United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)

gagrice

The white collar retirees are soon to get the GM Shaft as well. Big cash buyout. And what do you do with a big cash buyout. You can blow it on Stuff like a new car and home. You can invest it in a shaky stock market. Chances are it will not be near enough to match the pension check they are currently receiving. The UAW retirees are somehow exempted from this rip-off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/business/gm-to-offer-buyouts-to-white-collar-r- etirees.html

srs_49

From what I read, the retirees are not being required to take the lump sum - only that it is being offered.

FWIW, my company offered a lump sum payout of (defined) pension benefits that was pretty popular. So much so that they were forced to scale it back significantly because, rumor had it, it was draining the pension plan of assets. Your lump sum was related to the interest rate on 20-year treasury bills, I believe. So your lump sum amount could vary significantly depending on what the economy was doing.

They still offer a lump sum option for benefits that were accrued up through 1996. But there are so many restrictions on it and reductions (if you retire before age 65, etc) that's it's not a viable option for most people nowadays.

tlong

Of course, there a many in Western Ohio who aren't that happy with the bailout not helping keep their retirements from Delphi and the IUE union workers. They probably don't care about GM any more.

If I had been promised a bunch of benefits and had them cut, I'd not care about the company anymore, either.

I don't think that's hypocritical - as an example, take my wife's sister in law. A recently retired LA school teacher, she's getting 70% of her salary as pension, WITH lifetime health benefits for her AND HER HUSBAND (even if she dies first). As an employee, I would expect to get what I was promised. But as a taxpayer in Kalifornia, I find it obscene and revolting.

gagrice

BP & ARCO handed out golden parachutes to a lot of their employees in AK. Most got a big cash settlement to retire early. Then a big kick up in their pension. Many came back within a year as contract labor. Double dippin'. Most were hired back as consultants on a per day basis plus expenses. One guy that knew their communications better than anyone still working would come back for 3-4 days at $1000 per day plus all expenses. He made a lot more retired than working.

imidazol97

>If I had been promised a bunch of benefits and had them cut

Recently it came out that the government decided to cut the Delphi pensions out of the GM restructuring.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/emails-geithner-treasury-drove-cutoff-of-non-u- - - nion-delphi-workers-pensions/

Government had been saying it was just from the negotiations with UAW, etc. A friend of ours is getting only a fraction of his GM retirement amount because he was spun off into Delphi while promised he would retain his GM retirement levels. Of course he's getting social security and his other investments for retirement.

srs_49

What I was referencing wasn't a golden parachute, but just a form of pension payout that is available to anyone who retires.

Although during the three RIFs we've had over the past 2.5 years or so, the company paid anyone who went out a bonus equivalent to 2 weeks pay for every year of service, up to 50 weeks max. So if you had 25 or more years of service, you got almost a full year's salary as an incentive. Of course, you have to pay taxes on that full amount :sick: .

Many came back within a year as contract labor. Double dippin'

Technically, they probably weren't double dippin', as when they came back as contractors they were probably working for a contracting firm instead of their original employer. BTW, many of those who left my company under those RIFs I mentioned also came back as contractors.

roadburner

Recently it came out that the government decided to cut the Delphi pensions out of the GM restructuring.

Dear Leader knows he'll get the UAW votes, so Delphi ended up as collateral damage- why try to buy votes that you almost certainly won't get anyway?

stever

Stephen Harper knows he won't get those votes, so it'll be curious to see what he says if the Big 3 play hardball with the CAW and threaten to move more production south. Don't know if they'll play as hard as Caterpillar did. Harper got burned on the Caterpillar plant closing but still won re-election handily last year. (guardian.co.uk)

Canadian Auto Workers, GM begin negotiations (Detroit News)

The CAW has challenges. They don't like two tier wages plans and say they won't accept them (but they already have lower entry level wages that gain parity with existing wage levels after six years)

And speaking of parity, the universal health benefits that Canadian manufacturers enjoy should be less of a cost factor and the Canadian dollar is at par with the US dollar so that's a big issue. In past years, the Canadian dollar was around 70% of the US dollar. So there's fewer advantages to siting a Dodge Caravan factory in Ontario.

marsha7

"Caterpillar closed the factory after members rejected the company’s demands for sweeping concessions and went on strike. The factory’s production was moved to nonunion plants in the United States and South America."

