Makes me proud to be an American - GM strike settled
Sep 26, 2007 Opinions
Editors Note: We’ll have to wait another four years before the UAW members can blame Mexico for the loss of jobs and closure of plants in the United States. And doesn’t it make you proud to know these patriotic Americans are walking the picket line for mom, apple pie and the American way. As this photo, which you will not see published in the U.S. illustrates, the attitude of the UAW workers towards the American consumer and his employer. Just gives me the warm fuzzies to be an American.
General Motors and the United Auto Workers agreed to a new contract early Wednesday, ending a two-day nationwide strike with a watershed deal that establishes a new union-managed trust fund, funded by GM,for retiree health care but does not include wage hikes.
The tentative four-year agreement was reached around 3 a.m. Union officials promptly called off the strike — the first national job action against GM in more than 30 years — and said the new contract will be submitted to union members for ratification by the weekend.
GM’s 73,000 unionized employees are expected back on the job Wednesday afternoon and now must ratify the contract hammered out by union leadership.
To win over workers and get the deal wrapped up quickly, GM is dangling a $3,000 signing bonus for each member, with a possibility of additional signing bonuses in later years of the contract.
However, workers will get no base wage increases or cost-of-living adjustments as they have in the past, according to sources who have been briefed on the contract.
“There is no question this was one of the most complex and difficult bargaining sessions in the history of the GM, UAW relationship,” GM chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner Jr. said in a statement. “This agreement helps us close the fundamental competitive gaps that exist in our business.”
The company said the new contract would let GM “improve its manufacturing competitiveness, providing the basis for maintaining and strengthening its core manufacturing base in the United States.”
In mid-day trading, shares of GM were up nearly 5 percent at $36.10.
The agreement is expected to include larger monthly pension payouts for retirees, which are meant to offset any increases in health-care expenses for retirees.
The agreement is also expected to include language the allows GM to pay lower wages and benefits for newer workers and other workers in the plant who do not do manufacturing work.
Under existing union rules, U.S. automakers have to pay UAW benefits and wages of about $28 per hour for the housekeeping of facilities — costs that the non-union facilities of foreign automakers do not have to bear. (for pushing a broom?)
Foreign automakers, such as Toyota Motor Corp., have much more flexibility in non-manufacturing labor costs. As global competition has heated up, those automakers are pushing their manufacturing wages down. At a new assembly plant being built in Mississippi, for instance, Toyota has said it plans to pay workers as little as $12 an hour.
Currently, GM has a cost of $78 dollars per hour, per worker in wages and benefits compared to Toyota’s $48.00 per hour, yet the wage scale between the two companies is comparable.
The contract might also include changes to the so-called “jobs bank” — a costly union provision that forces the company to maintain UAW salaries when plants are closed or idled.
With the U.S. auto industry steadily losing market share to overseas manufacturers, both sides said the agreement will help keep jobs and manufacturing capacity in the United States.
GM is carrying some $50 billion in unfunded retiree health obligations on its books, a liability that executives say has helped make the company less competitive against foreign manufacturers. Toyota, the Japanese auto giant, is expected to supplant GM this year as the world’s largest car maker.
Under the agreement, responsibility for the retiree health plan will shift to a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association (VEBA) managed by the union. Details about how the VEBA will be funded have not been disclosed. But it is expected to involve a one-time payment of as much as $35 billion by GM, providing the union with money to invest and to pay for retiree benefits while reducing the company’s future expenses by billions of dollars. Creation of the retiree health trust is to be monitored by a judge and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to GM’s statement Wednesday morning.
At a Detroit news conference, UAW President Ronald A. Gettelfinger said the memorandum of understanding outlining the health fund would secure retiree health benefits for decades to come.
“We’ve got it secure and in place,” he said, according to the Detroit News.
Other details of the agreement were not released as union negotiators prepared to brief their national leaders and circulate the contract to local affiliates for approval.
Final negotiations had focused on the union’s desire to keep jobs at U.S. plants and reduce the use of part-time, temporary workers, while the company hoped to find ways to decrease the roughly $70 in average wages and benefits that it pays employees. GM’s labor costs are estimated to be between $25 and $30 an hour more than those of Toyota and other competitors.
