Feb. 23, 2012 online at www.uawlocal2250.com
From Chairman Mike Bullock: Here is More information from the Leadership Meeting in Detroit on February 16: UAW Vice President Joe Ashton's first announcement was the $7000 profit sharing, He announced it is the largest profit sharing check ever for General Motors and the first time it has ever been larger than Ford."These results also prove that President Obama made the right decision to stand with American workers and the domestic auto industry at a time when it was a difficult and unpopular decision. Without the President's bold action, the American auto industry would have collapsed" VP Ashton said. He also commented on the need for GM to add money to the pension fund. The pension fund is currently underfunded by $10 billion. On pensions, VP Ashton said that in 2011 only 16% of Americans have a defined pension as compared to 10 years ago the number was 30%. Mike Grimes, Administrative Assistant to VP Ashton, announced the requisition of 1277 employees for 15 GM plants in the US. These openings will be filled by Area Hire and then Extended Area Hire throughout the country. Backfills for those openings will come from New Hires, where needed. Under the 2011 National Agreement all Guide and Delphi employees will be given two offers to transfer to a GM location, 1 Nationally and 1 regionally. According to AA Grimes all Nationwide offers have been made and only regional offers remain. There are no Local Delphi or Guide plants within our region, so we don't expect any more transfers from Delphi or Guide in the future. Legal Services informed the leadership that as of December 31, 2013, it will be discontinued. All UAW represented employees should use this benefit before that happens, if for nothing else but to have your will drawn up. Benefits Administrator Dean Manship reminded everyone that open enrollment for Optional Life Insurance will be this Spring. Anyone who has Optional Life can move up one level without a health survey. Administrator Manship says that one of the most difficult things his department has to deal with is the updating of beneficiaries, or lack of. He wants to remind everyone to confirm who their life insurance beneficiary is. This can be done by going online at www.gmbenefits.com. Also, a lot of employees are using VR time, when there are open VP days on the calendar. If you know you need a day off in advance use the time off procedure before burning a VR day.
From the Education Committee: The winner of the gift basket is Keith Brooks, security. Also, we still have UAW anniversary shirts for sale in limited sizes. You can contact Donell Jordan in body shop, 1st shift, at column BB-13 if you are interested.
If you completed your 90 days of employment from Jan. 1 – March 5, 2012, there is a free celebration planned for you on March 4 at Cuetopia Sports Bar & Grill. It is located at 11824 West Florissant in St. Louis (314-830-1200). The party will begin at 7:30 pm and feature free entertainment. Please call Rowena at 314-972-0432 or go to column AA-18, body shop 2nd shift, to make reservations. All UAW employees are welcome. Wear your UAW jackets.
From Huffington Post: General Motors shot back at Newt Gingrich Tuesday, openly mocking his stump speech allegation that the Chevy Volt is an "Obama car" because "you can't put a gun rack in a Volt." "Actually, you can," wrote GM's head of communications, Selim Bingol, on the company's blog. "But the real question is, 'Why would you?'" Gingrich made a stir last week during a speech in Georgia when he observed that the Volt isn't a great car for a gun rack. "We believe in the right to bear arms and we like to bear the arms in our trucks," he said, according to The Detroit News. "That’s like saying, 'You can’t put training wheels on a Harley,'" Bingol said. "There are better places for gun racks and training wheels -- pickup trucks and little Schwinns, respectively. Seriously, when is the last time you saw a gun rack in ANY sedan?"
This month’s Fortune magazine cover has “Toyota” emblazoned in red and states the automaker is “Back on track”. The piece is written by Alex Taylor (don’t call me junior) III, smug automotive pontificator and erstwhile UAW and GM basher. One of the positives he points out in making his case is Toyota’s joint electric vehicle venture with Tesla. That, however, may turn out to be a negative thing. Word is out that Tesla’s electric Roadsters, of which approximately 2200 have been sold, have a tendency to “brick” (Tesla’s word), which is to say that if the battery gets fully depleted, it is basically a brick, and therefore must be replaced at a cost of around $40,000 to the owner, because the “bumper to bumper” warranty does not cover any damage related to "Failure to maintain the Battery at a proper charge level at all times" as a Santa Barbara owner found out the hard way (insurance won’t cover it either). So far there have been 5 instances of such an occurance, and it’s easier to do than you might think. According to Jalopnik, a Tesla Roadster that is simply parked without being plugged in will eventually become a "brick". The parasitic load from the car's always-on subsystems continually drains the battery and if the battery's charge is ever totally depleted, it is essentially destroyed. Complete discharge can happen even when the car is plugged in if it isn't receiving sufficient current to charge, which can be caused by something as simple as using an extension cord. After battery death, the car is completely inoperable. At least in the case of the Tesla Roadster, it's not even possible to enable tow mode, meaning the wheels will not turn and the vehicle cannot be pushed nor transported to a repair facility by traditional means. The amount of time it takes an unplugged Tesla to die varies. Tesla's Roadster Owners Manual states that the battery should take approximately 11 weeks of inactivity to completely discharge. However, that is from a full 100% charge. If the car has been driven first, say to be parked at an airport for a long trip, that time can be substantially reduced. If the car is driven to nearly its maximum range and then left unplugged, it could potentially "brick" in about one week. Many other scenarios are possible: for example, the car becomes unplugged by accident, or is unwittingly plugged into an extension cord that is defective or too long. The Santa Barbara owner took his Roadster out for a drive and then parked it in a temporary garage while his home was being renovated. Lacking a built-in Tesla charger or a convenient power outlet, he left the car unplugged. Six weeks later his car was dead. It took four men two hours to drag the 2,700-pound Roadster onto a flatbed truck so that it could be shipped to Tesla's Los Angeles area service center, all at the owner's expense. As a second Roadster owner discovered, the Tesla battery system can completely discharge even when the vehicle is plugged in. This owner's car was plugged into a 100-foot long extension cord for an extended period. The length of this extension cord evidently reduced the electric current to a level insufficient to charge the Tesla, resulting in another "bricked" Roadster. So what is Tesla bringing to the Toyota joint venture party? From the Toyota press release: “As previously announced, Toyota will pay Tesla approximately $100 million to supply the electric powertrain, which includes the battery, motor, gear box and power electronics for the RAV4 EV. Tesla will build the electric powertrains at its production facility in Palo Alto, California and then ship them to TMMC for final assembly into the vehicle.”
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