Now THAT is the way you run a business...if the employees don't want what you offer (and I am sure that Cat did not offer them merely minimum wage) then you shut the plant and move to somewhere where the workers do appreciate having a job...and tell the former workers, you don't want what we offer???...now go work somewhere else...

That is how you treat ungrateful workers...this crap about workers having a say in how the company is run is simply left-wing, politically correct, feel-good stupidity...

Now let's run it like a business instead of a playground...

stever

...this crap about workers having a say in how the company is run is simply left-wing, politically correct, feel-good stupidity...

lol, don't tell my deer hunting, pickup driving nephew down in Alabama that. He's one of ~12,000 "teammates" at Nucor, a steel making company that believes in decentralized management philosophy, performance based compensation and egalitarian benefits. There's a corporate jet but not much else in the way of executive perks. "Most operating decisions are made at the division level or lower. In addition, Nucor claims that its corporate office staff numbers around 75 employees, which may possibly be the smallest number of corporate office employees among major corporations." (Wiki)

Winco back in Boise is another example; maybe a better one, since some of their 14,000 employees are union too.

berri

Unlike D3, Cat has always played hardball with the UAW. On the other hand, Deere tends to play nice with them and has also performed well over the past decades. Maybe D3 is just at a disadvantage because they can be played off of each other in Detroit by the union. Personally, I think good can come from worker involvement in a company, but it requires a true team approach and a lack of bureaucracy and management arrogance. That is hard to come by, and perhaps about impossible in a union environment with the inevitable grievances and "us versus them" attitudes. It's probably also hard to accomplish in a large, highly structured corporation with over paid, self promoting senior executives. In fact, seems to me that the executive back stabbing can compete with union pettiness in ugliness and mediocre results.

gagrice

well said,

gagrice

Looks to me like being a Federal employee is the best ticket to a FAT retirement.

More than 21,000 retired federal workers receive lifetime government pensions of $100,000 or more per year, a USA TODAY/Gannett analysis finds.

Of these, nearly 2,000 have federal pensions that pay $125,000 or more annually, and 151 take home $150,000 or more. Six federal retirees get more than $200,000 a year.

Retired law enforcement is the most common profession receiving $100,000-plus pensions, including 326 Drug Enforcement Administration agents, 237 IRS investigators and 186 FBI agents.

The Postal Service has 714 retired workers getting six-figure retirements. The Social Security Administration has 444. A retired Smithsonian zoologist has a $162,000 annual lifetime pension.

The six $200,000-plus pensions include a doctor, a dentist and a credit union regulator, plus three retirees whose occupations weren't listed.

Pensions are a growing federal budget burden, rising twice as fast as inflation over the last decade. Pension payments cost $70 billion last year, plus $13 billion for retiree health care. Taxpayers face a $2 trillion unfunded liability

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48678353

marsha7

steve: "...12,000 "teammates" at Nucor, a steel making company that believes in decentralized management philosophy, performance based compensation and egalitarian benefits...."

I am all for this if that is what management wants to do, but I would never let the employees make the decisions on how the company is run...I do believe that the people on the line always know how to do their jobs better (even in the UAW!) and I applaud companies who ask for worker suggestions, implement them, and compensate the employee who suggested the improvement...Toy and Honda have that reputation, in a spirit of worker-management cooperation, whereas Big 3 supposedly tried the same thing, but any suggestion made by a worker was supposedly "stolen" by the plant supervisor, and so the usual animosity between worker and mgmt came into play, rather than let the worker get the credit...

berri: "it requires a true team approach and a lack of bureaucracy and management arrogance. That is hard to come by, and perhaps about impossible in a union environment with the inevitable grievances and "us versus them" attitudes."...I think in a union environment, esp the UAW, the word "cooperation" does not exist in their abridged dictionary...

