October 16, 2012 online at www.uawlocal2250.com
• Union Meeting is 15 minutes after today’s 2nd shift, and tomorrow at 7:15 am, 1 pm and 15 minutes after the longest 1st shift line time.
• There will be a Community Services Committee meeting Thursday, Oct. 18 between shifts in the cafeteria. All are welcome to attend.
• From Automotive News: General Motors will begin production of the Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrid at an assembly plant here by late 2013, GM North America President Mark Reuss said today. GM will invest $35 million in its Detroit-Hamtramck plant to prepare for production of the 2014 ELR coupe, Reuss said during a keynote address at the SAE Convergence Conference here. The car will be unveiled in January at the Detroit auto show. GM assembles the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid at the plant. The ELR's powertrain will be similar to that of the Volt, which can travel about 38 miles on electric power from a T-shaped lithium ion battery before a small gasoline generator kicks on to power the car's electric motor. GM has invested more than $530 million in its Detroit-Hamtramck plant since December 2009. More than 1,500 workers there assemble the Chevrolet Malibu and the U.S., European and Australian versions of the Volt.
• From Bloomberg: Toyota Motor Corp. first learned in 2008 about a defect in power-window switches that this week prompted it to recall 7.43 million vehicles worldwide for fire hazards, according to documents filed with U.S. regulators. Toyota, based in Toyota City, Japan, received a report in September 2008 from the U.S. about “an unusual smell” from the power-window master switch and “thermal damage” to the switch, the company said in a report posted yesterday on the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website. The automaker sent the part to the supplier to investigate and no “root cause” was found. No other problems with the switch were reported until May 2010, when the company said it began sporadically receiving information about an abnormal smell or smoke coming from driver’s side doors, according to the report. “There was really no trend early on and it took considerable time to diagnose what seemed to be an isolated problem and how it was occurring,” John Hanson, a U.S.-based spokesman for Toyota, said in an e-mail. The U.S. auto-safety regulator opened an investigation into about 830,000 Camry cars and RAV4 crossover sport-utility vehicles in February after receiving six reports of fires that started in the window switch. It’s received reports of nine injuries and 161 fires, Lynda Tran, a NHTSA spokeswoman, said. (Toyota had originally offered to address the issue through a “service bulletin” where the defective switch is only replaced if an owner complains. NHTSA rejected that approach and insisted on a recall)
• From the New York Times: The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs. Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance. But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents. That and other China-related holdings by Bain funds in which Mr. Romney has invested are a reminder of how he inhabits two worlds that at times have come into conflict during his campaign for the White House. As a candidate, Mr. Romney uses China as a punching bag. He accuses Beijing of unfairly subsidizing Chinese exports, artificially holding down the value of its currency to keep exports cheap, stealing American technology and hacking into corporate and government computers. “How is it China’s been so successful in taking away our jobs?” he asked recently. “Well, let me tell you how: by cheating.” But his private equity dealings, both while he headed Bain and since, complicate that message.
Mr. Romney’s campaign insists he has no control over his investments since they are held in a blind trust. That said, a confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: “Strong fundamentals” like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy. “Accordingly, Bain Capital expects to see an increasing array of high-growth companies available for investment,” the prospectus says. Among the companies in which the Bain funds have invested is a global auto parts maker that is in the process of closing a factory in Illinois and moving most of the equipment and jobs to Jiangsu Province, where the Chinese government has built it a new plant; a Chinese electronics retailer accused by Microsoft of selling computers with pirated software; and a Hong Kong-based Chinese appliance maker that was sued for copying another company’s design for a deep-fat fryer.
Mr. Romney has millions invested in a series of Bain funds that created and have a controlling stake in Sensata Technologies, a manufacturer of sensors and controls for vehicles, aircraft and electric motors that employs 4,000 workers in China. Since Bain took over the operation in 2006, its investment has quadrupled in value. Bain continues to own $2.6 billion worth of Sensata’s shares. Two years ago, Sensata bought an operation that made automobile sensors in Freeport, Ill. At the first meeting with the plant’s 170 workers, Sensata managers announced that by the end of 2012 all the equipment and jobs would be relocated, mostly to Jiangsu Province. Workers have staged demonstrations, pleading for Mr. Romney to intervene on their behalf. Chinese engineers, flown to Freeport for training on the equipment, described their salaries as a pittance compared with Freeport wages. Tom Gaulrapp, who has operated machines at the factory for 33 years, said he fears he will go bankrupt after he loses his job on Nov. 5. “This goes to show the unbelievable hypocrisy of this man,” he said of Mr. Romney. “He talks about how we need to get tough on China and stop China from taking our jobs, and then he is making money off shipping our jobs there.” Note: Sensata pays their Chinese workers $.99 to $1.35 an hour, with the typical workweek being 7-12 hour days. Honeywell, who sold the business to Sensata, reported that in 2010, the Automation and Control Solutions sector (including the Freeport plant) had a profit of $1.77 billion.
Tom Brune
UAW/GM Communications Coordinator
Wentzville Assembly
636-327-2119
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