Wednesday, February 18, 2015

State of the Union February 18, 2015

February 18, 2015 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

• Ticket sales for the Colorado coat will run through Friday, Feb. 20. Drawing will be Saturday, Feb. 21 at 1st shift lunch time in the cafeteria. Tickets are $5 apiece or 3 for $10 and are available from Women’s Committee members.

• Shift schedules for next week are: 1st shift – 6:30 am to 5 pm; 2nd shift – 2:30 pm to 1 am; 3rd shift – 10:30 pm to 9 am.

• From the Chattanooga Times Free Press: A labor group competing with the United Auto Workers for members at Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant has qualified for limited organizing rights at the factory. The American Council of Employees was certified by VW as having membership of at least 15 percent of hourly plant workers, Maury Nicely, an attorney for the group, said on Monday. Also, ACE was certified as having at least 15 percent of salaried employees, he said. Late last year, the UAW went through the same procedure, and auditors determined that the UAW had gathered signatures from at least 45 percent of the plant's blue-collar workers.
That percentage allowed the union to have regular meetings with Volkswagen officials. ACE will now have similar rights, though not as extensive. ACE will be able to convene monthly with human resources officials, hold regular on-site ACE meetings and post announcements at the factory. Both the UAW and ACE qualified under a labor policy that VW put into place last fall. Mike Cantrell, UAW Local 42 president in Chattanooga, said the group represents more than 50 percent of the blue-collar workforce. Cantrell said in a statement that the UAW, which already has met with VW management, is focused on representing its members and solidifying its partnership with the Volkswagen Global Group Works Council. He said the works council "has said clearly that it wants the Chattanooga plant to be a 'UAW-represented facility.'" Cantrell said he believes Volkswagen "will honor its commitment to recognize UAW Local 42, and we will continue working toward the process of collective bargaining with the company."

• The U.S. Postal Service is seeking bids on 180,000 delivery trucks as they look to modernize their fleet. They have set price parameters of between $25,000 and $35,000, with the total value of the contract somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 billion. The current trucks were built by aerospace company Grumman Corp., before Grumman was gobbled up by defense giant Northrop. Grumman put a rustproof aluminum frame on a General Motors chassis (the old Colorado) and powered it with a four-cylinder engine from the Chevrolet compact pickup. According to a 2014 report by the inspector general of the Postal Service, the Long Life Vehicles still in service cost an average of $3,188 to maintain in fiscal 2013, with 9 percent needing more than $6,000 in upkeep.

Given the history of the current delivery truck, GM – and Wentzville in particular – would be in a position to compete for this huge fleet order. GM Fleet and Commercial spokesman Bob Wheeler released this statement: “GM listens to the needs across a wide range of customers. The U.S Postal Service is an important customer and we are early in the process of exploring potential solutions that would work for their needs.”

• From Automotive News: General Motors sold 8,147 Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize pickups last month. Is that good or bad? It depends whom you ask. Jalopnik leans toward bad, I guess, with this headline from Tuesday: "Is The 2015 Chevy Colorado In Danger Of Becoming A Failed Experiment?" The writer, who counts himself a Colorado fan, laments that in January, just its fifth month on the market, the Colorado didn't overtake the segment’s top dog, the Toyota Tacoma, in monthly sales. (It was 11,409 to 5,942.) Meanwhile, a Fox News report called the Colorado a "hot seller." And then there's the press release put out this week by GM itself, trumpeting brisk sales in the Los Angeles area, ground zero for smaller pickups and a Tacoma stronghold. It's understandable that people want to be the first to declare GM's midsize pickup gambit hit or a miss. The stakes are high. Since GM hasn't disclosed a sales estimate, I thought I'd offer one as a bogey for a successful launch: 120,000 in combined Colorado and Canyon sales this year. That would breeze past the 82,000 average estimate provided to Automotive News by three research firms. IHS Automotive, AutoPacific Inc. and LMC Automotive gave those forecasts around the time of the September launch, before the Colorado was named Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year, and before the bottom fell out of gasoline prices.
If my back-of-the-envelope target is reasonable, then January sales of the two trucks bode well. A 12-month run rate alone puts the total near 100,000, and January is a slow month. Plus, the trucks are still in launch mode. Many dealers say they can hardly get any. But even clearing that bar, or falling short of it, won't tell the whole story. You'll need to look at Silverado and Sierra sales for signs of cannibalization. And the pickups need to do well in California, where Chevy desperately needs better brand consideration. Conquest and average-price data must be crunched. But for now, 120,000 sales is as good a measuring stick as any for what will be one of the most closely watched story lines in the industry this year.

• From the Detroit News: Drivers of Chevy Cobalts and Saturn Ions met with skepticism when they tried to restart a $10 billion lawsuit accusing General Motors Co. of exposing them to falling car prices. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber has the sole power to decide whether they can demand money for their old, often second-hand, cars. The judge cast doubt on their hopes of demanding billions of dollars in damages from the automaker when he asked why they should be allowed to sue the company for the lost value of their vehicles when many accident victims can’t sue for death or injury.

• From the Associated Press: The death toll linked to crashes involving General Motors cars with defective ignition switches has climbed to 56. The new total, which is four more than last week, was posted Monday on an Internet site by compensation expert Kenneth Feinberg. Feinberg and his aides are combing through claims filed before a Jan. 31 deadline to determine which are eligible for compensation. Each eligible death claim is worth at least $1 million under guidelines established by Feinberg, who was hired by GM to handle claims and make payments. As of Friday, his office had received 478 death claims and 3,834 injury claims. Of the injury claims, 87 have been determined eligible for compensation, up from 79 a week earlier.

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

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