The new contract, and the treatment of retiree health costs in particular, are expected to form a framework for upcoming union negotiations with Ford and Chrysler.
The U.S. auto industry is in the midst of a critical restructuring, with the Big Three companies in Detroit closing factories, shedding workers and changing designs to catch up with foreign manufacturers and evolving consumer tastes.
The strike began Monday at GM’s 80 unionized plants after a union-imposed deadline passed without an agreement. The impact was quickly felt — and demonstrated why both sides feared a prolonged shutdown. One U.S. auto-parts maker laid off hundreds of workers, and the president of the autoworkers union in Canada predicted 100,000 layoffs there by the weekend if the strike continued to disrupt production.
For each day of the strike, GM’s production was projected to fall 14,000 new vehicles behind rival automakers, according to industry estimates. The struggling auto giant was in danger of losing tenuous beachheads it had established with hot-selling, high-profit vehicles, such as the Buick Enclave and GMC Acadia. A UAW official said on Tuesday that the union had taken into account GM’s inventory before the strike and had warned the automaker before negotiations began to build up inventories of key vehicle lines.
Talks had continued Tuesday against a background of 24-hour nationwide picket lines.
Gettelfinger said Tuesday morning that he was hoping for a quick end to the strike, as many of GM’s 73,000 union workers around the country began budgeting to live on $200 a week in strike pay.
“In many ways it may be a good thing because it will bring an end to this thing quicker,” Gettelfinger said in a radio interview on Detroit’s WJR-AM. “We are ready to settle the agreement and move on with life. But it takes two sides to do that.”
The strike was a gamble of sorts for the union, whose members reported making no preparations for an extended walkout. A smaller, more targeted strike would have been easier to sustain. In 1998, the UAW struck at two key GM plants for 54 days, costing the company $12 billion in sales and $3 billion in profit.
Negotiations focused on wages, security for U.S. workers worried about jobs moving overseas, and the company’s continued investment in new products.
The strike was felt beyond GM. Delphi, which makes parts for GM and its rivals, began laying off workers at some of its 29 plants, the company said. Though it continues to make parts for Ford and other companies, Delphi depends on GM for much of its revenue. Some Delphi plants, such as the Saginaw Steering Systems plant in Michigan, divide work roughly equally among the Big Three customers. Delphi laid off a small percentage of its 2,700 workers at Saginaw.
But at the Delphi plant in Lockport, N.Y., about 90 percent of the plant’s output goes to GM, and most of the plant’s 1,900 workers faced lay offs if the strike endured, an industry source said on the condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak publicly on the subject.
Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, said GM production in his country was coming to a standstill because of the strike in the U.S.
At midnight Monday, a car assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, closed, putting about 3,600 workers out of jobs. A second Canadian car plant with about 2,800 workers was set to close on Tuesday because it lacks parts made by GM plants in the United States.
More than 16,000 Canadian union workers were to be laid off by the end of Tuesday because of the GM strike. If the strike continued through the end of the week, Hargrove estimated, as many as 100,000 Canadian workers could be laid off.
Despite the effect on his members, Hargrove said he supported the UAW strike.
“I believe General Motors’ problems in the U.S. are the same as they are in Canada — imports from Japan, South Korea and the European community,” Hargrove said. “They close off their markets. GM is trying to make the UAW pay for that. I think it’s wrong and unfair as hell.”
At GM plants around the nation, strikers settled into picket lines on Tuesday and wondered how long the walkout would last. Some said it caught them by surprise.
“All those years, my mom kept the back room stocked with cans of food in case Dad had to go out on strike,” said Mark Wilkerson, 42, crew coordinator for Local 1853 in Spring Hill, Tenn., one of about 200 picketers working six-hour protest shifts at the rural plant. “I didn’t plan anything because I really wasn’t expecting a strike. I heard they were near a deal a few days ago and things were going well, so I blew a lot of money this weekend.”
