The head of the UAW negotiating team voted to ratify a contract pending approval by rank and file UAW workers and leaders on October 16th. After the contract was sent out to be voted on by UAW members, it took nearly ten days for the final votes to be counted, and the GM UAW contract approved. The GM UAW contract was ratified on Friday, October 25th. Looking at the deal on its surface, it sounded like a big win for the GM UAW hourly workers. The contract was so good that some of the salaried workers at GM feared the automaker would come looking to save money in their departments.
Despite how good the contract looked, only 57 percent of the union workers voted in favor of the deal. Reports indicate that more than 38,000 GM UAW workers voted during the ratification process out of the more than 46,000 that GM has on the payroll. When the final vote was in, there was no clear indication given of when the GM UAW workers would get back to work. The contract grants the workers $11,000 ratification bonuses with temporary employees working at the factory for more than 90 days receiving $4,500 bonuses.
The workers have also been granted a 3 percent wage increase alternating with a 4 percent lump-sum payment on alternate years of the contract over the next four years. GM will invest $7.7 billion in U.S. manufacturing operations, and it will continue operating the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant. The contract will see Lordstown Assembly in Ohio remain closed along with GM transmission plants in Warren and Baltimore.
Estimates peg the cost of the strike to GM at $2 billion since it started on September 16th with the strike spanning 40 days. It was the longest GM employee strike since the 67-day strike in 1970. The contract will be used as the baseline for Ford and FCA, and it’s unclear which will go into negotiations next.
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Source: GMAuthority
Comments
So, is this going to result in GM having to outsource Engineering and Product development to India, a country that graduates about 4 times the Engineers as the United States and they work for a lot less?
Typical greedy and selfish union behaviour. They have no skin in the game but behave like they own the company.
Unions are the bane of greed and selfishness as they always only consider their own interests, totally ignoring that of the parent company that pays all of the wages and the interests of the USA as a country.
Ultimately, it was the greed of the UAW and poor productivity of union demands that was the primary cause for the insolvency of GM and Chrysler in the US -Ford was not far behind then but they started to address their restructuring earlier when gaining access to the required funds to finance the restructuring. became more difficult and ultimately impossible.
Down Under here in Australia, we have a powerful and very corrupt union movement and they have made sure that no manufacturing of any significant scale now operates in Australia.
The unions in Australia primarily only represent the employee’s of government paid industries as they are deemed by the unions to have endless source of money to help themselves to. It goes without saying that Australia has the most well paid public servants on the world that the tax payer must pay for. The other area that the unions have still managed to hang onto are those jobs and industries who’s product cannot be sourced from overseas. Building and construction and service jobs are prime examples of these.
Australian unions serve their own purpose where their leaders seek to improve their own power and control over politics and other critical areas so they can move into it as the next part of their career progression.
This could go a long way in explaining why we currently have the lowest level of union membership ever, at less that 10% in the private sector and 14% in the government sector.
Australia’s most successful industry is currently mining, but we are unable to even refine the mining products in Australia due to excessive costs.
I can only dream of a day when trade unions cease to exist in our once great Country. We have the highest paid construction workers in the world -where blue collar trade and unskilled labor workers earn more money than many university educated employees working in the industry. Go figure!