New Directions Movement

The Lowlights

The Highlights is a glossy sales brochure. As Woody Guthrie once said, "Some people rob you with a fountain pen." You have seen the Highlights, now consider...

The Lowlights:

Why should we ratify a contract that is incomplete? The fates of new hires at Delphi and Visteon are still undecided. The International is committed to negotiating for competitive wage and benefit levels at [read: $16 per hour] within six months. Plant closings, consolidations, and sales are not finalized.

Buyouts for retirees effected by plant closings are undetermined. If we ratify, we lose leverage. This contract is not completed. If we ratify now, we sign a blank check for concessions. Negotiators admit they need to go back to the table, but they want us to ratify the contract first. Pensions for Delphi flowbacks to GM haven't yet been worked out. Neither has the absentee policy.

Would you sign a contract with a home builder who had not finished the plans? We recommend a reasonable response. Send negotiators back to the table to complete the job.

Neutralizing the Nays:

GM and Delphi have separate contracts and separate pensions yet GM workers will vote on both contracts as if it were one agreement. Even if Delphi workers reject the contract, GM workers can over ride their vote. Many Delphi workers oppose the two tier wage and benefit structure because it undermines our union. But the votes of Delphi workers have been nullified.

They have been gerrymandered into a corner and mugged. Once this agreement is ratified the International has free rein to make concessions at Ford/Visteon and GM/Delphi without having to answer to the membership. We have gone from democratic

concession making to autocratic concession making.

The Highlights states there will be an equality of sacrifice. Salaried workers at Delphi and Visteon will also get a lower tier wage and benefit package. The UAW is negotiating for unrepresented salary employees? Will there be a second tier for International Reps, too? Let see if they will live on $16 an hour!

This contract has too many unanswered questions. Send negotiators back to the table. This Living Agreement is Dead On Arrival.

Downward Momentum:

Which sections of which assembly plants will be shuttled to lower wage suppliers? How many jobs will we lose? Second tier wages and benefits for parts workers will effect assembly plants, too. The establishment of second class union members at Delphi may introduce a two tier pension as new hires making considerably less than we did may one day decide to negotiate pension increases for themselves......and a second tier pension freeze for retirees. The downward momentum of this contract is coming soon to a theater near you.

Work Schedules:

The Highlights do not reveal details of the full contract. The DaimlerChrysler contract asserts that if the national union and national company decide that a plant should go on four 10 hour days, or a three-shift operation, or 3 crews on 2 shifts working 10 hours each like Saturn, they can implement it. It's called "Flexible Operating Patterns" The kicker is, it

will be decided nationally and the local/plant can only negotiate "administrative guidelines." What about overtime pay for alternative work schedules

Undecided:

The DaimlerChrysler contract has officially endorsed team concept. New language says all plants should implement Lean Manufacturing, and asserts that the International can take control of getting this implemented. A detailed organizational model of what it's supposed to look like includes a laundry list of team concept slogans like mandatory job rotation. It appears the International has become the enforcer of speed up, multi-tasking, and human robotics.

Once again, this part of the contract is unfinished and leaves a lot of room for manipulation and abuse.

Wages:

You want to catch a big sucker? Use FAT BAIT. Beware the lure of a signing bonus and fast track ratification. LUMP SUMS replace raises in the first two years of the contract. Lump sums save the company money, but a smaller raise package, say 2% per year, would have a better long term benefit for workers. Two 2% raises in place of two lump sum payments would gain a member $2040 per year compounded for the rest of his or her career. Plus increase payments for life, disability, and S & A insurance, SUB, overtime, etc... Lump sums are long term losers.

COLA Diversion:

The diversion of 2 cents per quarter from COLA (8 cents a year) to pay for our pension is DE-compounded ad infinitum. That is, 30 cents accrued by the end of the contract is sacrificed year after year after year, a permanent loss. We not only accept a reduction in pension improvement, we pay for it.