My point is simply that the entrepreneur takes the risk and is entitled to the reward...if that entrepreneur is willing to share management with the workers, and willing to put decision-making at the lowest level possible, let them do it, but I can assure you that it will not be in any UAW environment in your lifetime...maybe that is why the imports like Toy and Honda spend weeks or months teaching their workers their "corporate attitude" of worker cooperation, and that is why workers are so willing to submit suggestions to make the work better...the UAW may call it brainwashing, but a cooperative work environment seems to me to be a much better place to work than the stress of working the UAW line every day...they probably wait every day for the order to strike nationwide so they can kill the company, whereas the import workers probably do not have that "Let's destroy our employer" attitude...then again, the imports probably employ people who have something over 65 on the IQ scale, whereas that is probably the upper limit in the UAW...

gagrice

Looks like the Unions in Illinois are ready to eat their own.

“We are extremely disturbed that at a time when collective bargaining rights for public employees are under attack by a number of Republican governors, here in Illinois we have a Democratic governor who is undermining fundamental collective bargaining rights for public employees,” Carrigan said.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-15/news/chi-unions-protest-democrats-- at-illinois-state-fair-20120815_1_pension-systems-pension-reform-pat-quinn

stever

Sounds like the rank and file aren't happy with the status quo. Good for them. It's never good when you are taken for granted. Another example:

Chrysler workers reject new deal (Detroit News)

The subhead - "Local union leaders unsure why vote failed at Dundee Engine Plant" pretty much tells the story. Probably too busy playing golf with the plant managers to pay attention to the people working the line.

And note that "almost half of the approximately 650 hourly workers at the plant are new hires who had never been through a local contract negotiation". Doesn't say if those hires are on the second tier pay level.

andre1969

I don't know if employment in the federal gov't is really the meal ticked to retirement that it used to be. For one thing, that article states that only 1.2% of all federal retirees breaks the $100K mark.

Plus, the gov't changed their retirement system in 1984. The newer hires don't get those generous pensions. However, the article did state the the old system accounted for 96% of the 6-figure pensions, while the newer system accounts for 4%.

I wonder what kind of gov't workers are getting 6-figure pensions after working, at the most, only 28 years? (from 1984-now?)

stever

"Witness the factory of Tesla Motors, which recently began manufacturing the Tesla S, a luxury sedan, in Fremont, Calif., on the edge of Silicon Valley.

More than half of the building is shuttered, called “the dark side.” It still houses a dingy, unused Toyota Corolla assembly line on which an army of workers once turned out half a million cars annually.

The Tesla assembly line is a stark contrast, brilliantly lighted. Its fast-moving robots, bright Tesla red, each has a single arm with multiple joints.

Hyundai and Beijing Motors recently completed a mammoth factory outside Beijing that can produce a million vehicles a year using more robots and fewer people than the big factories of their competitors."

Skilled Work, Without the Worker (NY Times)

imidazol97

>“As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.”

This is a quote from the article. Workers=animals.

gagrice

It don't look like Rocky will ever find his factory job niche. He does say hi to all. He is busy politikin on Face Book.

tlong

It don't look like Rocky will ever find his factory job niche. He does say hi to all. He is busy politikin on Face Book

Thanks for the update. I hope he is doing well. He could come by sometime.

fintail

For the 1%, for arrogant management types, and in China, that's pretty much how it works.

marsha7

It looks like Roger Smith's dream has finally come true, just 20 years after he left GM...had technology been better back then, he might have had his factory of the future, but, like him or not, it seems that he was a visionary for his time...almost all robots and few humans to maintain them, they work 24/7/365, they don't strike, they don't grumble about conditions, they don't need vacations or sick days, and their work is constantly excellent or better, and they don;t show up drunk to work on Mon or Friday...

