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UAW Demands 46% Pay Hike


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I went out for drinks with my neighbors. Me and one of them are big car guys and we started talking about the UAW and what they are demanding and the strikes. One of the neighbors (who is not a car guy really unless it's a Prius) piped up and said it's really simple to fix this by cutting the CEOs pay and using that money to cover the costs that they need to give all the workers their demands. I had to break down to him how that wouldn't work but he refused to listen to me and kept saying the CEO needs to lose their salary to fix this.

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On 10/10/2023 at 12:06 PM, GearheadGrrrl said:

Lockout, fire and replace the strikers, etc. are tactics from an era of labor surpluses that won't work now. Volvo truck's other plant in Virginia voted down the contract a couple of times, workers are tired of Volvo treating them like second class autoworkers and Volvo's attempts to outsource chassis trimming and move medium duty assembly to a new non union plant have just made them madder. 

 

Uh..I think that is the point.  they are not "autoworkers" .  The competition in heavy trucks is a bit different than the "car" business.  I think every other class 8 builder has a Mexican facility.  When Ford sold the class 8 business to Daimler they kept class 6 and 7 and were building them in Ford's Cautilan (sp?) Mexico plant.  Then in 04 the Bluediamond JV was formed with Navistar and production shifted  to Navistar's Mexican plant. Not sure what year, but in one of the prior negotiations..8 yrs ago?...Ford agreed to bring class 6 and 7 production back to the US..OAP.  Clearly that was a "bone" thrown to UAW.   

 

But I think I Fain  is ignoring, that Mack is completely at risk as a stand alone entity.  If ever a case where the term "synergy" applies, it is when you look at the Volvo -Mack relationship..   Again, you can bet their is a faction in the HQ in Sweden that says.."maybe now it is time to grab the savings that a consolidation of the two brands makes sense.  It has happened too many times in the heavy truck industry.  Sterling-the original Sterling not the rebadged Fords of late, Reo, Diamond T, Diamond Reo, WhiteGMC...all these managements had read the same book.

 

And TT, to pull a quote from you on Saturday....".once a contract offer is presented, as a member of said negotiations committee, I am duty bound to present the offer in a positive manner (some would say "selling it") and if I did not and instead told my members that it sucked, I would be charged with bargaining in bad faith. " you are 100% correct  as I pointed out relative to Fain's comments when the Mack membership vetoed it big time.  The UAW reached an agreement.  You can bet your ass that settlement was run by Fain and he concurred.

Then when the members turn it down, he is giving them high fives!  Absolute bullshit.  

 

The guy is a showboat .  When it comes to the battery plants, think of it.  Ford is building these expensive plants here and for years, will  probably still be dependent of China for much of the raw materials...and if not China, some other third world country.  And Fain can't or won't recognize that perhaps, at this time he probably should be thinking about doing everything he can to get this buisness going here.  In the long term he will have plenty of time them to sell his union to the workers.  But he can't see that..and of course Mary Barra hasn't helped the situation either.

 

Oh and Gearhead,  don't forget there is much that still can be automated...when the labor economics make more automation cost effective.

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8 hours ago, Andrew L said:

I went out for drinks with my neighbors. Me and one of them are big car guys and we started talking about the UAW and what they are demanding and the strikes. One of the neighbors (who is not a car guy really unless it's a Prius) piped up and said it's really simple to fix this by cutting the CEOs pay and using that money to cover the costs that they need to give all the workers their demands. I had to break down to him how that wouldn't work but he refused to listen to me and kept saying the CEO needs to lose their salary to fix this.

You had me at Prius. ;)

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9 hours ago, Andrew L said:

I went out for drinks with my neighbors. Me and one of them are big car guys and we started talking about the UAW and what they are demanding and the strikes. One of the neighbors (who is not a car guy really unless it's a Prius) piped up and said it's really simple to fix this by cutting the CEOs pay and using that money to cover the costs that they need to give all the workers their demands. I had to break down to him how that wouldn't work but he refused to listen to me and kept saying the CEO needs to lose their salary to fix this.


Sadly there is a large percentage of the population who hate successful people/businesses and big corporations and want to punish them and at the same time redistribute their income to others.  The liberal push for BEVs is as much about putting the oil companies out of business as saving the environment.  CEOs may be overpaid but most worked their asses off for 25-30 years to get that position.  Try to hire a qualified fortune 100 CEO for $1M/yr total compensation - can’t be done.  If you get a good one they’ll be offered 10 times that somewhere else.  The market is what it is.  

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10 minutes ago, akirby said:

The liberal push for BEVs is as much about putting the oil companies out of business as saving the environment.


Which is stupid in and of itself because there’s so many things beyond gasoline that petroleum is used for it’s next to impossible to stop using oil at this point. 

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10 hours ago, Oacjay98 said:

I can only imagine that a lot of workers just want this shit done and over with by now. Maybe a settlement is near now that the profit machine Kentucky truck is on strike.


The leaked emails show the UAW just wants to cost pain to the companies which I’m not sure why - your just hurting yourself in the long run which shows how DUMB the people running the UAW are right now. Next year there will be little to no profit sharing as there will be little to no profit - so the signing bonus will replace profit sharing. It’s a net 0 gain in the long run.
 

As for the argument that CEO and board pay should work for free and given to the employees that would amount to .84 cents an hour on base pay if their pay is 100million dollars for total board compensation. If that’s all the UAW wants over the life of the contract so be it. But I’m not sure the UAW members advocating this could run the company as they also fight to be paid weekly because they can’t budget their money longer than that (also why they want a pension) 
 

This is irreversible damage to perception of the companies which just leads to lower sales and you can bet billions that Ford will be building and expanding their presence in Mexico just as others have done. You have a job at 40.00 an hour you have no job at 60.00 an hour. 

 

If anyone tried to get the 30% of signatures at a plant to trigger an election for  the plant to remain unionized one of two things would happen, they would end up dead or this would be settled. 

 

Also don’t really care what someone with a Prius says it’s not like he supported the UAW with his purchase. Also my friend says they say that to convince themselves they made a good purchase and says that to them. “Sounds like your just trying convince yourself it is because if it was that good sales wouldn’t have fallen as much as they have” Then follows it up with “is it though” when they try and explain and then  adds goes how most Prius people have moved on to Teslas and a Prius is the number one vehicle traded in. It’s really funny to watch how angry they get. 

 

 


 

 

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8 hours ago, mackinaw said:

 

Or perhaps they'll walk away from the proposed Marshall, Michigan battery plant.


It’s a shame that Ford is trying to bring new jobs to the US instead of importing things from China and now the UAW wants to make those plants uncompetitive from the git-go.  
 

They could easily manage gradual cutbacks at engine and transmission plants through normal attrition and early retirement.

 

Imagine how many more workers Ford would employ in the US if the UAW came closer to Tesla/Toyota compensation levels (overall avg - keep existing workers where they are but allow cheaper labor to be hired in).  More jobs, more growth.  Give the workers more in profit sharing.  

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