The Tennessee plant once built Saturns but now makes only parts. GM is retooling the plant to make other vehicles. In the process, 2,200 workers were laid off this year. The plant retains much of its pioneering Saturn management ethos, where workers and managers work more closely together than in other unionized plants. On Tuesday, plant managers brought food and water to striking workers walking the sun-drenched picket lines.
At GM’s Ypsilanti, Mich., parts-shipping plant, temporary workers — those without benefits — joined UAW workers on the picket line.
“I’d like to think I’ll have a job here in 10 or 20 years,” said temporary worker Jeff Helmer, 28, who has been at the plant for more than a year. “It’s been nice work, good work and good pay, and that’s what we’re trying to keep going.”
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Tags: General Motors, GM, strike, UAW
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September 26th, 2007 at 4:50
fuck bush. him along with the republicans will kill this country.when the wetback truckers are allowed across the border wages will disappear to walmart levels.fuck bush the republicans and the corporations.
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September 27th, 2007 at 11:21
I’m confused. The editor has “the warm fuzzies to be an American” yet you live in Mexico? Doesn’t that make you more “Mexican”?
I’d like to know the circumstances behind the UAW striker “saluting” the photographer. Well, I probably already “know” and it says more about “you” than it says about the striker. I could probably go down to the Home Depot where the Mexican day laborers hang out and get the same photo featuring “Jose” after a few choice words about his mother’s background. Only I wouldn’t do that.
Mexicotrucker has inspired me to write my senator and congressman to counter the hype and exaggerations of your website . Unlike you, I am an American and I can do that.
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September 28th, 2007 at 1:54
Actually Old Trucker, I’m as American as you or anybody else. Like more than 800,000 other Americans, I choose to make my home in this beautiful country.
Unlike 799,00 who are referred to as “fakepat’s”, I’ve chosen to assimilate myself into this country and not isolate myself in American enclaves as most do. And my life is much richer for it
For what it’s worth, the “warm and fuzzies” was sarcasm! Here you have a photo of a dickhead who is making more than $75.00 an hour in wages and benefits, walking a picket line and basically saying “fuck you” to whoever is viewing the photo.
And we wonder why jobs are moving to Mexico! The circumstances behind the photo? I would imagine the guy was just being a jerk and acting the fool. Kind of like truck drivers do when they get together on the CB or in a Petro restarant in El Paso and make stupid boneheaded and yes racist comments about Mexicans knowing full well every employee in the place who is Mexican is hearing the shit!
I am happy we have been the inspiration for you to write your Cpngressman. Unfortunately, if you use the rhetoric, half truth and outright lies the opponent of this program continue to use to push their point in everyones faces, your efforts will be wasted.
But then if you really are an “Old Trucker”, I would hope you would have a mind to think for yourself and not need others to tell you what to say and think. All the “old truckers” of my generation are like that.
Take care brother!
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September 28th, 2007 at 9:55
Actually, the base UAW wage is something like $28/hr. $56000/yr, base. The $75/hr figure comes from GM and includes some current retiree costs. Each active GM hourly worker is supporting several retirees, but that won’t last forever.
I’d like to see the calculus behind their $75/hr number but it’s unlikely the UAW “dickhead” in your photo will ever benefit from anything but a portion of that $75. $75/hr certainly sounds “rich” and it’s a useful tool to unholster when you need to “prove” how overpaid someone might be.
The average Mexican auto worker makes $7/hr in wages and benefits. THAT’S why “jobs are moving to Mexico”. $7/hr in total compensation is hardly a wage/benefits standard any normal American should aspire to. Before you get too proud of $7/hr, remember that Chinese wages are under $1/hr.
I doubt that many of these $7/hr employees will be buying a new GM vehicle but now I know who’s buying those rusted out “vehicle-in-tow/temporary licensed” beater autos you see convoying south on I-35 across Kansas and Texas into old Mexico.
I don’t think the UAW striker was thinking too much about anyone “viewing” the photo. I’m sure his “salute” was pretty much directed at and limited to the photographer. Whatever was said to the man to evoke a response like that we can only guess at. I’d guess the photog didn’t release the bird by saying something like, “have a nice day on the picket line, my handsome UAW friend”.