Now, do you want the UAW at your plant or these robots???

Oh, I think they said using robots for skilled tasks...surely if they can do skilled tasks, the unskilled tasks (you know, the ones you can teach to workers in under an hour) are certainly better handled by the robot...

It would be reasonable to say that the need for unskilled labor in factories is diminishing, whereas the education of the population does not seem to be moving to a "better educated" society...you would think, with this handwriting on the wall, anybody in the UAW would be telling their kids that the heyday of well-paid unskilled factory work is over, and they need to be better educated, but I wonder if they are actually smart enough to see that handwriting, or do they still think that by striking they will stop the onslaught of these robots???

Society is changing, and the workforce needs to change with it...not because I say so, but that work reality out there will be much different soon...the days of $35/hour to tighten lug nuts are rapidly disappearing...

gagrice

The only high paying do nothing jobs left are in the government. Especially if you got a strong union to control the city, county or state.

Union head says it's 'not possible' to eliminate positions from bloated city entity

Despite having no horses, the water and sewerage department for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer.

Yet even with a department so bloated that it has a horseshoer and no horses, the local union president said it is "not possible" to eliminate positions.

Union rules have turned the department into a government jobs program, some critics say.

The horseshoer’s job description is "to shoe horses and to do general blacksmith work … and to perform related work as required." The description was last updated in 1967.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/17404

stever

The city still had a few (9?) mounted police as of 2011. Sounds like they must contract shoeing out.

Would more a lot more sense just to put them on mountain bikes.

Then Detroit could hire a wheel truer.

Ah, Michigan....

gagrice

The Unions in Michigan are bankrupting cities and state, the same as many other places. They need some adults to stand up to them. CA has some bills that will bring some of them back to earth. Vote YES on 32

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_32,_the_%22Paycheck- - _Protection%22_Initiative_%282012%29

stever

The (R) governor here is pretty interesting. Lots of people call him a RINO because he really doesn't seem to much care about the politics and said right up front that trying to kill the unions was too much of a distraction to worry about (unlike Walker next door).

If a bill gets to his desk he likely won't veto it though. The guy seems to be focused on spending and budget matters and ignoring the ideological stuff. Haven't seen any poll numbers but I bet they are relatively good.

lemko

The Philadelphia Police Mounted Patrol has a few of its horses stabled just down the street from my place. I see police trucks with horse trailers coming and going all the time. The mounted patrol is excellent in controlling such disturbances as the recent flash mob riots we had. Few things strike fear in the hearts of marauding thugs like a police officer swinging a baton while mounted on a rampaging stallion!

stever

"But labor experts say the union's tough talk may be just that. And the CAW itself acknowledged it is having at least some of the desired effect.

"The threat of a strike has certainly captured the attention of the media and company executives alike. Over the last few days, meetings have picked up and are now taking place more frequently," the union said. "Much to our disappointment though, these meetings have not yielded many results."

CAW tells members to prepare for strike next week (Detroit News)

gagrice

How stupid are the CAW members? Don't they know GM is hanging by a thread and still owes the tax payers $42 billion. Didn't they learn anything from pushing Caterpillar out of Canada? Our automakers should pull out of Canada. They are no better to USA than Mexico factories. Indiana will take all their rejects and not force a closed shop on the workers.

stever

"CAW Secretary-Treasurer Peter Kennedy said the CAW is "much closer" with one company to reaching a deal on a new-hire proposal that would lower the starting pay of workers and extend the time it takes to reach a full wage. He declined to name the company, but said he was hopeful a deal could be reached with the company sometime Saturday."

