Workers expose GM payoff to Canadian auto union officials

[Hannah Bell]

Management at the General Motors transmission plant in Windsor, Ontario, have been forced to annul a secret memorandum of understanding with local officials of the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) after outraged workers launched a campaign to recall shop committee members who benefited from the sweetheart deal.

At issue was a local or “backyard” deal under which GM secretly increased the pay of five union officials who work as full-time CAW representatives at the transmission plant....

Said recently retired Local 1973 member, Gene Locknick, a member of the group opposing the secret pay hike, “Because the plant’s shutting down next year, not only do they get an hourly pay increase that shows up on their cheque every week, this also affects the pension they’re going to get….They did it to top off their pensions.”

The secret-side deal to line the pockets of the Local 1973 bureaucrats was concluded earlier this year shortly after the CAW insisted that GM Canada workers twice reopen the collective agreement and accept massive concessions so as to clear the way for the taxpayer-funded bailout of GM by the Canadian and Ontario governments...

The new contract, rammed through by the CAW last spring, freezes autoworkers’ wages and cost-of-living allowances until 2012, gives back a week of holidays and a previously negotiated $1,700 annual bonus, increases health care and insurance premiums, and allows the company to increase the workload. Retirees have had their cost-of-living protection suspended and face increased co-pays for health and other benefits. Overall, the new agreement surrenders at least $19 per hour, per worker in labour cost—considerably more than did the 2008 sell-out contract, which provided GM with an additional $400 million in savings.

And while the CAW justified its support for these latest concessions by claiming that they were necessary to save jobs, GM is proceeding with the previously announced closure of the Windsor transmission plant and imposing further job cuts elsewhere.

News that local officials have been receiving topped up-pay since August threatened to stoke mounting rank-and-file opposition to the CAW...Local 1973 President Bill Reeves admitted as much in statements made to the Windsor Star last week. “There are a lot of things that are done under memorandum of understanding,” he said. “General Motors is closing the plant, so if you’re going to get it, you might as well get it now, right?” Angered over the exposure of the payoff, he added, “It’s just for a small group, and people are making it a bigger issue than it really is.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/caw-o14.shtml

[HamdenRice]

1. WSWS routinely lies about AFL-CIO unions so I would doubt anything in this article

As you know, WSWS is part of a corporate Trotskyite cult owned by the CEO of an advertising printing firm that services the country's largest corporations.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6560399&mesg_id=6561071

The "Dear Leader" of WSWS who has never been elected leader of WSWS, but has run WSWS-SEP and its predecessor organizations for decades as a cult without a single election, hates unions, and his own $26 million dollar business, from which he earns about a $1 million per year, is a non-union shop. He has a record of calling out his cult members to counter-picket any AFL-CIO strike picket, and even cooperated with federal prosecutors to railroad a real union official to prison.

"Dear Leader" of WSWS doesn't even tell his members his real name. He goes by the pseudonym of "David North" to his cult followers, but his real name is David Green.

Dear Leader writes long rambling theoretical essays that establish the WSWS "correct party line" and all WSWS articles are written so that the facts and opinions conform to Dear Leader's thoughts.

That's why there's no way of telling whether anything in a WSWS "article" is true or not, and why many people automatically unrec anything cross posted from WSWS to DU.