Wagoner is exultant that he and the UAW gruelingly managed last year to make a deal that, if blessed by a federal judge, will cut GM’s unfunded liability by around $15 billion and pare cash outlays as well. But that will still leave Wagoner facing a colossal competitive disadvantage. The cost is not his fault. Rather, it is a legacy dumped on him by CEOs of decades ago who gained a certain amount of wage restraint from the union—and labor peace for their own terms of office—by granting retiree health benefits that had neither large, immediate cash costs nor, under the accounting rules then applying, much effect on the bottom line. Today, with health-care costs exploding and the accounting rules stiffened, this mess has come home to roost. It is the problem, says Wagoner (almost certainly giving too little weight to his shortage of revenues), that more than anything else “affects the future viability of GM.”
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/02/20/8369111/index.htm