CAW 'much closer' to deal on new-hire proposal with Detroit automaker

Oh, and it's not just Indiana or Mexico - "Until this month, the crossover [Equinox] SUV was built only at two plants in Canada. The additional manufacturing could help GM, should the Canadian Auto Workers go on strike against GM."

Spring Hill Assembly Plant back online

Both links from the Detroit News.

gagrice

Time for Government Motors to pull out of Canada. Let them start their own auto manufacturing company. What does it benefit the USA to have our cars built there? Time to end all these job killing trade agreements. We need to look out for Number ONE USA.

lemko

Did Canada ever have its own car industry?

fintail

Bricklin? McLaughlin Buick?

stever

"The Canadian Auto Workers' attention now shifts to General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, now that Ford Motor Co. and the union have agreed on a tentative four-year contract.

The new contract, agreed to Monday afternoon, means there will be a substantial investment at Ford's Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario.

It will extend the number of years that newly hired employees must work at lower wages before earning top-tier money."

Bit of a surprise since Mulally had an anti-union rep at Boeing. Or it could mean that Ford will move more future jobs to the US instead of Canada. "It could impact the UAW in a positive way."

CAW reaches agreement with Ford, turns focus to GM, Chrysler (Detroit News)

marsha7

"How stupid are the CAW members? Don't they know GM is hanging by a thread and still owes the tax payers $42 billion. Didn't they learn anything from pushing Caterpillar out of Canada?"

Uh, do I REALLY need to answer that question???...remember, these are the folks who one main hiring requirement for UAW membership is an IQ beneath most Labrador Retrievers, and I hate insulting Labs...

berri

Canada isn't really that big of a D3 market and it seems to be steadily moving to Asian makes, so there really isn't much reason for Detroit to stay if they are not competitive in wage packages. Nafta seems to shif the advantage to Mexico rather than the US though.

stever

“We have a lot of work ahead of us to bring our two organizations together and to consummate this marriage of two hell raisers made in heaven,” CAW secretary-treasurer Peter Kennedy told a news conference announcing the vote.

Canadian private sector workers are still more than twice as likely to belong to a union than their U.S. counterparts, official statistics show."

Canadian Auto Workers, CEP join forces to create Canadian mega-union (financialpost.com)

stever

Haven't heard much about this, being up in the boonies and not watching the commercials.

Prop 2: Amending State's constitution on collective bargaining (WNEM)

This proposal would "grant public and private employees the constitutional right to organize and bargain collectively through labor unions."

stever

"In a break with decades of U.S. auto-union tradition, the prevailing wage paid to new unionized autoworkers is less than that of the average laborer producing items ranging from metal and wood products to food and beverages.

Until now, autoworker pay hasn't dropped below the average industrial wage since Henry Ford instituted the $5-a-day wage for factory workers in 1914, according to a comparison of historic prevailing UAW wages provided by Ford in 2011 and pay data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As U.S. automakers hire new, lower-cost workers, the UAW has posted two straight years of membership gains, to 380,719 members last year, according to a March union filing with the U.S. Labor Department. UAW membership peaked at 1.5 million members in 1979."

Autoworkers earning less in U.S. happy to compete globally (Detroit News)

gagrice

Is this amendment meant to stop RTW in Michigan? If so it will probably be found unconstitutional. Hope the people of Michigan are smarter than that. Though it is doubtful, from postings I see elsewhere. Indiana is getting more companies with RTW being passed. If the UAW savior in the WH is defeated they will be looking for work at Toyota or Honda. GM cannot continue without constant infusion of tax payer dollars. They are already $54 billion in the Red to US. Of course the Media will lie and leave out the Billions we dumped into the UAW pension plan and screwed the Delphi salaried employees out of their pensions.

By the way Rocky is back happily working.

imidazol97

>, the prevailing wage paid to new unionized autoworkers is less than that of the average laborer...

BUT, what about the overall compensation package? retirement, healthcare, paid vision insurance, dental, etc.? I strongly suspect the overall package is much, much higher than the average industrial worker with no skills to which they are comparing and I suspect it's more than toyota and Honda are paying their workers.

