Don’t Let Them Destroy Our Union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.midatlanticlabor.com/appiesnet/wordpress/?p=666

by Frank Hammer

http://www.centerforlaborrenewal.org/?P=A&Category_ID=1&Article=230

As the fate of the Detroit auto industry is being debated, the arguments and positions are becoming crystal clear. There is now a chorus of right wing ideologues who are pushing to let GM go into bankruptcy. No argument here about “too big to fail.” No regard for consequences like we heard when the Congress approved the $700 billion stash for the banking and financial industries. The Detroit Three are accused of mismanagement at a crescendo much louder than the financial giants we had to save. Why the double standard?

The reluctance to bail out GM and the other Detroit automakers has everything to do with the UAW, as if the impending collapse is the fault of the workers at the bottom of the heap. The “free market” types want to use the current auto industry crisis to force a “restructuring” of the companies’ “relationships” – principally with the UAW. We hear a chorus about “bloated UAW contracts”, contract terms that “GM can’t live with,” or references to “overpaid” autoworkers, etc. Never mind that just one year ago UAW autoworkers agreed to huge concessions in what President Ron Gettelfinger describes as a “transformative agreement” (for which, in the Detroit media, he was heralded “man of the year.”). That agreement, according to Gettelfinger, was designed to make the UAW labor force cheaper than their non-union brethren at Honda, Toyota, etc. This from a once proud union which set the industry standard.

Before the 2007 agreements were negotiated, the average total UAW labor cost per vehicle was $2,400, or a little over 8% of the price of a vehicle. UAW workers then were among the most productive in the world, producing value added worth $206 per worker per hour. This is far more than he or she was earning in wages, even when benefits, statutory contributions and other costs are included. The margin of difference in labor costs with non-union Toyota before the transformative agreement was already then just $250-$300!

Autoworker Healthcare

The free marketers also complain about the “lavish” costs of autoworker healthcare, obscuring the fact that the UAW accepted all the risk for their retirees’ health care when it agreed - to a “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association,” or VEBA at the Big Three’s behest. To the forces which have conspired for many years to establish a “union-free” domestic auto industry, none of these concessions matter.

FULL story at link.