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UAW Members Ratify GM Agreement |
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Members of the UAW overwhelmingly ratified an agreement with General Motors (GM) Corp. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told a Detroit press conference today that 74 percent of GM’s U.S. production and skilled-trade workers voted in favor of the deal.
Under the agreement, the union-run retiree health care trust will gain 17.5 percent ownership of a post-bankruptcy GM, with an option to buy another 2.5 percent.
“UAW members have once again stepped up to make necessary and painful sacrifices to preserve U.S. manufacturing jobs,” Gettelfinger said.
This settlement agreement will give GM a chance to survive the worldwide collapse of industry sales and return as a viable company once the economy recovers and consumers begin purchasing vehicles again.
The concessionary settlement agreement, which takes effect today, meets the requirements of the U.S. Treasury for additional loans to General Motors. It includes modifications to the union’s 2007 collective-bargaining agreement with GM and modifications to the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) trust.
UAW Vice President Cal Rapson, who directs the union’s General Motors Department, said:
We’ve negotiated an agreement which will make GM competitive. And thanks to hard bargaining and strong public support from our members and from many Americans who care about our country’s manufacturing base, we won a commitment from GM for new small-car production here in the United States.
“It’s going to stop the imports coming in here from China,” Gettelfinger added. “We can build those small cars in this country.”
In a separate announcement, GM said it plans to reopen a shuttered U.S. factory to build compact cars that will likely be the smallest vehicles GM has ever produced here.
The company said in a written statement that the retooled factory will be able to build 160,000 small and compact cars per year. The automaker did not say which factory would be selected to build the cars.
A pact between GM and the UAW was essential before a June 1 deadline for the company to restructure its debt as part of a process widely expected to include a bankruptcy filing.
In April, UAW members ratified a similar agreement with Chrysler, Fiat and the Treasury Department.
In the end, Gettelfinger said, the deal is good for America. In an interview on the PBS “NewsHour” last night, he added:
It’s good for the economy. The auto industry is a major economic driver in our country, and to see the companies fail would be economic disaster.
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On eve of GM bankruptcy
Obama administration targets the working class
30 May 2009
Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/pers-m30.shtml
The expected bankruptcy filing Monday by General Motors—for decades the largest US corporation and one of the country’s biggest employers—marks a turning point for both American capitalism and the American working class. Its significance is not only economic and financial. It is also a political milestone. The US government set the June 1 deadline which has forced the bankruptcy filing.
The Obama administration holds the whip hand, having advanced $40 billion in bailout funds to the auto bosses, and the White House will effectively control GM, holding 72.5 percent of its stock and appointing a majority of its board of directors. In return for their collaboration, the administration is awarding the United Auto Workers executives a 17.5 percent stake in the downsized GM.
In compelling GM to file for bankruptcy, Obama is giving the signal to all of corporate America to attack the jobs, wages, pensions and health benefits fought for by working people in the course of more than a century. The full power of the US government is being used to set an example of making the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism.
…”
It is critical for working people to understand the political meaning of these figures. Obama has summed up his economic philosophy as putting an end to unsustainable levels of consumption spending. It is clear whose consumption is to be cut: Not the luxuries and perquisites of the super-rich, but food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education and other basic necessities of the broad masses of working people.
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Obama has once again made payback to the Unions who gave hove massive mamount of hard money in his support. He is a servant of the Unions; their slave, their whore.
This so called ‘bailout’ is nothing more than stealing from tax payers to give to his Masters.
Obama will soon lose favor with the as yet ‘blind’ liberal socialist Democrats!
Quite bizarre to see a comment by “Windsor Wins” that completely misses the reality that far from being in service to the unions who made his election possible, Obama has sold us out already and, as Jerry Wells pointed out, signaled to the rest of Corporate America that union contracts and fair wages can be destroyed.
Obama is beholden to the bankers who run the Treasury Department and the Wall Street Execs whose contracts, bonuses and perqs can’t be messed with.
Windsor Wins” must be brainwashed by Rash Limpbow or Spawn Vannity or Muck Hickaby to think Obama is anywhere near being a socilaist. If he were, we’d be much better off.
As it is the UAW now owns just under 20 percent of a bankrupt company and tens of thousands of its members are thrown out of work, by corporate greed, concessions by union leaders, and Obama.
In a socialist system, the workers would own the whole company and decide whether or not the managers who have been making millions of the backs of the workers should be run out of town or thrown in jail.