New Hires will receive pay at a rate of $14.00 per hour starting in 2010. Current workers will continue to receive the higher pay scale. This is why the automakers have been buying out high seniority workers to get them to voluntarily quit. Some of the receive as much as $70,000 to quit.
What GM is hoping for and the UAW is hoping for is bailout money to get them to 2010 and to continue to buy out UAW seniority workers.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
And I said months ago that a wholsesale dumping of UAW retirees off the Big Three pension and medical insurance rolls was going to be Priority #1 in the new administration.
And this was before I had any idea WHICH candidate would win in November.