Contract betrayal will give UAW majority ownership in Chrysler

DainBramaged

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Wed Apr-29-09 12:32 AM
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Contract betrayal will give UAW majority ownership in Chrysler

Everything workers have traditionally associated with a trade union—the right to strike, higher wages and benefits than non-union workers, shop floor protections, a chance to retire with a secure pension and health care benefits—has been jettisoned.

There will no longer be even the pretense of collective bargaining and contract guarantees. Instead, according to the contract summary, wage and benefit rates “will be based on Chrysler maintaining an all-in hourly labor cost comparable to its US competitors, including transplant automotive manufacturers.”

In other words, UAW workers will be paid the same or less than non-union workers at the Japanese-owned factories in Mississippi, Alabama and other southern states—with one difference: They will still have to pay dues to the UAW.

Under the terms of the agreement, time-and-a-half pay for working more than eight hours or on weekends will be eliminated, with overtime calculated instead on a weekly basis, i.e., for hours worked over 40.

Break time will be reduced from 46 to 40 minutes each day.

Cost of living allowances—won after the 67-day strike by GM workers in 1970—will be eliminated, along with performance and Christmas bonuses.

Skilled trades will be consolidated into two classifications.

The two-day Easter holiday will be eliminated.

The UAW’s collaboration in offering up the next generation of auto workers as a source of cheap labor, without the slightest job security, continues. The agreement will extend the use of temporary part-time employees and the hiring of so-called “entry-level employees” who are paid half the wages of older workers and receive few benefits and no employer-paid pensions.

All workers at the Twinsburg, Ohio stamping plant will be forced to accept lower-tier wages, in order to keep the plant “viable.”

Supplemental unemployment benefits, which, along with state unemployment benefits, provided laid-off workers with 90 percent of their wages, will be sharply reduced, just as the company plans to carry out a major downsizing. Instead, workers will receive “transitional assistance,” which, along with state benefits, will pay only 50 percent of workers’ gross pay.

Perhaps the most brutal treatment is being meted out to retirees and their families. As part of the deal with the Obama administration, the UAW agreed to accept half of the $10 billion owed to its already underfunded Chrysler retiree health care trust (known as a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA) in Chrysler stock, instead of cash. Previously, the UAW—which will oversee the provision of medical coverage to some 125,000 retirees and their dependents beginning January 1, 2010—said there would be no changes in benefits until 2012. It has now agreed to immediate “benefit adjustments.” These include sharply higher drug co-pays and the elimination of vision and dental care.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/chry-a29.shtml

Shafted. Bad.