The UAW has approved terms of a possible deal that would send GM’s Flint, MI, medium-duty commercial truck business to Isuzu. The deal, though not completed, would keep the assembly line’s UAW workforce building GMC TopKick and Chevrolet Kodiak trucks until 2014. UAW Local 598 Shop Chairman Mark Hawkins tells MLive that a GM-Isuzu deal would be best for workers considering GM’s financial struggles and its desire to shed the commercial truck business. “We got [sic] close to 500 people who work on that product line,” says Hawkins. “This keeps that work in Flint for the next six years.” GM had previously planned to sell the business to Navistar, which would have moved production to its Springfield, OH, plant. According to UAW officials, the Navistar deal fell through because GM no longer wanted to move ahead with production of a super-heavy-duty pickup product at Flint Truck. GM is currently “assessing various strategic options for the business” saying, “no decisions have been reached and there are no details to share at this time.” While UAW members are sweating out news about the future of their jobs, may I suggest they take a moment to reflect on how much worse things could be?

The Freep reports on the analysis of JP Morgan’s Eric Selle and Atiba Edwards, who argue that GM bondholders could emerge from negotiations with a 20 percent stake in the world’s second-largest automaker. GM must outline a strategy to eliminate two-thirds of its $35b in unsecured debt by February 17. “We expect a bond exchange will settle around 35% of par with an equity component representing 20% of GM’s equity,” write Selle and Edwards. But the JP Morgan analysts warn that the “threat of bankruptcy will have to return in order for GM to achieve the required restructuring goals.” What, again?

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In a comment under our most recent United Auto Workers post, Taurus GT500 posted the below. I thought it worthy of lifting into pride of place in our blog roll.

“Bob Cratchit asked us to drop you a line. We’re the Ghosts of Main Streets Past, Present, and Future.

The what?

You know us by our nickname. We’re the (former) steel towns of the Mon River – the Steel Valley. You know, Steelers, Steel City. Get it? That’s us.

We’ve been where you’re going. …But, it wasn’t always like this.

Once, we made rails that connected shining sea to shining sea; girders that put the sky in skyscraper; and when Henry and those Dodge boys and that Durant fellow put America on wheels, where you think all that steel came from?

You and Rosie the Riveter was the Arsenal of Democracy. Maybe with better PR we’d a been the Blast Furnace of Freedom.

Our furnaces’d light the sky for miles. Endless parades of coal barges. And freight train whistles at all hours. Man, like the song said, we were something to see.

But that was then …and this is now.

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You may recall this headline. That’s because we’ve already used it: “Chrysler Ends Jobs Bank on Monday. Calls It Something Else. Will Reinstate ASAP.” In said post, we debunked the idea that the United Auto Workers (UAW) was making anything resembling a concession. To refresh your memory, the union said the action on the Jobs Bank was a temporary suspension, rather than an outright elimination. Today, Bloomberg reports that the 1,600 GM employees currently enjoying the benefits of the UAW jobs bank will be out in the cold as of February second. But not really. GM spokesman Tony Sapienza tells Bloomberg that those leaving the jobs bank will get state unemployment benefits and “some GM pay.” Over at Automotive News [sub], Sapienza said GM is discussing “supplemental pay” [emphasis added] with the union “as part of current negotiations.”  

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Just when I thought I was too cynical for this world, the world proves that I’m not cynical enough. To wit: The Detroit Free Press headline proclaims “Chrysler jobs bank ends Monday.” Seems clear enough, right? The Congress demands that ChryCo end the United Auto Workers’ Jobs Bank (95 percent pay and full benefits for not working). ChryCo and the UAW end the Jobs Bank. Done. Sure. I’ve pointed out many a time that the UAW hasn’t given back anything without a quid pro quo. “Historic health care giveback” my ass. How about a couple of billion bucks up front? So anyway, I’m scanning this article, looking for the catch. And by God, here come paragraph five, six, seven, etc. “Chrysler told employees in a letter Friday that workers now in the jobs bank would be placed on ‘enhanced layoff,’ effective Monday, until a final agreement has been reached with the UAW. Workers going into enhanced layoff were advised to apply for jobless benefits and told they will keep medical, dental and group life insurance during that time. [UAW ChryCo Veep General] Holiefield advised members that the changes are temporary until negotiations are completed. ‘It is important that everyone understand that these provisions will only be in effect until such time as the mandates from the U.S. Treasury Department have been clarified.” So it ain’t really over ’til… the workers or Chrysler die. Oy.

