Word: uaw
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...table. Savvy, funny, easygoing and biting toward adversaries, Douglas Fraser, president of the United Auto Workers from 1977 to 1983, took on issues ranging from rising health costs to encroaching competition from Japanese carmakers and managed to win the respect of workers and Big Three executives alike. The UAW's deep concessions during the economically challenging years of his tenure angered many. But the Scottish-born labor leader, who got his start as a local leader in the '40s, won more than he lost, including landmark comprehensive health care and uncapped cost-of-living allowances. In 1979 his impassioned lobbying...
...next task is for the UAW leadership to overcome skepticism about the VEBA among its rank and file, both active and retired. Union skeptics have been waging an underground campaign against the VEBA on the Internet for the past several weeks and it is having an impact. "I think it's a conflict of interest for the union to represent us and take care of our health care," said Tom Avery, a UAW retiree from Pontiac, Michigan who was helping out on the union's picket lines...
...UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said he was confident the VEBA trust will have sufficient resources to pay for the health care of present and future retirees for the next 80 years. "I think our retirees will be exceptionally pleased with this contract," he told reporters during an early morning press conference convened to announce the end to the union's first nationwide walkout against GM since 1970. "We feel very good about this agreement," he said. Other unions, including the Teamsters and building trades unions, have helped administer union members' health care benefits for decades...
Alan Baum, an analyst with the Planning Edge in Birmingham, Mich., said, that a strike over job security is likely to be the UAW's attempt to win concessions from GM in exchange for the union's acquiescence to parts of the health care financing agreement, embodied in the so-called Voluntary Employment Benefit Association (VEBA). "If the UAW its going to take the VEBA to its members," says Baum, "it has to have something to show for it. The issue then becomes, 'We gave here but this is what we got.'" Baum said the strike could well serve...
...moment, the official focus is job security. "It's about investment in new products and its about economic issues that affect our membership," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger at a press conference at union headquarters in Detroit. Gettelfinger said talks would resume immediately, but after nearly 10 days of intense negotiations he did not sound optimistic about the prospects for a quick settlement. "It was going to be General Motors' way at the expense of the workers," Gettelfinger said. "The company walked right up to the deadline like they really didn't care." He added, "You can only be pushed...