State of the Union October 12, 2011

Oct. 12, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

•    Correction: Body shop job openings are posted at column DD-31.
•    There will be a Women’s Committee and Veterans Committee meeting Thursday, Oct. 13 after first shift at the Union Hall.
•    From the UAW: Just eight days after reaching a tentative agreement with Ford Motor Co., the UAW reached a tentative agreement with Chrysler Group LLC today, completing its third agreement with domestic automakers in a month. “Less than three years ago, Chrysler was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy as our nation was thrown into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” said UAW President Bob King. “This tentative agreement builds on the momentum of job creation and our efforts to rebuild America by adding 2,100 new jobs by the end of the agreement in 2015 to communities left in turmoil in the wake of the country’s economic collapse.” King added. “This tentative agreement, coupled with the new agreements at General Motors and Ford bring more than 20,000 new jobs to communities across America,” said King. “Together with the jobs created in suppliers and other businesses supported by auto manufacturing, a total of 180,000 jobs will be added to the country’s battered economy. Through collective bargaining and working together with the domestic automakers, we have shown that cooperation and collective bargaining work,” King added. The UAW Chrysler proposed agreement also includes $4.5 billion of investment to produce new models and upgraded vehicles and components by 2015, all of which will be invested directly into retooling and upgrading plants.
•    From the Detroit News: Michigan plants were the first to turn down Ford Motor Co.'s tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers, vote results showed Tuesday. But many do not see the rejection as a harbinger of the contract's fate. Members of UAW Local 900 who work at Michigan Assembly and Wayne Integrated Stamping barely defeated the tentative four-year agreement by 56 votes of 2,582 cast. Some parts depots across the country also have voted on the deal, reached Oct. 4. Together, they bring the total to 50.1 percent of production workers favoring the agreement, but 45.2 percent of skilled workers voted yes, according to the Ford-UAW Facebook page. The two groups vote separately. There are 58 Ford locals. Voting must be done by Tuesday. At Ford, "We remain optimistic that the tentative agreement will be approved," said spokeswoman Marcey Evans. UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, in a weekend interview, said "there is no doubt in my mind this contract is going to pass."
GM CEO Dan Akerson gave his first on-the-record discussion as CEO with a newspaper's editorial board (the Detroit Free Press). Here are his comments on the new UAW contract and future labor costs:
"I tried to establish a relationship with (UAW President) Bob King and (Vice President) Joe Ashton. To put it in nautical terms, if you're at sea, there are very defined rules of the road. And as long as everyone follows them, you'll avoid a collision. I didn't want to have that metaphoric collision. So I thought that if we met frequently, got to know each other on a personal level and expressed what our goals were, so we could identify areas of potential conflict, we could potentially avoid them.
"(Previous GM CEO) Ed Whitacre told me he was the only CEO who ever visited Solidarity House, and that was for 15 or 20 minutes. I spent a lot more time down there this year. I thought as a sign of a new era in industrial relations, you have to go down and show that you're willing to extend the hand. ....What's important, that they recognized and that management recognized, is that we actually need one another. ... We had to align our goals and objectives. ...
"I was reviewed in the Washington Post as, 'This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.' I said that we had to have our compensation aligned with business objectives. And my statement was, 'If we do well as a company, then the union should share in our prosperity.' They're members of the team. They may be represented, but they're members of the GM family. And we got that.
"I didn't want to see any structural increases, that if things turn down in this turbulent world, that they should be getting raises when management's not getting anything. I wanted a quality component to their compensation because it's a component of management's compensation. ... And I thought that was enlightened on Bob King's and Joe Ashton's perspective to accept that. ...
"I also wanted to facilitate their agenda to bring jobs to America. We want the United States to do well, too. ... It's not a commitment, hard and firm. If there were a deep recession, then we have to -- but clearly, we look at our production plans around the world and the cadence of new product introductions, and we thought it made sense.
"I thought it came out equitable on both sides. I thought it represents a new industrial era, that in fact this company has to get all of its human resources aligned."
On future labor costs
Increasing the number of tier-two workers "is important in relative terms. We've got to feather this in. It can't be a flash cut -- that wouldn't be fair to our employees. But over time, we've got to feather this in and have a comparable cost of labor with transplants in the U.S., or else we're not going to be competitive.
"There has to be some trust on both sides of the table. We're not trying to hurt anybody. We're trying to stay strong. So over time, as part of the labor contract, we would buy out some of our more senior employees and some of the skilled trades. We don't need to get there tomorrow. ...
"We'll get there, but we don't need to be punishing. We need to recognize that our employees have a right to a certain set of expectations, and we will be competitive over time."