Feb. 14, 2012 online at www.uawlocal2250.com
Reminder: Union meeting is tonight, 15 minutes after longest 2ndshift line time, and tomorrow at 7:30 am, 1:30 pm, 3 pm and 15 minutes after longest first shift line time.
In a couple of weeks you will receiving an information and sign up packet for life insurance. During the enrollment period – March 5 through March 16 – you will be able to either enroll or increase your coverage one level without proof of good health. You will be able to enroll through the mail or online at gmbenefits.com. Read your packets carefully for all the necessary instructions you need to take advantage of this offer. Also, there will be a 4 month payment holiday for enrollees from June through September.
The Education Committee would like to thank everyone for their support and congratulate all the winners in the drawing. Consolation prizes will be awarded tomorrow at lunch time during both shifts in the cafeteria. A list of winners (there are many) will be posted in the cafeteria as well. To claim your prize, please bring your ID or ticket stub.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, having fallen behind rival Rick Santorum in Michigan polling, has authored a sequel to his 2008 NY Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. No, he is not apologizing for wanting to throw us under the bus. Rather, it is a defensive piece of revisionist history claiming he was right all along. Says Mitt: “Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry (actually GW Bush stepped in first). The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama's management of the American economy are evident in what he did.” Huh? “Before the companies were allowed to enter and exit bankruptcy, the U.S. government swept in with an $85 billion sweetheart deal disguised as a rescue plan. By the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style. Thus, the outcome of the managed bankruptcy proceedings was dictated by the terms of the bailout. Chrysler's "secured creditors," who in the normal course of affairs should have been first in line for compensation, were given short shrift, while at the same time, the UAWs' union-boss-controlled trust fund received a 55 percent stake in the firm.”
Let’s let veteran auto industry journalist Justin Hyde, who covered the crisis start to finish for the Detroit Free Press, tackle this claim: “Chrysler's secured creditors were a group of Wall Street banks — including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs — and investment firms, some of whom had bought the company's secured bonds in the months ahead of bankruptcy hoping to cash in. They could have rejected the government's offer of 28 cents on the dollar in cash for their $6.7 billion in bonds and paid to liquidate Chrysler themselves, but decided that not only would they come out even further behind, they'd also be blamed for destroying an American automaker. (GM's secured creditors − also mostly Wall Street banks — were paid in full, and endorsed the Obama bankruptcy plan.) As for the "union-boss-controlled trust fund," that's what's known as a VEBA trust that now pays the health care of 426,409 retirees from GM, Ford and Chrysler — and in return, owns all future health-care obligations from the companies for those retirees. With this, Romney appears to argue that before hundreds of thousands of UAW retirees got health care, Wall Street should have been made whole.” If you wish to read the entire diatribe, you can go to the Detroit News website.
From the Detroit News: United Auto Workers President Bob King used the anniversary of the Flint sit-down strike on Friday to call for "direct action" — including nonviolent civil disobedience — to take back America from the "right-wing Republicans" and "one-percenters" he says have hijacked this democracy. Seventy-five years after workers took over General Motors' factories and forced the company to sign its first national contract with the union, King said the same sort of militancy is needed to stop what he called a rollback of workers' rights and civil rights. "It will take direct action. It will take us being willing to face arrest. It will take us being willing to be part of marches and demonstrations," King told a crowd of some 500 cheering union members gathered at the UAW Local 651 to mark the anniversary of the end of the 1937 strike. He said corporations such as GE are making billions and paying little or no taxes while middle-class Americans are losing their homes. "It's immoral!" King shouted. "We should be so outraged at the injustice in America!” King said the UAW is joining with other unions, including the Service Employees International Union, members of Occupy Wall Street and others to create a new "movement for social justice" that will employ the tactics of the civil rights movement to fight against what he called "corporate greed" and attacks on labor. "In April, we're going to be part of a broad coalition that's going to be training our membership and anybody who cares about justice in this society in nonviolent direct action," King said. Their first mission, he said, will be to demonstrate at the GE shareholders meeting in Detroit on April 25. King also said the UAW must do everything in its power to re-elect President Barack Obama and oust Republicans. "They are attacking democracy in America and they are attacking us in the labor movement," he warned. "But electing President Obama, electing (U.S. Sen.) Debbie Stabenow, electing all these other Democrats is nowhere near enough."
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