Well, he should know. I mean, when the head of the United Auto Workers (UAW) says GM can’t satisfy Congress’ conditions for a second major suckle on Uncle Sam’s teat, you gotta listen. Big Ron Gettelfinger is the guy who has to agree to an equity-for-health-care-payment swap as one of the two major conditions for the cash. “Honestly,” Ron Gettelfinger says, signaling the spinmongery to come. “Most people that have looked at this from a realistic standpoint would say this timeline is almost unattainable. I said myself that I hope this wasn’t set up to intentionally fail… People have no idea of the magnitude of what they were asking these companies to do.” Or to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, ask not what the UAW can do for GM, ask what Congress can do for the UAW. Or to not paraphrase John F. Kennedy, “We’ve done everything we said we were going to do up to this point,” Gettelfinger maintained, assuming that no one will attempt to substantiate a single union “give back.” “We have ongoing discussions with the companies — but nothing formalized in any way shape or form.” No surprise, then, that Gettelfinger said there’d been “no real progress” on a new agreement. The charade continues– until the congressional deadline of February 17. And beyond!

Hey, Reuters calls it the Detroit Auto Show. And it is an auto show in Detroit, no matter what the official organizers call it. And outside said event, United Auto Workers (UAW) employees protested the possibility that the union would comply with federal requirements on the $13.4b loan which saved GM from Chapter 11. “The group of some 50 or more workers marched up and down outside the conference center in chilly but sunny weather, chanting such slogans as “Bush says cut back, we say fight back” and holding signs including “No millionaire left behind” and “Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign.” And what’s with the MSM insistence on repeating the myth that the UAW’s ’07 contract contained “landmark givebacks on wages and health benefits”? Anyway, “The concessions that Bush wants us to make [that we’re not going to make and will remove from the loan agreement with Obama’s help anyway] are just a slap in our faces,’ said Tammy Jones, a furnace worker at Chrysler’s Hamtramck axle plant in Detroit.”

The Detroit News reveals that page 60 of the Loan and Security Agreement between GM and the U.S. Treasury Department commits GM and Chrysler to a Catch-22. “They would be in default of federal short-term loans if the United Auto Workers [UAW] or another union engaged in a strike or work stoppage.” At the same time, the loan agreement requires GM and Chrysler to bring their labor costs in line with the transplants’ (by February 17 no less). So the UAW is carrying the football; they can nuke GM’s call on the public purse simply by striking. “I can’t see that a strike would serve any benefit right now,” analyst Aaron Bragman of IHS Global Insight told the News. “It sounds like maybe some Republican union-busting language got in there, which would not surprise me.” And it sounds to me like Aaron, and perhaps the Treasury Department, got it exactly backwards. Will the UAW strike GM? No, but they could. And when it comes to negotiations, potential power is as real as it gets.

At first glance, this makes no sense: the head of the United Auto Workers (UAW) telling the world that GM and Chrysler are done feasting at the bailout buffet. “If we can get by without more money, that’s what we want to do,” Big Ron Gettelfinger told Automotive News [AN, sub] in an interview at Solidarity House. And if I could convince my Lexus dealer to give me a new IS-F with a handstand, that’s what I’d want to do. Clearly, Ron Gettelfinger is promising someone a rose garden– while he’s painted the ailing automakers into a corner. Ish. First, this is what car salesman call an “if then” close. Second, Ron told AN that “how well the money holds out will depend on sales volume this year.” Gettelfinger is hopeful that “sales will not dip more than 1 million units below 2008’s depressed 13.1 million.” So, IF U.S. new car sales DON’T dip below 12.1m per year, THEN GM and Chrysler recover without any more federal funding? Nonsense. Make no mistake: Ron’s statement is part of a calculated plan to avoid making any concessions during the federally-mandated negotiations to reduce his members’ pay and benefits. In other words, the UAW doesn’t need to make concessions because everything’s going to be alright. It is, in fact, Ron’s opening gambit. And it’s not bad. But shame on AN for swallowing the union boss’s bait; hook, line and sinker. I mean, what is this…

