GM workers find out why they gave up right to strike!

[Ohio XB]

I am copying and pasting a post I made at a local message board (local to me in Ohio).


http://content.usatoday.com/communit...vrolet-cruze/1



GM wants all UAW workers at Michigan plant at half-pay rate

Trying to defy the industry maxim that small cars mean small profits, General Motors wants to pay all workers at the plant where it makes its new Chevrolet Cruze compact about half the wages that some other unionized workers earn.


The plan drew about 100 protesters outside UAW union headquarters in Detroit over the weekend, Automotive News reported.

Already, the UAW and GM management have agreed that about 40% of the workers at the Orion Township, Mich., plant will make about half of the $28-an-hour wage that so-called tier-one workers earn, the Detroit Free Press says. Besides the Cruze, the plant will also make the Buick Verano, another compact car.

Lower wage scales for new hires is only the start. Eventually, GM wants to transfer all big-earners out of the plant to make way for only the lower-paid workers:


"We have become 'red circle,' " Mike Dunn, who heads the UAW local at the plant, said in a video to members seen by the Free Press. "No other tier ones will be able to transfer into Orion."

GM says creating a plant with workers at lower wages than the rest of GM is necessary to reduce costs to the point that small cars become profitable again. For long, Detroit's Big 3 automakers either have had a choice of making small cars at a loss in the U.S. or at a profit in Mexico, South Korea or other lower-wage markets.
But Detroit makers may no longer have a choice. As tighter restrictions on fuel efficiency force automakers to produce smaller cars, there will be fewer big, high-profit vehicles that can be made in the U.S.

In the past, concessions like this one from the UAW would have been hard to imagine. But the UAW gave in during GM's financial troubles that culminated in its bankruptcy reorganization filing last year.
The Free Press says:
UAW agreements allow GM to use the second-tier wage in an entire facility. The landmark agreement that allowed for the use of a two-tier wage called for a 25% companywide cap on lower-wage workers starting in 2015, but didn't put caps on individual plants.

Orion workers who accept offers from GM to work in Lordstown, Ohio, will help pave the way for all the workers at the Orion plant to be paid a lower, second-tier wage.

Many Orion workers who were laid off at the UAW's $28 first-tier wage received letters this week offering them a first-tier job at General Motors' Chevrolet Cruze compact car plant 250 miles away in Lordstown, said Pat Sweeney, president of UAW Local 5960 in Orion. The Lordstown plant has 375 assembly and stamping jobs open, Sweeney said, although he did not know how many Orion workers were offered jobs.

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I know somebody here works at the Lordstown plant. This affects you directly and I have a couple questions. Does Lordstown have a flexible body shop? Are you also building a Buick vehicle off of the Cruze platform?


If the answer is "No" to either or both of those questions, here is something else to ponder. If you have two plants building the exact same vehicle, and one has 1/2 the wages of the other, which would you keep/expand?


This is why we voted NO on giving up the right to strike at Ford. Ford has not had a major strike since the early 1980's or the late 1970's. Why now do they want us to give that up? This article screams why from mountain tops.

GM had a strike in 1970 and not again until 2007 when they struck at 80 plants in 30 States "....because General Motors was unwilling to accept the union's demand that it protect workers' jobs and benefits. "

Now GM is nailing the workers and the workers cannot do a thing about it this time.

From the same article of the strike in 2007.....
For General Motors, its unyielding stance reflects its decision to accept the short-term pain of a strike at 80 facilities in 30 states to achieve its goals: a lower cost structure and more flexible work force to better compete against surging Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda.

''This really is a defining moment,'' said James P. Womack, an expert on manufacturing and co-author of ''The Machine That Changed the World,'' which studied the plants of Japanese automakers in the United States. ''G.M. has backed away from defining moments for generations. And now somebody there has finally said, 'We have to do this because it's a new era.' ''


Well GM got what it wanted now and the beginning has begun. You know Ford and Chrysler will want the same thing, however, while Ford is making regular profit, and the workers have already given up everything else that GM workers have, the UAW workers at Ford will NOT accept giving up the right to strike. Ford has also said that they can now make money on small cars, and that's why the new Focus is being built in Michigan.


Food for thought. This is a big hit to wages in the US falling, as if they haven't fallen generally enough.


Steve