UAW Negotiations

[Len_A]

Better get all of you facts straight !

 

Check the white collar benefits compared to the UAW. Pretty poor, in comparison. White collar has not had COLA for many, many years. Also check what the pay raises and bonuses are for the past few years. And only a few white collar have any collective bargaining tool !

 

And absolutely no one is looking out for salaried retires. You have to be "healthy" (or are working on a plan to become healthier) in order to get "full" coverage for all of your health care. (No "plan", you pay extra for all deductibles).

 

 

 

Bottom line. Greed exists at all levels. Many Ford UAW workers feel like they have a advantage over their cross town brothers and want to keep it that way. So much for solidarity !

I said this requires "an equitable expression of sacrifice from upper management". I said exactly NOTHING about giving the current salaried employees BELOW upper management, and the salaried retirees, a continued beating. Did I? My beef has to do with upper management's seven and eight figure incomes, plus two of them being jetted to and from out-of-state homes, all on the company dime,while they take & take from everyone else. NO one is advocating that the salaried mid management and retirees continue to take it in the ass, but the union is legal forbidden from helping to look for those who are not members. Don't think for a minute that the majority of the rank & file or the leadership is unaware or indifferent to the plight of the their salaried coworkers and retirees. It's that legally, there's nothing they can do to help. This is a question of upper management's leadership and PR skills. Is both a monumental over reach by upper management, and a demonstration of PR stupidity to continue to both pay Mulally and Fields $ 259,000 and $150,000 per week, charter a private jet to fly Mulally back to Seattle and then back to Detroit every weekend, and after Fields took a PR beating two years ago over the weekly flights to Florida at a cost of $50,000 a week, now they pay for his commercial first class flight tickets every week, and then expect the union members to approve more contract concessions a scant six months after they already approved concessions this past February. Concessions that they did approve, that by Ford's own publicly stated estimates, save the company a half a billion dollars a year. Now they want more concessions, that Standard & Poor's reported will have little impact anyway, one way or the other, on Ford's bottom line.

[Len_A]

There should be no parity between different jobs within the same company. The parity should be between workers in different companies doing the same job.

 

Ford's management jobs are at parity with other similar jobs at other companies (including non-automotive). Managers are managers, engineers are engineers. If the going rate for a plant manager or engineer is $200K then that's what it is. That's how the market works. If you cut manager pay or engineer pay too much then they'll go somewhere else.

 

But the union workers are already compensated way above the market rates, so it's not the same thing at all.

Upper management at Ford is making far more than their counterparts at the transplants, whom they want the union to emulate, and far more than their cross town rivals at GM and Chrysler, whom Ford upper management also want the Ford UAW members to accept parity with.

 

So Ford upper management's income and perks, especially in light of the continued weekly jetting home (and then back), on the Ford's dime, by Mulally and Fields, is a legitimate issue, and politically stands in the way of any attempt to further modify the collective bargaining agreement with the UAW. To add fuel to the fire, Ford's almost year old PR campaign of "We're different, 'cause we didn't take any bailout money", couple by the recent increases Ford's monthly sales figures, and two quarters of some kind of profitability, makes it politically difficult to the point of impossible to sell the rank & file membership on the idea of reopening a contract just reopened and ratified six months ago, without a quid pro quo from the guys at the very top.

 

You have to be either blind or incredibly stubborn, in your point of view, to not understand all the nuances of the situation.

[steve577]

UAW deserves our support because they buy

a lot of cars. American cars.

[silvrsvt]

INow they want more concessions, that Standard & Poor's reported will have little impact anyway, one way or the other, on Ford's bottom line.

 

Standard and Poor's doesn't have an inside line to Ford's balance sheet either...it may or it may not affect them, but isn't always better to err on the side of caution then kill the goose that laid the golden egg?

 

As for upper management compensation, what would you see them give up? Is them getting free flights home going to change anything major? How much of a paycut should they take? Would Mullay coming out and saying, hey I'm gonna give up 5 mil of my salary make you happy? I bet you that 5 million less wouldn't even pay for a plants worth of health care for a year...Then what else do you want them to give up? I'd rather play it safe for the next couple years till the market corrects itself then fight to get pay raises etc etc. As for upper management of GM and Chrysler...Ford sure as hell didn't get themselves into the hole that the other guys did...and should be paid accordingly.

[RichardJensen]

Topic's closed. If you want to rant about how Ford is screwing you over by expecting the same treatment as GM and Chrysler, given Ford's significantly larger debt load, go do it in the employee section.