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...General Motors, where labor strife has lurked below the surface during much of the company's recent history, workers at five different plants who transferred back to GM from its former subsidiary are frustrated by the company's demands for more concessions. Protests by union members are blocking the contract changes deemed necessary by the company. "In regard to the Delphi plants, discussions between GM and the UAW are still ongoing, so no further details are available at this time," says a GM spokesman. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
Much of the opposition is coming from workers from GM plants in Saginaw and Grand Rapids, Mich., and Lockport and Rochester, N.Y., where UAW members say they are being pushed to renegotiate a contract that included concessions they signed only last year, when the plants still belonged to the bankrupt Delphi Corp. "We haven't seen anything in writing yet, but we know they're coming for us again," says a GM worker from Grand Rapids. "We also know they want a 'no strike' clause...
...membership is screaming 'Hell no!' on this deal," says a GM worker from Rochester. "We will no longer allow them to hold the old 'Do it, or we will close your plant' b.s. over us any longer. Our feeling is basically, Go ahead. They have already taken too much for us to care anymore." (See 10 milestones on the road to GM's bankruptcy...
...healthiest of the domestic carmakers, has traditionally had the best relations with the UAW. But last fall workers at Ford voted down contract changes aimed at erasing the gap in labor rates that had opened up with key competitors, who got additional concessions as they went through bankruptcy. GM's labor costs after bankruptcy have fallen from $72 per hour to about $50 per hour under pressure from the Treasury. Ford's hover around $55 per hour after recent adjustments, and the gap is a top issue for Ford's management. (See GM's great hopes...
...supreme peril to American democracy, "and we must rise with the occasion." Notice: he said we must rise. But that requires, if nothing else, a sense of shared values. Few paid much attention last December as Southern Republicans in the Senate blocked a $14 billion federal rescue of GM and Chrysler. That lawmakers representing states with nonunion foreign-auto plants should blame organized labor for not slashing worker benefits to levels offered by Nissan hardly came as a shock...