UAW sees his future on the line in talks

UAW President Bob King has a notorious aversion to wearing ties. But his choice of dress was especially significant when the veteran and his Union bargaining team met with their counterparts from Chrysler on Monday to begin contract talks covering 23,000 hourly workers. Both sides in what they described as a show of solidarity, Maroon jackets came out in the corresponding.

There is no doubt that the kick off contract talks this week between the United Auto Workers Union and big three automakers in Detroit are different from past years. Both parties recognize that domestic producers are still struggling for themselves right after the worst industry downturn since the great depression. But the future of the UAW is on the line too.

King and his team will be cycling from Chrysler for General Motors to Ford this week for the photo ops taken and ceremonial grin. Behind the scenes, Union and management teams have quietly met for months to work on the key issues that they hope to solve before the expiry of the contract in mid-September.

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"We feel we have a huge responsibility collectively to the American public," said King, referring to the billions of taxpayer dollars that were spent bailing out GM and Chrysler.

Now more than ever, work and management operate as if they have a common goal, according to many involved in the talks.

Bankruptcies 2009 General Motors and Chrysler drove home the fact that the Detroit Big three automakers could vanish if fail to address the fundamental issues that drove the producers of deep into debt and eroded steadily over the decades, their sales and market share.

"We must be competitive," said Mark Fields, Ford President of the Americas. The creator of the U.S. was the only one of the big three to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection two years ago, but unlike its crosstown rivals, it took on significant debt that is desperate to draw. So Ford is expected to seek further concessions on top of what she got from 2007, when he speaks the last round of contract is required.

Ford estimates that approximately $ 58 is spending an hour on wages and benefits for each worker unionized. Chrysler says the figure is closer to $ 52. This is all about equal to what Chrysler officials believe its rivals are paying import to many so-called "transplant" assembly lines that have sprung up across the country over the last quarter century. The presence of those factories will be felt as bargaining Detroit moves forward.

"We're out of the game of the major costs of labour (industry)," said a well-informed source on negotiations to Chrysler. Recently, in 2006, the servants were paying about $ 76 per hour for work UAW, which says the source is "unsustainable". The source asked not to be named because negotiations are ongoing.

While many members would regain some UAW concessions made in 2007 and 2009, leaders are doing relatively little noise about getting the salary or benefit hikes this year. Bargaining is more likely to focus on where to allocate a fixed "bucket" of cash, perhaps to trim health costs to put a few dollars more in salary, the source said.

Enhanced profit sharing
If there must be more money, the UAW has indicated that it will in the form of greater profit sharing programs. "Our members deserve more high" when times are good, the King said recently.

There is another reason why talks this year will be different from that in the past. The Federal Government prevented the UAW to hit when it approved the bailout of GM and Chrysler two years ago. While a strike is not possible to Ford, there was one there in a third centuries. Instead, a deadlock would result in binding arbitration.

And that, the King said, not on his agenda at Chrysler. "If arbitration happens, if something like this happens, then I would say that we haven't done our job."

One of the few problems that might be a sticking point concerns the two-tiered wage structure the UAW passed in 2007. King has fretted that those now being hired at half pay are not always a "living wage". On the other hand, he also acknowledged that the scale is encouraging automakers to Detroit to add jobs.

GM is building the new subcompact Chevrolet Sonic in a suburban Detroit plant, rather than importing it from Korea, as he did with the previous model, Chevy Aveo. The source said of Chrysler, the producer is investigating 300 different plans to bring the work that it had previously outsourced to save money.

Even with recent expansions at plants in Sterling Heights, Michigan and Detroit, Chrysler has just one third of the number of workers UAW that employed a decade ago. Total membership UAW Union revealed, was 376.612 at the end of 2010, down from the Summit 1979 1.53 million.

"It's not sustainable," warned Harley Shaiken, a former member of UAW and now a professor at the University of California, Berkley labor.

One of the challenges for the UAW will craft a contract that not only keeps the image-makers Detroit competitive but which can also help the EU meet its next objective: organize transplant urgently. So far, only three are approved representations and one former UAW, GM/Toyota joint venture near San Francisco, has closed.

UAW organizers have come to recognize that the show of force does not win the transplants, where workers typically looking for stable employment. Instead, the pitch will be what King called "creative problem solving" and the ability to offer better wages and benefits workers can win on their own.

So, what happens in Detroit over the next month and a half could determine not only what happens in the pocket of the three major Workers Union but who have a vital Union of belong to.

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