UAW offers concessions to automakers
The United Auto Workers announced today their willingness to make contract concessions to assist the troubled Big Three automakers in winning loan guarantees from the federal government. The UAW will agree to delay the autoworkers contribution to the retired workers insurance fund and suspend a program that paid benefits to laid off workers.
“This
should be interpreted as a meaningful and a painful sacrifice,” said
Harley Shaiken, a labor relations professor at the University of
California at Berkeley. The jobs bank was “something the union worked
over decades to achieve.”
....The
concessions by the UAW, the industry’s biggest labor group, will save
money as well as help the automakers argue that they have labor’s
backing in shrinking operations to remain viable.
...The union will revise the payment schedule for UAW-run trust funds
for retiree medical care that were part of a 2007 contract, President
Ron Gettelfinger said today after an emergency leadership meeting in
Detroit.
...He
said an interest payment for the delay would be agreed upon by the
companies and the UAW, which had 464,910 members at the end of last
year for the lowest total since the Great Depression. The first
contributions were due in January 2010, and the postponement would need
approval by a federal judge.
....“We can’t have a union if we don’t have factories,” said General Holiefield, a UAW vice president who is the union’s liaison with Chrysler. (Link)
The concessions will be something valuable for the automaker CEO's, scheduled to testify tomorrow before Congress, to keep in their back pocket. With some promise that longer term union trouble may be resolved, some Congressional members who had previously expressed reservations about a bailout may now be more inclined to dole out the dough to Detroit.
Or it sure can't hurt, anyway.
so let me get this straight? they're gonna bail on contracts and promises in order to help out the people who caused he problem in the first place?
my plan: http://thebetterbailout.com
Posted by: brandon mc | December 04, 2008 at 09:07 AM