Word: gm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...spirited, but civilized, debate between powerful opponents who have come to know each other well. Such a square-off is exactly what is likely to begin this week when Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Auto Workers, reaches across the table to shake hands with George Morris, GM vice president for industrial relations, and open new contract negotiations between the union and the automakers...
...auto negotiations are the main event in this year's crowded calendar of bargaining bouts. Nearly 700,000 of the 4.5 million workers involved in bargaining this year labor under pacts with GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors that expire Sept. 14. Every auto negotiation carries the threat of a strike that could disrupt the economy, but veteran bargainers on both sides rate the chances of settling without a strike this year as the best in memory. Main reason: the industry is booming, its workers are prospering and neither side sees much to justify a knockdown fight...
...admitting that publicly. The union will, as always, choose a target company with which to conclude a pattern-setting agreement (the betting in Detroit is that it will be Ford) and doubtless continue talks down to the last midnight. Meanwhile, both sides are indulging in the usual rhetoric. GM Chairman Thomas Aquinas Murphy has warned that labor contracts that raise costs without improving productivity are "fateful mortgages upon our economic future," and Woodcock has spoken portentously of "the final countdown" to bargaining. Yet even the sloganeering has lacked fire. For example, a U.A.W. convention early this year displayed a banner...
...truth, both sides have good reason to be satisfied with the way things are going. The auto companies' first-quarter profits amply demonstrated Detroit's rise from the recessionary dumps: GM earned $800 million, Ford $343 million, Chrysler $72 million (American Motors, however, suffered a $4 million loss in the most recent quarter). Only 30,000 workers at the four companies are still on layoff, one-tenth the number that were idle in February 1975. The contracts signed in 1973 raised the average assembly-line worker's wages 570 an hour and contained an unlimited cost...
Possible Compromise. Another issue is supplemental unemployment benefits (SUB), which combined with regular unemployment compensation provide laid-off workers with as much as 95% of their customary take-home pay. The SUB funds, which are stocked by management contributions, ran out at GM and Chrysler during the recession. Some senior workers who were laid off later got nothing because payments to younger employees who were idled earlier had depleted the kitty. The union will likely ask for higher company contributions to the funds; a possible compromise would be separate funds for junior and senior union members...