State of the Union March 8, 2011

March 8, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

There will be a Women’s Committee meeting and a Veteran’s Committee meeting Thursday, March 10 at the Union Hall after first shift. All are invited to attend.

From Automotive News: UAW President Bob King said last week that statehouse efforts to restrict collective bargaining in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan have only strengthened the UAW's resolve to organize workers at the U.S. operations of foreign-owned automakers. "The good thing in all this -- I guess there's always a silver lining -- is that workers understand that we're all tied together, he said, "If we don't stand together and support one another, our middle-class standards will be destroyed." The UAW represents 246,000 public workers in seven states who could lose benefits and bargaining rights. The UAW has begun some field organizing around Toyota, Honda and other nonunion carmakers located largely in right-to-work states.

From the Associated Press: Part of a Michigan auto parts factory that was damaged by fire last week started producing again over the weekend, easing a parts shortage that had forced two auto companies to shut down some assembly lines. GM said Monday that the Cruze plant in Lordstown, Ohio, would be restarted on Tuesday, and workers at an adjoining parts stamping plant would be back Monday night. About half of the Magna plant's production restarted during the weekend, Magna spokeswoman Tracy Fuerst said Monday. Only about 25 percent of the factory space was damaged in the fire, but it burned two large holes in the roof of the building and caused structural damage. Fuerst said some of that damage had been fixed. Firefighters, who poured 1.2 million gallons of water on the plant to put out the blaze, have said its cause was accidental, starting in machinery into which foam was injected to make some of the parts. GM closed its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant on Friday and Monday, and at least six other GM factories were affected by the parts shortage. Officials were still assessing the impact at midday Monday.

Here is the February sales report from Marketing Manager Andrew Reyntjes:
On the Retail side we are seeing a gradual improvement in divisional and dealer involvement in the marketing and selling of full-size vans. During the recession we saw, for various reasons, many dealers exit this part of the business. As the economy is improving and as vehicles that have been held beyond the normal lifecycle are being replaced we are seeing a revival in this business. It is vital that we continue to support and encourage our entire Chevrolet and GMC dealer network with appropriate tools. We are continuing to produce new video and still assets for use in web, online, print and other various advertising initiatives. We continue to ensure that vans are included in corporate-wide incentive and sales programs and we are also being very diligent to make sure that our pricing and sales incentives are equal to or better than Ford. We have more work to do to strive to give dealers professional sales tools such as small-business Retail catalogs aimed at the retail small business customer as well as other point of sale material and continuing first-rate Business Choice and Business Central programs. We have had success in utilizing our E-Fleet inventory to inject profitable passenger models into our dealer network. Last year according to R.L Polk registrations we picked up a point of retail market share for the CY.

On the Fleet side we suspect that the massive increase in Ford share this month was due to a very large Fleet deal. Unfortunately we are unable to confirm this hypothesis due to the fact that registrations are not available due to a R.L.Polk lag time of 30-45 days. We do however keep track of the timing of Fleet deals where we were unsuccessful in winning the business. What I will say about our Fleet deals is that we are very mindful of the discounts that we offer to large commercial accounts. We are in business to make money in the Commercial space and we are not looking to buy market share at the expense of profitability. Given the fact that we have been pretty much selling everything we make, sometimes it makes sense to walk away from deals that do not make economic sense and sell to those that strengthens the profits of the new GM. We know that the big miss in GMC Fleet deliveries was due to the fact that bodies are being constructed at upfitters for a significant number of Penske and Budget Truck cutaways. As a result of this we expect strong GMC Fleet deliveries to be reported over the next couple of months.
LPG Cutaways are under development with a prototype being displayed at the NTEA show next week together with CNG cargo vans. This will appeal to businesses and school and shuttlebus customers and upfitters. We are working with industry partners to ensure a successful launch of this offering.

We are winning a good chunk of profitable diesel deals particularly in the ambulance market as we have the new emissions Duramax diesel, the most capable diesel engine in the segment. Ford does not offer a diesel. Our discussions with NHTSA continue on the safety and capability of our Passenger van. We have many competitive advantages in safety and security that have not been evaluated by NHTSA on our 15 Passenger models. Hopefully we can move the stigma of the industry-wide 15 passenger van poor safety perception to a competitive advantage for GM. Our Engineering team is working hard on this relationship and initiative. 2011 is shaping up to be a year of segment growth and we simply need to continue to fight to earn more than our fair share of it.