State of the Union June 28, 2011

June 28, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

Reminder: The deadline for the team member referral process is Thursday, June 30 at 11 pm. Once again, this must be done through the mySocrates website at https://mygm.gm.com. If you are having difficulty with the mySocrates website you can call 1-888-337-2400. If you are having difficulty with the referral website you can call 1-800-973-1465. You can also come to personnel at first and second break or lunch time for assistance in completing the process, but you must have your gmid and password.

Unfortunately, Brother Jerry Ploch did not win the Fox 2 St. Louis “Summer R&R in Your Backyard” contest yesterday. However he would like to thank everyone who voted for his entry.

From the Detroit Free Press: The head of General Motors' North American operations says that new contract talks with the UAW will be different from the contentious bargaining of the past. Mark Reuss, GM president for North America, said Monday that the two sides have been talking informally for 18 months about items that can benefit the company and the union. The formal start to the talks is scheduled for July 27. Although he characterized the talks as amicable, Reuss conceded that there will be give-and-take as the company and union stake out their demands. He revealed few details of GM's wish list, although he said the automaker wants its factories to be more flexible so they can change quickly to build modelsthat are in high demand. "Some of the stuff we want is a good thing for the union, and some of the stuff the union wants is a good thing for the company," he said. "Being flexible and agile, for instance, everybody wins."

From Automotive News: UAW President Bob King says a lack of independent labor unions in Mexico explains why auto workers there remain impoverished despite a booming car industry. Many Mexican employers have unions, but they predominantly are "protectionist unions" that work on behalf of companies to hold down compensation and preserve production, King says. These protectionist unions won't hold democratic elections for officers or subject labor agreements to a vote by members, he says. "In Brazil, 36 million people have moved out of poverty in recent years because of what free labor unions have fought for," King says. "You haven't seen that in Mexico." (In contrast to IHS Automotive’s estimate of Mexican autoworker wages and benefits of $3.75 an hour, Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography says the average wage and benefit package for Mexican auto assembly workers is $6.94 an hour. The minimum wage by law in Mexico is about $5 a day.)


Apologies for the glitch-ridden broadcast of the Dan Akerson/Mary Barra town hall meeting yesterday. Here are some excerpts taken from video clips posted on the Socrates website:
o DA: “We’ve made more money in the last year than we did in the prior 10 years and yet our margins are half of what some of our competition is.”
o DA: “The biggest concern is we’re not as productive as our competitors around the globe and we’re going to have to reduce complexity.”
o DA: “We need suggestions. The best ideas come from those who are engaged on a day-to-day basis.”
o MB: “We have the highest rate of engineers that are not working directly on vehicle programs.”
o DA: “We had (around) 30 boards to pass on various decisions – that had just been here for years – that were eliminated (last week).”
o DA: “We’re in the 1st or 2nd inning…This is going to be a long march. But we now have the requisites to drive this company to great. (GM was) More positive in J.D. Power. It’s good but we need it to be great. All great organizations are defined by people.”
o DA: “We’ve got to get better and we’ve got to do it faster”
•    From the Wall Street Journal: Moody’s Investor Service Tuesday cut Toyota Motor Corp.’s senior unsecured long-term credit ratings to Aa2 from Aa3, saying it will take time for Japan’s biggest auto maker to return to “strong profitability” as it tackles the strong yen as well as the effects of the March 11 disasters. In a statement, Moody’s – which in April put Toyota under review for a possible downgrade – warned that a further ratings cut remains a possibility. Toyota’s final ratings “incorporate one notch of support from the country’s banks and government, which are themselves under review for possible downgrade,” the credit rating firm said. “Moody’s expects Toyota will gradually improve its operating profit margin to 3%-5% (in the year ending March 2013), but it may take some time to regain its strong profitability, that is more than 5% operating margin on a sustainable basis.” Standard & Poor’s Rating agency cut its rating on Toyota to AA- just days before the March 11 earthquake, citing “weak profitability.” S&P went on to cut its outlook on all of Japan’s major auto makers to negative late in April in the disaster’s aftermath.