State of the Union October 31, 2011

Nov.1, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com


•    There is an announcement scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 3 at 11:05 am. It will be staged in the center of the plant at P-39 and guest speakers will include UAW Vice President Joe Ashton and GM Vice President of Labor Relations Cathy Clegg. Everyone is encouraged to attend this positive announcement.
•    General Motors Co. today reported total sales of 186,895 vehicles in October, up 2 percent compared with October 2010. Retail deliveries were up 3 percent compared with the same month a year ago and accounted for 77 percent of GM sales. Deliveries to fleet customers were essentially flat. “Chevrolet led the way for GM in October driven by the continued success of the Cruze and Equinox,” said Don Johnson, vice president, U.S. Sales Operations. “Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC have all performed well this year, which has set the stage for our transition to a higher mix of 2012 model-year vehicles. Combined with the launches of several new fuel-efficient cars, including the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick LaCrosse eAssist, we are very well positioned going forward.” In October, GM’s year-over-year passenger car sales increased 4 percent, crossover sales decreased 1 percent and sales of trucks, which include full-size pickups, vans and SUVs, increased 2 percent. For the month, 2012 models accounted for 80 percent of passenger car sales and about half of truck and crossover sales. Highlights for October include double-digit sales increases for the Chevrolet Equinox, Camaro and Express, the Cadillac SRX, the Buick Regal and the GMC Terrain, as well as the continued success of the Chevrolet Cruze. In addition, Chevrolet dealers delivered more than 1,100 Volts for the vehicle’s best month to date, and GM remains on track to expand Volt availability to 2,600 dealers in all 50 states by the end of the year. The new 40-mpg Chevrolet Sonic also is building momentum, with sales of more than 3,800 units in its second month of launch. (Van sales came in at 7331, up 16.6% over October 2010)
•    Oasis Car Wash and Detail of Wentzville is offering a GM employee discount. Just show your badge and receive $3 off of any car wash or $8 off of any express detail package. The car wash is located at 25 Jiffy Street near Dierbergs off of Wentzville Parkway. Phone number is 636-327-0420

Here is part one of a Bob King interview with Jeffrey Brown of National Public Radio:

JEFFREY BROWN: So when you came to the threshold issue in these negotiations, the thing you had to have to reach an agreement, is holding on to jobs more important now than negotiating higher wages?
BOB KING: Absolutely. No worker is secure unless you have got new product and new investments coming into their facilities. That was our highest priority and the priority that we made the most gains and the most success.
JEFFREY BROWN: And after so many members -- losing so many members in the last decades and after what happened a couple years ago, do you go into negotiations like this inevitably from a position of weakness? Or how do you feel going in?
BOB KING: No, I think that we -- you know, I think that we still have considerable leverage and power in the industry. I think that our view has changed, that we understand the people who have the most at stake in the long-term success of these companies is our membership. CEOs change, shareholders change, management changes, but our members are there. And their long-term security, their pensions, their health care, their economic security is tied into long-term success of the company. So we're focused on making sure that there's new product, new investment, good technology, highest possibility quality for the consumers. So our role has kind of shifted as we have gotten into more of a global economy and global competition.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, with this two-tiered wage system, with most of the new jobs coming in at lower wages, is that now the new normal for union workers, and is that dividing your members, two classes of workers, essentially?
BOB KING: Well, I'm really proud of our membership. The traditional members put the highest priority on raising the wages and benefits of the newer members. That's in the greatest spirit of solidarity. Traditional members got no base rate increase. The new members got $3.50 an hour. It's long been a value of the UAW that people doing the same job should make the same rate of pay. We had to deviate from that to save the companies. And this is the first contract where the companies are beginning to be healthy again. None of them are totally out of the woods, but they were in good enough economic shape to be able to do $3.50 base rate increases for the entry level. So we're really happy with that. We'd like to have seen more, but we thought that was financially viable for the companies, kept us competitive. And then, as you know, in the lump sums and the profit sharing, there are not two tiers. Everybody's treated the same. And so in actual annual income, we made tremendous improvements for the entry level.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, I said you had to work hard to get members to ratify. In fact, you faced a fair amount of dissent along the way. You had lower ratification rates than historically. You had some important plants even reject the contract. So what do you say to workers who now say to you -- they say, look, we gave up a whole lot a few years ago, we don't seem to have gotten much back, and they're also seeing that the CEOs at the companies are still making a lot of money and complaining about it?
BOB KING: Well, CEO pay is going to be an issue. It has been an issue for the last 50 years in the U.S. Our country's out of whack with most places in the world. I think we have got to give shareholders and employees as shareholders more of a voice in CEO pay. That's a legislative issue, as well as a contractual issue. In no contract do you get everything that you want. Did we make substantial progress in this contract? We think absolutely we did, especially in product investment. We were very -- we were not concerned just about ourselves and our membership. We were concerned about our communities and getting jobs in America. We were very appreciative of the American taxpayer and President Obama for believing in the American auto industry, believing in American workers. And so we wanted to make sure that the number one priority in this was to create jobs in America. So there will be a lot of people in a lot of communities around America that are hired into middle-class jobs because of what we did in this contract.