State of the Union May 15, 2012

May 15, 2012 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

•    Union meeting is 15 minutes after 2nd shift line time today and Wednesday at 7:15 am, 1 pm, 3 pm and 15 minutes after 1st shift line time. There is also a Community Services committee meeting Thursday at 4:30 pm and after 1st shift line time.

•    From UAW President Bob King: The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is taking credit for the success of the American auto industry, yet he opposed federal loans for U.S. automakers - loans that ultimately saved more than a million American jobs - in a 2009 New York Times editorial, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Romney has been vocally opposed to the auto loans for the past three years. He criticized President Obama as recently as February, 2012 in his opinion article in the Detroit News saying, "The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better." But now he's claiming credit for President Obama's intervention to save the industry.
President Obama and Democrats in Congress provided emergency bridge loans for an auto industry that was a casualty of a collapsed credit market, when no private investors or companies would provide financing. The loans - which were predicated on painful sacrifices by workers, management and other stakeholders - enabled the companies to return quickly to profitability and repay the loans years ahead of schedule.
Moreover, the industry has added more than 200,000 jobs in the last few years and 2011 was the strongest year of industry job growth since 1994. None of this would have happened if Romney had been the one making the decisions.
The successful recovery of the American auto industry is a great national success story that most Americans are very proud of. It's an example of how business, labor and the government can work together to find solutions to some of the nation's most difficult problems. Mitt Romney's values of profits-over-people are wrong for workers and wrong for all Americans who value hard work, shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

•    From the Wall Street Journal: General Motors Co.'s lofty plan to return its long-troubled European unit to profitability is taking shape as the company heads into its first major showdown with the region's powerful labor unions amid the latest restructuring. GM is preparing to make "unpopular decisions" to improve the efficiency of the region's underutilized factories, Karl Stracke, GM's Europe chief. He said GM won't increase exports as a means to bolster production and salvage factories, as the union leaders had hoped. Any factory that remains after the restructuring should be able to turn out enough vehicles to run 24 hours a day, or on three shifts, Mr. Stracke said. This would be a change from the current situation, in which underused plants are driving losses throughout the region. Getting to that point would likely require a combination of plant closings, shifting of production among factories and improved sales. GM needs the support of the region's powerful labor unions to push through its plan. For years, unions and regional governments have fought moves by the auto makers in the region to cut capacity amid increased competition and declining demand. The result is an overcrowded and largely unprofitable European auto industry—exacerbated by the region's sovereign debt crisis—in which Opel is among the weakest players. "We have to implement many individual measures to make Opel profitable again as soon as possible," said Mr. Stracke, picked by GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson last year to head Germany-based Opel and British sister brand Vauxhall. "This requires some unpopular decisions," he said. Mr. Stracke said, despite the problems, Opel can succeed if the company can slash costs, improve capacity utilization and generate savings through its new alliance with French peer PSA Peugeot-Citroën. Mr. Stracke said GM wants to use its European plants on a three-shift basis in the future to greatly reduce production costs. It is an ambitious goal. GM's plants in Europe overall are operating at 65% of capacity, among the lowest in the region, according to analysts. Around 80% is considered the minimum required for profitability. In the U.S., GM's factories operate at about 100% capacity, the company says.

•    From Automotive News: A garage fire last week in suburban Houston has been linked to a Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid, but the company quickly noted that the battery remained intact and unplugged -- and did not appear to be the cause. But if not the battery, then what? More likely, poor packaging in the engine compartment and exhaust routing generated excess heat. When combined with a fluid leak, that would be enough to create a fire, said Jon Bereisa, CEO of consultancy Auto Lectrification. Bereisa was chief engineer of General Motors' EV1 and was the systems architect for the Chevrolet Volt, so he knows his way around these sorts of complex problems. Bereisa has driven the Karma and has nosed around the car's inner workings. When he saw the cramped engine compartment of his test car, he was immediately alarmed. "That engine is shoehorned into that bay, because they had to use a larger engine, because it was too heavy a car. As a result, there's no room for exhaust routing and heat shielding to route the heat away," Bereisa said in an interview. The Karma is "using the hell out of that motor-generator," Bereisa said. As a result, a "thermal condition" would be created under the hood or along the tightly packed exhaust routing path. With that sort of heat, an oil, fuel or coolant leak can cause a risk of fire. Jeremy Gutierrez, the owner of the Fisker Karma, said he smelled rubber when the fire started. Bereisa said: "You don't smell rubber with batteries, but you will if it's something on the engine.”

Tom Brune UAW/GM Communications Coordinator Wentzville Assembly 636-327-2119