I don’t encounter overtly boneheaded racist people very often. The last time was on a farm south of Fresno. Ironically, the bonehead racist was an English speaking illegal alien farmworker from Mexico who didn’t care for African-Americans and thought we needed to hear it everyday. Funny, eh?
I’ve known a lot of truckers, a lot of UAW workers (autos and farm equipment manufacturing) and a number of Mexicans (illegally here and otherwise). Stripped down to our foundations we’re all the same, good and bad and everything in between.
None of this is about “race”. Playing the race card is dishonest subterfuge. It’s only about wages and living standards. Those enjoying a relatively comfortable life want to maintain it and those who don’t have much in life want more. And then there are some of us who might be comfortable enough but expect to get MORE comfortable by stripping our comfortable neighbor’s wealth to give to the less fortunate … while conveniently skimming a bit off the top for yourselves.
Anyone who argues the average American autoworker (or trucker) is an overpaid slacker who should surrender to our less fortunate neighbors from the south while ignoring the record profits and multi-million dollar bonuses our Wall Street friends are enjoying is … beyond hope.
Take care yourself. Remember what Ben Franklin said and had put on a Colonial flag, “don’t tread on me”. Ben said the rattlesnake “never wounds till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.”
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September 28th, 2007 at 11:17
Actually, the number I quoted, $78 an hour per worker, wage and benefit costs came from a financial analyst from the Wall Street Journal.
You’d be surprised at how many of these $7 an hour workers in Mexico are driving new GM, Ford and Dodge vehicles on the wages of working parents.
The GM and other cars are models you’ll never see in the US unless being driven by a Mexican national because of the EPA laws, but they are good solid sub-compacts.
I am aware of the concerns of some but people are coming up with all types of outlandish scenarios of doom and gloom that simply are not true.
They keep trying to convince people that Mexican truck drivers are going to be brought to the US to fill vacant seats in American trucks, and when people hear that crap, they rightfully get upset. I would be very pissed also if there was any possibility of that happening, but it’s not happening, it can’t happen and it won’t happen. If this was the plan, there has been nothing to prevent companies from hiring qualified Mexican drivers under the HB1 Visa program. Employers only have to demonstrate a need and prove they advertised the position with no response from qualified individuals. Ironically, those are the same rules Mexican companies are required to follow in Mexico if they want to hire an American. The two countries are not so for apart. I think the biggest difference is the PC crowd in the US and Mexico, where political correctness is a joke to them.
The biggest problem I have with union workers is by personal observation. We had an OEM auto parts supplier in Muskegon Michigan I used to service. A union shop. Don’t remember if it was the Teamsters or UAW but that doesn’t matter.
You would have whole sections standing around doing nothing but watching their co workers work or struggle with a situation with no plans to lend a hand, because it wasn’t part of their job description. A shipping clerk would not receive a UPS shipment because it wasn’t his “job” even though he would be standing idle with his thumb up his but.
UAW janitors making $28 is ridiculous to lean on a broom 8 hours a day and appear to be busy. But ask them to give up $.50 and hour or pay $10 more a month as copay on their insurance and they’re ready to walk the picket line. And then, if the company stands tough and refuses their demands and shifts production to Canada or Mexico, they blame NAFTA or the MEXICANs.
I believe in free trade and the possibilities it opens for us. We have made some very bad deals concerning China and other far eastern countries that is coming back to bite us in the ass now.
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September 29th, 2007 at 1:41
Tell you what pal! My first thought was to delete all your nonsense but then I thought, “why do that?” You are proving my points for me, to wit: The complete lack of common sense, facts, manners or intelligence of a segment of the oppositon.
You have your little free Wordpress site up so have fun while it lasts. I will be editing your future comments if it gets to out of hand.
Keep up the good work for me fellow when you are not hauling or doing whatever you do to your pigs. Your efforts to make a fool of yourself are paying me dividends. If you knew anything about SEO, you would realize that.
G’day
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September 29th, 2007 at 2:00
The company I am leased to pays a set contracted rate per mile. They pay a fuel surcharge based on a sliding scale commiserate with the national average price of diesel on Monday morning. They also pay first night layover and subsequent nights at an increasing scale. We rarely lay over. They pay a very attractive drop pay rate and I take all the multi drop loads that they have.
