COMMENTARY FROM DETROIT NEWS
HEAD: GM gets tougher; will UAW cry 'uncle'?
The guerrilla game of chess the United Auto Workers union is playing with
General Motors Corp. turned into a serious game of chicken on Wednesday.
The Detroit automaker canceled medical and life insurance benefits for
workers striking the Delta Town****p factory outside Lansing, something the
company hasn't done in a decade.
Call it payback for the myriad walkouts and threats of strikes the UAW has
been waging against GM for the past month -- ostensibly because of local
contract issues. In reality, the local walkouts are a poorly disguised
attempt at getting American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. to increase
its offer to striking workers there. Or call it appropriate financial
management because the union now will rightly pay those benefits for
workers
who voluntarily left their jobs, not the company.
Either way, it signals that labor negotiations today are nothing like
those
of the past.
Rarely would an automaker or a supplier go on record insisting that it
will
shut factories, as American Axle CEO Richard Dauch has done, or take
advantage of provisions in national contracts that allow them to take
benefits away. But that's what we've got today, and both GM and American
Axle have the stronger hand in this shoving match.
The dour economy and dimini****ng clout that goes with union member****p
declines bolster the companies' claims that they can't operate with costs
significantly higher than their competitors here and abroad.
Throw in the fact that plenty of people are willing, if not begging, to
work
for $14 an hour, and the union's case is made tougher to defend. The blogs
and coffee shops are abuzz with chatter between American Axle workers who
are job hunting because they can't afford to be on strike, or from others
aching to still get into the industry despite its issues.
That doesn't mean the UAW should roll over, and we all know it won't. And
it
doesn't lessen the struggles those workers and others will face when
forced
to live on lower wages.
But it certainly makes it harder to turn down an offer of up to $200
million, as GM has made to help out with the Axle talks, or drag on a
strike
for weeks, if not months, solely in the name of solidarity.
After all, let's not forget that most workers in America do not belong to
unions, and they scoff at the union's complaints that buyouts and bonuses
being offered to the UAW's work force are not generous enough.
Perhaps Michigan's automotive entitlement culture finally is taking its
last
breath. That change isn't easy, but it's necessary, and once it is
accepted
the game playing can end.
*********
Wow, logic, reason, and rationality in labor negotiations...amazing.
Dionysus
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