State of the Union August 23, 2011

August 23, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com


From UAW Vice President Joe Ashton: During contract talks, everyone wants to know, “What is going on?” With this in mind we are creating a new communication network that will provide regular updates to the UAW-GM team electronically. Initially, the messages will deal with contract negotiations. We will pilot the system through the end of the year. Based on your feedback we will consider expanding the network and the type of information available. All UAW-GM members will be receiving a letter around the end of August that will have a temporary user name and password as well as instructions for how to sign up for the site. You can visit the site at www.uawgmnow.com; however you cannot sign in until you receive your temporary user name and password. You will be receiving a letter at home from the UAW-GM that contains your personalized username and password to access this site. Participation is completely voluntary and you can opt-out at anytime. (Also) For the past two years, the UAW and GM have collaborated on a Facebook page to highlight all the great news coming out of our plants and warehouses. Visit http://www.facebook.com/uawgm.org.

Reminder: The deadline to sign up for the Women’s Committee golf tournament is Tuesday, Aug. 30. It will be held Saturday, Sept. 10 at Country Lake Golf Course in Warrenton. It is a three person scramble with a 1:30 shotgun start. Entry fee is $70 per person or $210 per team and will include food and beer after the tournament. There will also be longest drive and closest to the hole prizes as well as a skin game. The top three places in three flights will be paid. All proceeds will go to the Women’s Safe House. Entry forms are available from any committee member or at the entrances. The Women’s Committee is also selling raffle tickets for a board full of lottery tickets. Price is $1 per ticket or 6 for $5 and available from any committee member.

From Automotive News: UAW President Bob King says transplant automakers that pay workers more at some U.S. plants than at others are providing an opening for UAW organizing. In an interview Friday, King said the UAW would equalize pay and benefits for transplant workers in the Deep South who earn $5 to $6 less an hour in wages and benefits than co-workers farther north. It's a key point that King said he wants transplant workers to take from the current Detroit 3 contract negotiations. King said Toyota pays workers less at its San Antonio pickup plant than it does at Georgetown, Ky., where the Camry, Avalon and Venza are built. "If you go to San Antonio, to Canton, Mississippi, to Honda in Indiana, to any of the newer facilities, they're dramatically lower than what we are and dramatically lower than their own co-workers in the same corporation," King said. "That should really be bothersome."

From the Chattanooga Times Free Press: A powerful Volkswagen labor leader says he will not actively promote UAW efforts to organize the automaker’s Chattanooga factory, according to Reuters. Bernd Osterloh, who represents labor on the German car maker's supervisory board, said while he’s keen to see organized labor representation at the Chattanooga plant, he would not actively promote UAW efforts to broaden its membership there. Osterloh said in Hamburg, Germany, that it was up to the employees themselves to decide which union should represent them.

From Autoblog: Chrysler is officially killing the 2011 Ram Dakota this week, which the UAW fears may lead to nearly 150 hourly positions getting the chop. The move has already spelled the end for 39 temporary positions at Chrysler's Warren Truck Plant. Chrysler brass say they still haven't figured out who's getting cut, but if says if there are layoffs, the workers would likely be reassigned to another operation. According to Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, the Dakota will likely be replaced with a "lifestyle vehicle." Chrysler sold a scant 13,000 Dakotas last year. By contrast, Dodge moved 177,000 of the midsize pickups in 2000.

Here’s some more Q and A from the Dan Akerson interview:
Q.One of the things you have been able to do, Mr. Akerson, as GM has gotten more profitable and begun selling more cars in the past couple of years, is to hire back some of the people who you were forced to lay off as you closed plants. Do you worry that the economic weakness now might force you to rethink some of those hires?
Akerson: Well, I don't think so. I mean I worry about it -- about everything. I think we've been very prudent in hiring people back and obviously we can't control everything, and if things were to get a lot worse, obviously we're going to have to review the bidding. But we've been cautious in our hiring. That being said, we've hired back a fair number of folks, and we've gone to double and triple shifts in some of our plants. Of course, the question might be asked, "Why aren't you opening additional plants?" We want to make sure the demand is there and sustainable, because you open another plant and it takes a couple hundred, $300 million to $500 million in tooling and that's a difficult decision to recover from. So we have been prudent, but at the same time, we have hired folks back and we've invested another $5.5 billion roughly in new plant and equipment in this country, in the United States particularly, to try to make sure that we are as efficient and quality based as we can be. I think, as you say, we've made great progress but the future is always difficult to read and we just don't want to overextend ourselves in the current economic environment.
Q.Yeah, you've said a couple of times though that you're looking toward September and the rest of the year to keep up the pace that you guys have established since January. How are you going to do that when consumers aren't spending, when they're watching the stock market, and saying, "Oh my goodness! I have to stick everything under my mattress"?
Akerson: This is a team effort, it's a team game and as I say we've got a couple new products coming out that we think could be intriguing. We believe there is a fair amount of pent up demand. The average fleet, the age of the average car on the road, truck on the road in the United States is at a 25-, 30-year high. We know people have postponed purchasing over the last couple of years, with all of the turmoil going back to the start of the Great Recession in 2008. So as I say, we keep our breakeven point as low as we possibly can. We continue to invest in new products, new development, whether it be new cars, new models, but also new propulsion, advanced propulsion and technologies. We're playing for the long run, not the next three, four months, but over the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. That's one of the things I have tried to bring to the company, is to project forward to 2025, and 2050: Where do I want this company to be out five, 10, 50 years from now, so that we can be proud that GM is a national champion, if you will, here in the United States, North America, more generally; to grow and to embellish our brand, our reputation on a global basis as well. That's not going to happen in the next four months or the next four years, it's going to happen over the next 25 to 50.