Feb. 9, 2012 online at www.uawlocal2250.com
From Chairman Mike Bullock: Vacation application instructions have been finalized and are available. If you do not have a copy, ask your group leader. Read them carefully. The rules regarding Thursdays/Fridays are the same as last year and are spelled out in the instructions. One positive agreement is that Entry Level members who have 100 hours or less will not be forced to use their VR time for mandatory vacation coverage. As we did a couple of years ago, the negotiated day off for Veterans Day observance will move from Nov. 16 to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This is no disrespect intended to our Veterans (and Veterans Day is Nov. 11 every year) but by moving the day off (as many other plants did), 2nd shift members will have time to travel or prepare for family gatherings on Thanksgiving.
Good News: The jackets are finally in! We are in the process of taking inventory to confirm the order. The plan is to begin distribution on Monday, Feb. 13. Sign-up sheets for each team will be given to the team leaders, who will have team members sign by their name. The team leaders will then take the sheets to the office behind the eyeglass store at column A-40 to pick up their team’s jackets. No jacket will be handed out without a signature. If you are absent the day your team’s jackets are picked up you can come and pick your jacket up. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
The Education Committee is selling white T-shirts this week for $20 each. This year is the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the UAW and next Monday, Feb. 13 will be “White Shirt Day” to commemorate the anniversary. The committee is still selling raffle tickets to raise funds for educational literature for Union members. The prize is a large his/hers gift basket and tickets are $5 each or 3 for $10. Drawing will be held Feb. 13th.
From Reuters: The head of the United Auto Workers, Bob King, will join the supervisory board of General Motors Co's struggling unit, Opel, in March, marking the fourth new appointment to come out of Detroit recently, a German newspaper reported late on Monday. Handelsblatt wrote that King would be the first U.S. union representative elected to a German carmaker's board in five years after the UAW gave up its seat on Daimler AG's board following the sale of Chrysler. In November and in January, GM appointed three U.S.-based top executives to Opel's board and named Vice-Chairman Steve Girsky as head of the board in an attempt to stanch losses at the subsidiary.
From Automotive News: Chrysler Group hourly and salaried workers will receive profit-sharing and performance bonuses on Friday, just nine days after the automaker reported a $183 million profit for 2011. The company’s 23,000 hourly workers will receive an average of $1,500 each, while salaried bonuses will vary. The payment to hourly workers is based on a formula negotiated last fall with the UAW and is double the amount paid to employees last year.
From Wards Auto: The styling of General Motors’ next-generation large pickups and SUVs “won’t be wildly different” from those currently in showrooms, says the auto maker’s design chief Ed Welburn. According to WardsAuto data, large pickups, SUVs and luxury SUVs accounted for 1.8 million U.S. sales and 14.1% of the 2011 market, down from 2.8 million deliveries and a commanding 17.6% share in 2007. GM maintains the lion’s share of sales in those segments. Last year, the auto maker delivered 799,318 large pickups and SUVs for a market-leading 44.3% share. Trucks such as the Chevy Silverado pickup and Tahoe SUV will continue to play a big role in GM’s business, evidenced by the $1.13 billion the auto maker will invest over the next several months to accommodate assembly of its next-generation large pickups and SUVs at plants in Arlington, TX; Flint, MI; and Fort Wayne, IN. On top of that, GM will make a $1.1 billion powertrain manufacturing investment to improve the fuel efficiency of its trucks with an advanced 8-speed transmission and a new small-block V-8 engine featuring upgrades such as gasoline direct injection and lightweight aluminum. The auto maker will pump another $260 million into its casting and component-making sites for the new V-8, which also will see duty in some GM sports cars. GM plans to stagger downtime throughout this year in preparation for the 2013 arrival of its new pickups and SUVs, which likely will bow as ’14 models. Welburn is mum on most details about the new light trucks, saying only that GM will stick with a proven mix of tough-looking, but not overly aggressive exteriors, and comfortable interiors. “Clean design ages far more gracefully than some very expressive design,” Welburn notes, attributing that strategy to the longevity of the current models, which have been on the market since 2007. Welburn warns against drawing a connection to next-generation models from the handful of concept trucks the auto maker has shown in recent years, such as 2003’s Chevy Cheyenne or last year’s accessory-laden GMC Sierra All-Terrain HD. “You can expect something much better than any of those concepts,” Welburn says of the half-ton trucks. “They should not be allowed to be in the same photograph with what we have coming.” Welburn admits his group faces increased responsibility for helping GM meet strict new fuel-economy and emissions regulations in markets around the world. Designing a more aerodynamic car draws the highest priority, he says, but mass-reduction ranks a close second. “I love big wheels on a car,” he says. “Go up another size and they look even better. “But if you can shrink-wrap the vehicle, make it a little smaller, we can go down a wheel size and get some mass out of the vehicle,” Welburn adds. “Mass reduction and aero, neither one is easy, but they are both fun challenges.”
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