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Posted on 07/25/2011 10:14:07 AM PDT by ThinkingBuddha
To help American carmakers stay in business, autoworkers grudgingly gave up pay raises and some benefits four years ago.
Now that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are making money again, workers want compensation for their sacrifice. Just how much they get is the central question hanging over contract talks that start this week between Detroit and one of the nation's largest and most powerful unions.
The negotiations, the first since Chrysler and GM took government aid and emerged from bankruptcy, will set wages and benefits for 111,000 members of the United Auto Workers, including those at Ford, which avoided bankruptcy by taking out massive private loans. The UAW's four-year contracts with the Detroit Three expire on Sept. 14.
There's more at stake than pay. After the industry's brush with financial ruin in 2008 and 2009, both sides know how quickly Detroit's sales and profitability could vanish. Sales are on pace to reach nearly 13 million cars and trucks this year, better than the 10 million in 2009, but still below the 17 million peak in 2005. Americans are worried about buying cars when wages and the job market are weak. The workers and Detroit companies can't leave themselves vulnerable to rivals.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice...if they’re compensated, it’s not sacrifice.
VW has worker councils in Europe and their contract says all plants regardless of location will have one.
It's law that worker councils must be part of a union arrangement.
Unfortunately for them, the workers themselves are leery of both. So the UAW is trying to organize the plant and VW keeps sending representatives over to explain how wonderful the arrangement is.
Again, the workers aren't biting...yet.
There’s probably 2000 people for every UAW job willing to work for their deal or less. (That’s probably conservative).
Not really. In the early 1990s when he retired, Lee Iacocca left Chrysler with really great product line (Grand Cherokee, a new Ram truck and the LH sedans). The company was making money hand over fist.
Unfortunately, Iacocca also blocked Bob Lutz from being his successor and instead pushed for an unethical slimeball named Bob Eaton. Management from mid-managerial level up received two to three times their base pay as annual bonuses rather than fixing quality issues. Eaton engineered a deal to sell Chrysler to Daimler even though Chrysler had greater assets and value at the time. Eaton made about $70 million off the deal and Chrysler went down the tubes.
Snip: “They also resent the size of executive pay packages, particularly at Ford, where workers fume that Ford CEO Alan Mulally got $26.5 million for 2010.
Some assembly-line workers are already mad about giving up guaranteed raises. They could resist profit-sharing.
“Most workers say `No, that’s not good enough,’” says Gary Walkowicz, a Ford worker who ran unsuccessfully against King last year. “It’s like pie in the sky as opposed to real increases in wages to help us keep up with increasing prices.”
end snip.
Idiots abound. First of all, Ford would not be the strongest of the big 3 if they were stull under William Clay Ford, Jr. Second, as an assy line worker how much value do you actually add? With mfg processes in place, anyone could be trained in a very short period of time to follow the instructions and pictures to do your very limited operation. Plus you get to leave at night, go home get drunk and operate as effectively with a hangover the next morning.
Now, Mr. Mullaly never gets to leave, is often only able to sleep on flights, is moving from continent to continent, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of people’s livelihood across the globe, is rarely ever able to see his family, etc.
As far as I’m concerned, Alan Mullaly is very under compensated for the pressure he is under and the work he does. He adds a lot more value than our entire federal government to the US.
You “blue collar” fools are simply fools. Without him you’d be jobless.
That would explain why United Welfare Fund of UAW went belly up.
They now switched over to Healthplex, which is a union ins WORSE than UWF.
And I understand UWF is in some kind of suit with a few “companies” that haven’t paid their dues.
Remember when VW did this previously in 1978 in Pennsylvania?
They brought in the UAW and the plant went belly-up in 9 years IIRC.
Surely they learned SOMETHING from that.
Now that the Union is an owner. They owe us.
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