are still unemployed, and until recently res!ded in the San Jose homeless tent village, until the authorities knocked all that down. That’s why my assistant Nguyen had to go back to San Jose to see how they could help his family members.
The difference is that GM knew about the switch defect before the first of millions reached customers. You can equivocate all you want.
Oh I see, so Honda was blissfully unaware, of the Claymore mines lurking in their, air bags ? Your hatred of all things domestic, has clouded your thinking. Of course Honda knew, long before, any shrapnel went into a customers face. Honda thought it best to sweep it under the rug, and hope it goes away.
Can’t say that Honda is any different from the rest of them. They screwed up, tried to cover it up, and got caught.
In other news, the sun will rise, and set, tomorrow.
HDC… I know what your saying. My point was that UAW, or non UAW, Asian, or German, things can go wrong. I don’t think that any individual worker, or that matter the entire corporation, set out to kill anybody.
Even vehicles from 10 or 15 years were built to a price point. All of the car companies, bar none, were guilty of some sort of negligence/ cover up.
As far as the guys living in the tent? I would bet that somehow, somewhere those folks made some poor choices in their life. If one finds themselves living in tent. One can’t blame GM the UAW or Toyota.
mikey, Nguyen is quite secretive about his relatives living in the San Jose tent city. I don’t know how they are related to him.
I didn’t pursue it, but I understand from previous conversations with him that the shutdown of NUMMI was devastating to them, and the others that were let go.
My understanding is they lost everything because the California welfare payments did not cover the $1900 a month mortgage payments, among other payments due, like car payments, insurance payments.
About the UAW and unions, well, I remember the days of “Go slow” so well documented by Phil LeBeau and others where UAW members interviewed said, “we don’t do that any more.” That being missing fasteners, or poorly assembled vehicles, or purposely slowing down production to coerce management to give in to outrageous demands.
Unions in America are not the same as unions in Europe or Asia, or even Mexico for that matter. Outside of America, unions work as partners with management to achieve the company’s objectives. Sure, there are differences but they’re not as vicious as the UAW with their well-documented tactics.
In America, the union-employer relationship is adversarial. My mom and dad were both union, albeit different unions. When they broke free, they really got a different perspective on labor relations, especially my dad who advanced to the managerial level within the dept of defense civil service.
My mom opened up her own shop and hired people in to do the work. That gave her a new perspective on how unproductive most hired help is, while at the same time that same hired help p!sses, moans, complains and b!tches about how little they get paid for “all” the work they have to do.
I’ve seen it for myself when I hired American workers in. They can’t even come close to the illegal aliens I hired in productivity and who cranked out an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder. The further away one gets from unions, the more blatant and destructive they appear to be to employers.
But I fully understand that union members and former union members, will have a diametrically opposed view of the same facts.
mikey, Nguyen is quite secretive about his relatives living in the San Jose tent city. I don’t know how they are related to him.
I didn’t pursue it, but I understand from previous conversations with him that the shutdown of NUMMI was devastating to them, and the others that were let go.
My understanding is they lost everything because the California welfare payments did not cover the $1900 a month mortgage payments, among other payments due, like car payments, insurance payments.
About the UAW and unions, well, I remember the days of “Go slow” so well documented by Phil LeBeau and others where UAW members interviewed said, “we don’t do that any more.” That being missing fasteners, or poorly assembled vehicles, or purposely slowing down production to coerce management to give in to outrageous demands.
Unions in America are not the same as unions in Europe or Asia, or even Mexico for that matter. Outs!de of America, unions work as partners with management to achieve the company’s objectives. Sure, there are differences but they’re not as vicious as the UAW with their well-documented tactics.
In America, the union-employer relationship is adversarial. My mom and dad were both union, albeit different unions. When they broke free, they really got a different perspective on labor relations, especially my dad who advanced to the managerial level within the dept of defense civil service.
My mom opened up her own shop and hired people in to do the work. That gave her a new perspective on how unproductive most hired help is, while at the same time that same hired help p!sses, moans, complains and b!tches about how little they get paid for “all” the work they have to do.
I’ve seen it for myself when I hired American workers in. They can’t even come close to the illegal aliens I hired in productivity and who cranked out an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
It’s all in the eye of the beholder. The further away one gets from unions, the more blatant and destructive they appear to be to employers.
But I fully understand that union members and former union members, will have a diametrically opposed view of the same facts.
The organization of labour had a huge beneficial effect on workers and society. We seem to forget that point.
BUT
Any time power shifts out of balance we eventually see corruption of those wielding power.
“It is not only the slave or serf who is ameliorated in becoming free… the master himself did not gain less in every point of view,… for absolute power corrupts the best natures.” Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine.
Most tend to believe that was the origin of the quote “”Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” Lord Acton.
The pendulum swings back and forth.
The UAW feels that it is its turn once again.