UAW sees its future in the row in talks

UAW President Bob King has to carry a notorious dislike for ties. But his choice of the robe was particularly important as the work veteran and his negotiating power-national union team with their colleagues from Chrysler Monday met contract to start talks about 23,000 workers. Both sides in what they described as a show of solidarity, was matching wine-red jackets.

There is no question that differ from past years this week between the United Auto Workers Union and the three big automakers kicking off contract talks Detroit. Both sides recognize that domestic manufacturers have still to fight, to correct that industry after the worst downturn since the great depression. But the future of the UAW's on the line.

King and his team will be engine, Ford of this week for the ceremonial grip and grin photo ops cycling by Chrysler to General. Behind the scenes, Union have quietly and meeting management team has been for months on the central topics to work, which they hope that to fix up the contract mid-September.

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"We feel we have a huge responsibility to the American public", said King, referring to the billions of dollars taxpayers, the bailing out General Motors and Chrysler were spent.

Now more than ever before, work and management are, as they would have involved a common goal according to many in the talks.

The 2009 bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler home drove the reality that the big three Detroit automakers could disappear if they push address fundamental questions, the makers of deep in debt and in the decades steadily undermined their sales and market share.

"We must be competitive," said mark fields, President of the Ford of the Americas. The only one of the great was the U.S. manufacturer to avoid three filing for bankruptcy protection two years ago, but unlike its crosstown rivals took considerable debt, which is desperate to pull down. So that Ford search for additional concessions expected is what it has received since 2007, took place when the contract is the last race.

Ford estimates it spends an hour in wages and benefits for each unionized worker about $58. Chrysler says that the figure is closer to $52. This is approximately equal to what Chrysler officials believe his rival in many so-called figures, assembly lines that have emerged across the country in the last quarter century 'Transplantation' import. The presence of these holdings significantly as negotiate is moved forward in Detroit.

"We are labour costs, of the game of the leading (the industry)," said one well-placed hand informed the negotiations at Chrysler. Only in 2006, the domestic workers paid an hour for UAW labor about $76, said the source, the source was "unsustainable." not to be named because the negotiations will be asked.

While many UAW members wish to recover some make relative the concessions in 2007 and 2009, Union leaders the little noise, therefore, wage or use walks this year. The negotiations is rather to focus where you reserve a fixed "bucket" of cash, perhaps trimming health care costs, a few dollars more pay envelopes, put in the source said.

Improved profit-sharing
If there be more money, the UAW has indicated that it will seek it in the form of improved profit-sharing programs. "Our members earn more the head" If times are good, King said recently.

There is another reason why this year's discussions will be different than in the past. The Federal Government barred the UAW from striking if it approved two years ago the GM and Chrysler bailouts. While a strike at Ford, it was not one in one-third of a century. Instead, a deadlock would result in binding arbitration.

And the, and the King said, is not on his agenda at Chrysler. "If arbitration happens when something that happens, then I would say that we have not done our job."

One of which concerns some problems that could be a sticking point the two-tier pay structure in the UAW in 2007 approved. King has annoyed that those are now set on half pay not always "living wage." On the other hand, he also acknowledged that Detroit automakers jobs add the lower scale promotion is.

GM is building new Chevrolet Sonic small car in a suburban Detroit plant, rather than from Korea, import, such as with its predecessor, the Chevrolet Aveo. The Chrysler source said that studying work bring back 300 different plans, which it previously had outsourced manufacturers, to save money.

At the last enlargements at plants in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and Detroit Chrysler has barely one-third the number of UAW workers, it used a decade ago. UAW membership resulted Union was 376,612 to the end of the year 2010, down from the 1979 peak of 1.53 million.

"The non-sustainable, is," warned Harley Shaiken, a former member of the UAW and now work Professor at the University of California, Berkley.

One of the challenges of the UAW is can help to design a contract that not only keeps the Detroit makers competitive, but also make the union its next pressing objective: organize the transplants. So far, only three accepted UAW representations and one, the former GM/Toyota joint-venture in the vicinity of San Francisco, has closed.

UAW organizers are to recognize that shows strength that transplants will win did not come, where workers look generally stable jobs. Instead have to pitch, what King called "creative problem solving" and the ability to better pay and benefits as employees themselves can win.

So, what happened in Detroit over the next month-and a-half could determine not only what is in the pocket of big three union workers, but whether they belong to a viable Union to have.

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