AFL-CIO Bargaining Digest Weekly 9-9-06

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/09/bargaining-digest-weekly-24/

Full story at link.

Bargaining Digest Weekly

The California Nurses Association won a pay raise for nurses at Kaiser Permanente. The nurses also won language to protect them from a bad Kentucky River decision by the National Labor Relations Board.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said the Chrysler Group is financially strong enough that cuts in workers’ health care coverage are not needed. Daimler Chrysler named UAW President Ron Gettelfinger to its supervisory board. Gettelfinger also published a Labor Day op-ed in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere about a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell’s “The Risk Pool” describes the pivotal 1950 auto negotiation and the nation’s employer-based health care system. Both the op-ed and New Yorker article highlight the tremendous competitive disadvantage U.S. companies face because our nation has historically placed the burden of health care costs on individual employers, rather than spreading these costs more broadly across all of society.

Charting its “Way Forward” Bill Ford relinquished day-to-day control of Ford Motor Co. to Alan Mulally, current CEO of Boeing. Mulally is given much of the credit for Boeing’s market and financial turnaround.

In other auto news, the UAW at Mitsubishi Motors ratified a new agreement, and the USW International Union ended their strike at Steel of West Virginia after approving a new contract.

AK Steel workers, now affiliated with the Machinists (IAM), spent Labor Day still locked out after seven months.

Members of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada at the Boston Symphony will receive a 13.6 percent pay boost during their new three-year contract.

The bankruptcy court judge ruled that Delta can end its pilot pension plans.

Another bankruptcy judge ruled the excessive executive pay plan at Dana is illegal under the new bankruptcy law.

Saying it will cost too much, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he will veto the universal coverage health care bill.