The UAW had a chance to hold the wages up for their industry, but instead they chose to hold the wages and benefits UP for the high seniority workers and threw the lower wage tier employees, then current and future, under the bus as far as their future wages. All was good just as long as the highly paid, full seniority workers kept their full pay. God knows, they should have to give back 5 or 10% as had some folks in other work areas have had to do.

imidazol97

>Is this amendment meant to stop RTW in Michigan?

I am probably wrong, but I glean that the purpose of embedding the constituional amendment into the Michigan law is to give labor the right to do as they did in the healthcare industry. The union (SEIU?) somehow got an interpretation of laws so that people being paid with any form of government money to do home healthcare had to be members of the union and have the union dues withheld.

The result was, as I read recently, that people in homecare jobs where the pay comes partly from Federal monies, such Medicare or Medicaide as caring for a profoundly bedridden loved one, had dues to the union withheld. The story told how many millions or tens of millions had been gained by the union coffers through this grab of any form of public money paying the bill.

Sort of the ultimate public employee union power grab.

And the parents taking care of a bedridden son had money withheld from their government subsidy paying for their son's home healthcare. AND they have NO voice in the union--but the union has the dues money.

This is much more pernicious than just trying to outlaw RTW in Michigan. I read the FreeP paper issue while visiting there several weeks back and trying to reconcile the description of the ballot issue with what I knew about the power grab by the uniona few years ealier. Rush Limbaugh had talked about the union's tactics, IIRC.

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/fight-over-unionization-michigan-home-health- - -care-workers-continues-federal-court-an

http://www.freep.com/article/20120526/NEWS06/205260440/Union-dues-can-no-longer-- - be-withheld-from-Michigan-home-health-care-workers

Google Michigan union healthcare workers

stever

I'm struggling with my absentee ballot right now. I think the health care one you've heard about is Prop 4, which provides for collective bargaining for in-home care workers. Prop 2 is the "RTW" one.

Here's a pretty good summary page of all the MI props.

imidazol97

When I read the paper there was only 1 discussed.

Off to do more research.

Here are the bullets for #4:
Allow in-home care workers to bargain collectively with the Michigan Quality Home Care Council (MQHCC). Continue the current exclusive representative of in-home care workers until modified in accordance with labor laws.

Require MQHCC to provide training for in-home care workers, create a registry of workers who pass background checks, and provide financial services to patients to manage the cost of in-home care.

Preserve patients’ rights to hire in-home care workers who are not referred from the MQHCC registry who are bargaining unit members.

Authorize the MQHCC to set minimum compensation standards and terms and conditions of employment.

And the bullets for Issue 2:
This proposal would:
Grant public and private employees the constitutional right to organize and bargain collectively through labor unions.

Invalidate existing or future state or local laws that limit the ability to join unions and bargain collectively, and to negotiate and enforce collective bargaining agreements, including employees’ financial support of their labor unions. Laws may be enacted to prohibit public employees from striking.

Override state laws that regulate hours and conditions of employment to the extent that those laws conflict with collective bargaining agreements.

Define “employer” as a person or entity employing one or more employees.

marsha7

Just what is rocky doing and where is he working?

iluvmysephia1

gagrice, where is rockford fosgate at these days and just what is he doing?

gagrice

Rocky is working in Shipping and Receiving plus inside sales for a big tool supply company in Grand Rapids. Says it is a good job and challenging. They sell to the metal trade. Milling machines and lathes etc.

PS
I think after work he only has energy to turn on the TV and watch sports. I keep telling him sports are the opiate of the masses.

stever

Cool - tell him everyone says hey.

iluvmysephia1

I do wish my Seattle Seahawks well against rockford's Detroit Lions this Sunday, October 28th, 2012, at 10:00 Central time. Or is Detroit Eastern time?