To answer your question, NO, I would not stand still for a moment if they tried to do that without my consent. But the thing is, they wouldn’t try. They are honorable people. Ask any contractor who works for them. They’re Mexican American owened, a family business and family values guide the business.
But that has nothing to do with my point on the GM strike. That strike was over two things. At what level was GM going to fund the health benefits program (GM wanted to do 80%, UAW was demanding 110%) and the UAW wanted a written guarantee of job security. There is no guarantee of nothing in this life but death and taxes! And GM was correct to balk at the latter.
But when these guys are making $250 per day plus overtime to stand around with their thumbs up their asses and watch an automated line go by, and when asked to maybe forgo a wage increase, or perhaps contribute $10 bucks a week more towards your health insurance, they go on strike, then something is definitely wrong with the system. And wasn’t it just a year or so ago that GM was in deep financial doo doo? Were I in their shoes, you damned straight I’d give up a little for continues job secuirty.
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September 29th, 2007 at 12:28
“My first thought was to delete all your nonsense …”
I’m sure it was. That way, you’d “win”?
In the facilities I visit, the $28/hr UAW janitor has long since been outsourced. He’s been gone for 10 years or more. Want to guess who’s now doing the work?
H-1B visas fill skilled, technical jobs with foreign employees. Engineers. Computer programmers. You have to have a minimum of a Bachelors degree to enter the program. Unless something has recently changed, H-1B visas can’t be used to fill trucking jobs.
The typical H-1B wage is about 3/4 of what the “overpaid” American who previously did the work made in the position. The H-1B employees have the added benefit to the company of holding down the wages of surviving American employees. Any “requirements” that the employer first advertise locally before going overseas to fill the job are … pretty loose. *Wink* *Wink*.
I know this for a fact. Before I was an old trucker, I was a not-as-old engineer!! By the way, many of the H-1B indentured servants do really poor quality work. But they are “cheap”.
There’s another visa program for importing trucking labor but I don’t remember the code. I’ve run across some Bosnians and Indians here under the program.
You don’t have to worry about any future posts from “old trucker” getting out of hand. This is the last one. I only posted the first time to advise you in a completely friendly manner that I was writing my congressman to counter your efforts. And more importantly, I have to get back to work.
Adios.
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September 29th, 2007 at 1:38
Old Trucker. The thing you quote was not directed at you in anyway but as some foolish simpleminded person who cannot stand anyone to disagree with him. My comments make no sense now since my antispam system here has blacklisted him and sent him to spammers hell.
Actually, the $28 and hour janitorial postions were mentioned prominently by economist and others on talk radio this past week and they apparently still exist in some plants. What you suggest though about “guess who is doing the work”, I don’t think holds water. I don’t think that the Big Three would be stupid enough to employee illegals, but then again, who can say. I simply don’t know, and actually don’t care. It doesn’t effect my life.
The Visa program for importing truckers is the same. H1B. You just have to show a need. That’s how they’ve gotten all the Kiwi’s in and Aussies and some from the Eastern bloc. Strange though isn’t it how they have not taken advantage of a labor force south of the border. Pretty much puts that to rest.
But hey, write your Congressman, That is Democracy in action. But as I see you as an intelligent individual, use facts if you can find them to support your position and not the hysteria the rest are using to put across their point of view.
You know, if this wasn’t an election year, this program would be going on with very little opposition. It’s all politics and about the money in the end. And nothing you, or I nor anyone else say or do is going to change the outcome.
Take care and your viewpoint is welcome here anytime
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September 30th, 2007 at 8:48
Your opinion hoss, and it is a wrong opinion.
I am against illegal immigration however I am quick to realize that the knee jerk reactions of the neo-cons are ridiculous and have no chance in hell of success.
The Mexican Pilot Truck Program has nothing whatsoever to do with the illegal immigration debate and that is the focus of this blog, in addition to featuring articles and news about Mexico in general.
Perhaps if you would take the time to read what is here instead of coming over, and leaving inane comments such as this one, you might learn something.
And besides, what does this particular post have to do with illegal immigration?
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