Word: uaw
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...before Dixie gets too smug, it should acknowledge a debt it owes Detroit, or rather Detroit's labor union, the United Autoworkers (UAW). The UAW has made the Big Three's labor force one of the world's best paid and protected - clout that is now a focus of what's wrong with Detroit. Still, the foreign automakers are in America in large part because, as their more fuel-efficient cars became popular in the U.S. in the 1980s and '90s, the UAW lobbied to get them to build production plants here...
...firms flocked to the South to avoid Detroit's high-cost culture. But while southern auto employees extol the union-free, right-to-work rules of their states, the truth is that they might still be earning the basement-level wages of a Mississippi textile worker today if the UAW hadn't leaned on the likes of Mercedes in Washington. "Mercedes wanted a much lower pay scale when it arrived here," says Cashman, who notes that veteran southern autoworkers now earn "only fractionally less" than the average $27 an hour for Detroit workers (and often end up with more, thanks...
...Gettelfinger, the UAW's president, has also suggested the union is particularly opposed to putting any more pressure on retirees. "The big sticking point for retirees is that we already paid for our health care. Why should we have to pay again?" says GM retiree Greg Shotwell...
...UAW, however, would agree to meet wage parity only by 2011, when their existing contracts expire, a recognition that reopening them before then would clear the way for difficult and unpredictable votes. "Evidently, the only thing that matters to the majority on the other side of the aisle is that workers get paid too much in this country, and unless we sock it to the worker, they will not be willing to allow a $14 billion bridge loan in order to save an industry," said Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat. "This is not tonight about Democrat and Republican. This...
...contracts the union signed and ratified with GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler last year, over significant internal opposition, also represent a 5% cut in real wages because money from the automatic cost-of-living escalator that has been a feature of UAW contracts for more than half a century was diverted to cover health-care expenses, says Amy Bronson, who recently retired from Chrysler LLC and is now working on a Ph.D. at Wayne State University in Detroit. Union members also paid more for health care and gave ground on work rules, which critics claim drive up operating costs...