Auto Workers Contract Questions

[texastoast]

What's the "Jobs Bank" program and the particulars of it? Does anyone know?

Also, how does the Big Three's costs compare to foreign auto makers?

I need a DU perspective.

[SharonAnn]

1. I have serious questions about management contracts and benefits. Why aren't those

being discussed?

And I have really serious questions about the financial industry's management contracts and benefits and bonuses and stock options and .....

[madrchsod]

2. don`t matter if gm and chrysler goes bankrupt

the country will be in a depression so cost comparisons won`t be relevant any more....

[Idealism]

3. The Big Three's costs are mainly:

Health care and pensions. GM has only 250,000 retirees that they pay pensions to (because the workers payed into them, they match the money as an IRA-type account)

It costs the Big Three about $75 an hour in total compensation per worker per hour (but that includes paying legacy costs).

Foreign automakers that have plants in the US (that don't have legacy costs yet because they haven't been here long- Toyota has less than 2,000 retirees in the US) pay $60 per worker per hour in total compensation

Thats a 20% differance per hour, just due to legacy costs that Toyota and Honda don't yet have. They will in the future, so 30-40 years down the line they will be in the same quandry that Detroit is in now. But nobody talks about that...

Thing to remember, Japanese automakers get universal health care and a pension fund that is paid into by the government. These are HUGE cost savers for them.


Edit: Japan also has a "job bank" program, but it is government run and so responsibility doesn't fall on the company.

Currently, Japanese government has urged their CEOs to avoid job losses in any way possible, because it would put a great stress on their job bank.

[whippo]

4. 2005 story- Jobs bank programs -- 12,000 paid not to work

WAYNE -- Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working -- on a crossword puzzle. Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits.

"We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper," he says. "Otherwise, I've just sat."
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/17/A01-351179.htm

Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers and Delphi Corp. as part of an extraordinary job security agreement with the United Auto Workers union.

The jobs bank programs were the price the industry paid in the 1980s to win UAW support for controversial efforts to boost productivity through increased automation and more flexible manufacturing....

General Motors Corp. has roughly 5,000 workers in its jobs bank. Delphi has about 4,000 in its version of the same program. Some 2,100 workers are in DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group's job security program. Ford had 1,275 in its jobs bank as of Sept. 25. The pending closure of Ford's assembly plant in Loraine, Ohio, could add significantly to that total. Those numbers could swell in coming years as GM and Ford prepare to close more plants.

Detroit automakers declined to discuss the programs in detail or say exactly how much they are spending, but the four-year labor contracts they signed with the UAW in 2003 established contribution caps that give a good idea of the size of the expense.


According to those documents, GM agreed to contribute up to $2.1 billion over four years. DaimlerChrysler set aside $451 million for its program, along with another $50 million for salaried employees covered under the contract. Ford, which also maintained responsibility for Visteon Corp.'s UAW employees, agreed to contribute $944 million.

Delphi pledged to contribute $630 million. In August, however, Delphi Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert S. "Steve" Miller said the company spent more than $100 million on its jobs bank program in the second quarter alone.

"Can we keep losing $400 million a year paying for workers in the jobs bank and $400 million a year on operations? No, we cannot deal with that indefinitely," Miller said in a recent interview with The Detroit News. "We can't wait until 2007."

------------------------------------

2008-

UAW to renegotiate labor terms, suspend jobs bank

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said the union will suspend the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers are paid up to 95 percent of their salaries while not working, but he did not give specifics or a timetable of when the program will end.

"We're going to sit down and work out the mechanics," Gettelfinger said at a news conference after meeting with local union officials. "We're a little unclear on some of the issues."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081203/ap_on_bi_ge/autos_uaw

[texastoast]

5. And we paid the Republican CEO goldhats how much to negotiate

that crap?

That's completely unsustainable. Any executive who negotiated that should have to pay for it.

I'm sorry, I might piss off a lot of people here, but I don't want to give a dime to anyone who negotiated that. Paying a stupid executive $25 million in "severance pay" when the company has tanked should be just fucking illegal. But you can't pay thousands of people not to work and stay in business. And this is a capitalist country, like it or not.

[sandnsea]

6. "Laid-off" means going back to work

They were supposed to work these people back into jobs. And, how many millions are paid in bonuses every year and why is that never called "a loss". They used to be willing to pay "laid off" workers because they didn't want to lose their highly trained employees. Now they don't give a crap which is also why the quality of our goods is as bad as it is.