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Unintentionally, obviously. As in the Ford employees are on the clock and off gallivanting around at the same time. Anyway, watching this Rescue4 (WDIV) TV investigation, you can almost hear the station’s Program Director. “Jesus Christ! Jesus H. Christ! You can’t air that! Union bosses getting paid for working while they’re, what, getting haircuts and shopping for booze? Oh wait. This IS good. Hmmm. OK. Kiss their ass. Ford, I mean. A lot. Talk about the turnaround. What’s that electronic thing called? Stink? Slinky? Whatever. And make sure you say that most Ford workers don’t do this. Get the Harbour report guy. THEN screw ’em. Hehehehe.” The screwees in question: “six-figure” union chairman Jim Modzalewski and “union security rep” Ron Seroka. If you think this is an isolated incident, chances are you’re too good for this world.

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].

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United Auto Workers’ (UAW) boss Big Ron Gettelfinger pops his head above the PR parapet every now and again to defend his members’ right to the wages and benefits that they’ve negotiated from Detroit’s failing automakers. But in the main, the UAW’s Big Cheese remains tight-lipped about the finer points of the union’s contract, strategy, golf course, JOBS bank, election process, internal dissent, balloting procedures, etc. (not to mention embezzlement and corruption). So when The Detroit News offered Ronny G unedited space within their precious pages, you’d hardly expect anything other than broad strokes (so to speak). You know: Wall Street vs. Main Street, investing in America; that sort of thing. One exception: Ron takes on the “myth” that UAW work rules rule the rotting roost. “According to the Harbour Report — the standard for measuring auto plant productivity — all 10 of the most efficient plants in North America are union plants. Union workers get the job done in less hours per vehicle than the competition. For example, according to 2008 Harbour data, it takes UAW members in Kansas City just over 19 hours to assemble a Ford F-series pick-up. It takes more than 32 hours to assemble the Toyota Tundra, a similar vehicle, at a non-union plant in Princeton, Indiana.”

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Not for us though. We’ve had the luxury of several pre-bailout months of foreknowledge of this particular $33m white elephant. The kids at Fox News, on the other hand, seem to have only just found out about the UAW’s Reuther Family Education Center, and they’re downright apoplectic. The $33m resort, nestled on “1,000 heavily forested acres” has lost $23m over the past five years, despite charging as much as $85 in green fees. Besides improving the UAW’s collective handicap, the Family Education Center provides accomodations for retreats and conferences which give members “a deeper understanding of the UAW and the union movement away from the routine of their daily lives,” according to the Center’s website. All of which has Fox reaching for the “union-basher” volume of its rolodex.

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Excerpt from an email sent by Soldiers of Solidarity’s I. S. Bill Hanline: “Lastly, the money for these programs came from somewhere. The automakers did not out of the kindness of their hearts offer job income security to us workers. There had to be a trade off. In other words we gave up something for those benefits and if I remember right it was the Annual Improvement Factor (AIF) that we gave up in exchange for lump sum payments during each contract period from 1984 to present time that paid for those benefit programs. We were told in each contract how much money would be put in the trust for our SUB and JOBS programs. Problem with that is there never was as much money placed in those trust as the union announced during the ratification of all those agreements. Instead during the life of those agreements the Union agreed to allow the automakers to pay as they went, instead of fully funding the trust, this is what caused any shortfall of which in turn placed a bigger burden on the automakers cash flow during times when they had to pay members their contractual benefits. That is the main reason for the automakers dilemma today. Senator Corker and Shelby need to be reminded of this fact and they should also inquire with the foreign automakers in their state they might find out that those automakers have income security programs vary much like the programs they want UAW members to give up.”

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..

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