On top of that the rate of health care inflation will be deducted from the COLA formula. The Highlights estimate this factor to be 1/10 of a percentage point, but who knows? It could be higher depending on escalating health costs. At any rate, it is cost shifting. Above the table and legal as sin, but nonetheless, cost shifting.

Pensions:

Big 3 retirees are forced to give up $1.6 Billion dollars in concessions ,UAW top leadership picked on the retirees who are the largest but weakest organized group in the UAW and they cannot vote on the contract ... But can vote in local ections for officers and delgates..

Oraganize now for the next convention 2006 For the first time since the 1960's there will be NO Raises for Current Retirees that will increase their base benefit, only Lump Sums. This is in essence a pension cap. Considering the price of gas and no COLA on pension, retirees will in effect have a travel restriction imposed.

Perhaps gas vouchers would have been more appropriate than car vouchers. The pension improvement over the course of the new contract (for 30 & out) will be $145 less than the last contract. There are no incentives other than to retire before you are fired as a result of tougher work rules and stricter discipline. (See Nate Gooden quote below.)

Health Care:

The 1999 Highlights reported no takeaways on health care yet co-pays were raised on prescriptions. Co-pays on doctor visits varied by area: zero here, ten dollars there, and $80 to a $100 in some areas where no HMO was offered. Now co-pays on prescriptions are doubled and doctor visits are $10 [?]. If history is any guide, undisclosed facts will be revealed at a later date and some fees may apply.

Skilled Trades:

Joint task force to study the current structure and make it a world-class act. Ratifying this open ended contract jeopardizes the integrity of the trades. World class is a euphemism for combining trades which translates into layoffs, multi-tasking, and subcontracting. There are no world class in Third World standards.

Absenteeism:

Quote unquote, New Discipline System. Stricter rules on absenteeism penalize workers for occurrences? at DaimlerChrysler. What defines an occurrence? The boss. This language enables bosses to penalize workers with health or family difficulties, and permits an unequal application as to what constitutes an excused or unexcused absence.

If you have 8 "occurrences" in 9 months, you get a 30-day layoff (formerly 10 days). Then, if you have one unexcused absence in the next year, you are fired!

UAW International Vice President, Nate Gooden, put out a warning to those who miss work too often: "You will be discharged. You will not return to DaimlerChrysler. Because we are sick and tired of taking care of you." (Detroit Free Press 9/20/03)

Job Security:

The International has never fully enforced job security language. The Companies owe us thousands of jobs under past agreements. We do not have job security, we have plant closings and sales and spin offs. Concessions do not provide job security. Concessions do not sell cars. Concessions enable the failures of management to grow and multiply. How does downsizing win market share?

Boondoggle Preserved:

No concessions on Joint Funds. The Corporations have spent billions on joint funds allegedly to become more competitive, yet continue to lose market share to rivals. Nonetheless, 19 cents per hour plus up to $5 per hour in overtime fees will be dropped into the Wishing Well....ca-ching... ca-ching...

What is Missing?

The shadow in the Highlights is the elimination of classifications and work rules. The seniority system may be replaced by escalations in the rule of favoritism and an unjust distribution of labor. And what about Temp Workers, the Jim Crow section of the UAW? The abolition of Temp Workers should be a top priority, but it was not addressed.

MAKE ALL TEMPS PERMANENT and ALL NEW HIRES PERMANENT.

That is the union way. Dignity is not negotiable.

This contract shoves wedges between assembly plants and parts plants, current employees and new hires, permanent workers and temp workers. This contract is an assault on solidarity, and an insult to the principle of Equal Pay for Equal Work. If sacrifices must be made, they should be shared evenly. The inequality of a two tier wage structure and the introduction of favoritism as the law of the shop floor is a double barrel shot gun blast to the gut of unionism.

Ask questions. Demand answers. VOTE NO until YOU KNOW.

Send negotiators back to the table with a mandate to complete the task, and...

DEFEND SOLIDARITY, FIRST, FOREMOST, AND FOREVER