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United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)

16663 messages,  Last post on Nov 08, 2009 at 9:32 PM

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What is this discussion about? Automotive News


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#6845 of 16663
Re: Wonder what... [steve_] by gagrice
Dec 27, 2008 (5:06 pm)
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Replying to: steve_ (Dec 27, 2008 11:00 am)

"among the union's biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union's neck
 
Another example of the stupidity in the UAW. You can remember when the AK Teamsters built that big hospital, Dental clinic, Rec center, headquarters building in Anchorage? They, the AK Teamster's leaders, being smarter that the UAW leadership, got rid of all those assets. I don't have the exact cost to build and what they were sold for. The bottom line the rank and file members are not supporting those extravagant buildings.
 
They did build a huge resort in Indian Wells near Palm Springs. It was not even open to members of the Teamsters. We probably could not afford to join. The bottom line is our $13 million land investment with the Pension Trust money has netted to date over $450 million.
 
What has the UAW done for their members lately, except drive jobs out of the country?
#6846 of 16663
Re: Does anyone know? [04cad] by explorerx4
Dec 27, 2008 (5:51 pm)
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Replying to: 04cad (Dec 27, 2008 8:43 am)

i agree that many of the members of the UAW invested the fruits of their labors in their family's and communities. michigan has some really great state higher education institutions. i guess it is hard to separate the organization from the individuals.
many people in michigan have a passion for the automobile. if you have ever spent any time there, it is pretty obvious.
from what i have gathered, the people installing the lug nuts on hondas and toyotas are getting paid about the same as their UAW counterparts.
the difference is in the legacy costs.
#6847 of 16663
Just a few thoughts by marsha7
Dec 27, 2008 (6:13 pm)
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on this Christmas weekend, hope all yours was happy...
 
Saturn is not critical for the survival of GM...after reading a few books lately (Call Me Roger, Comeback), they document Saturn as a multi-billion dollar loser from the day it ran the first car off the line...what Roger Smith envisioned in his mind never became true...cost overruns, quality problems, made the division no different than any other GM division, like Chevy or Buick...
 
As far as supplier bankruptcies following a GM bankruptcy, that may be the cost of fixing the whole shebang...because if GM does NOT file Chapter 11, than all you really are doing is, literally, maintaining the status quo of the last 30-plus years, by not forcing necessary change onto GM...it MUST shed, and destroy, the UAW, so it can relieve itself of its unmanageable debt that is, and will, kill it...
 
To not force the change will simply mean that tomorrow will be no different than a day in 1982, 1993 or 2004, and the underlying problem will not change, so, like termites eating away at a wood foundation, all will look OK until the foundation is simply gone...it is gone as we speak, but a bailout will simply hide it for another moment in the future...
 
You need to stop looking at contracts that were signed and obligations that were committed to...if the $$$ is not there to make it work, then the contract has no choice but to be breached...
 
After all, every person or company that files for bankruptcy is, in effect, breaching every financial agreement they have committed to perform...but the reality is simple, like it or not...if the money isn't there, the money isn't there...so breach of contract becomes the ONLY viable option...you cannot get blood from a stone...
 
Should management have agreed to all those provisions in past UAW contracts???...obviously, no...but, at the time they signed them, GM, Ford and Chrysler never dreamed that their market share would drop so low, and their sales would drop even lower...that, in itself, is an expression of the sheer arrogance of Detroit, as the Japanese automakers came in, made much better cars, and the Big 3 simply thought they were a flash in the pan...
 
So, we can agree that management was stupid to sign the contracts, but that is now water under the bridge...they now have the ability to make millions more cars that they can/will sell, and they need to downsize by thousands of workers and a goodly number of factories, simply because we will not buy all they can make, as we have found alternatives that the American buying public simply believes are better made...
 
So, after pointing fingers at stupid management, and union workers who simply can't count the number of bolts needed to hold a window regulator in place ( that, rocky, is what happens when all those "skilled workers" you refer to actually perform their jobs), and now union workers who will strike rather than compromise, they have no choice but to jettison the workers, jettsion the agreements, and move forward in a much smaller, but stronger, automaker...
 
What many folks cannot imagine is simply a GM that was once a world power on its own, now a large player but not the power it once had...kinda like the old Soviet Union...previously a superpower, and now still a major player on the world stage, but not with the power it once had...GM will be like that...even a 20-25% market share will keep it a major player, just not the 65% market share it had in the 50s and 60s...
#6848 of 16663
gagrice... by iluvmysephia1
Dec 27, 2008 (6:20 pm)
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have we had any UAW members join us in here, to your recall? Most thinking people who have followed this thread are having a hard time feeling sorry for the UAW's.
 
Question to any of you UAW workers out there soon to get canned from your jobs:
Are you looking in to getting re-training? College in your 40's?
 
Or are you scheming to try and collect from what must be hard up midwest states for months of U.I. That is while your chance to re-train fizzles away and you decide to eat some steak on your U.I. every so often. Why not, you reason, you deserve it, right?
 
Pfft!
 
So far CNN or HLN or Bar-bwa Wah-Wah and her donut-eating dork buddies on The View(except Elisabeth Hasselbeck ) don't see any reason to do any stories on this issue. Yet the story is huge, it's not just large, it H-U-G-E with a pronoounced H! Not just one of the U-G-E's, with the H silent. This is HUGE, my car-crazy friends.
 
This 17.5B large is not gonna be enough to turn GM-Titanic away from the iceberg, which in their case, is theirselves.
#6849 of 16663
i really feel like... by explorerx4
Dec 27, 2008 (7:20 pm)
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most posters here and a lot of other people have fallen for a classic 'misdirection'.
are there big problems in the domestic auto industry? yes.
are they the root cause of our economic problems?
#6850 of 16663
Re: UAW excess [bhmr59] by dallasdude1
Dec 27, 2008 (8:07 pm)
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Replying to: bhmr59 (Dec 27, 2008 4:49 pm)

It's a resort paid for by membership dues
 
I've mentioned Black Lake Family Education Center prior. Its paid for by the UAW membership. Summer family scholarships are available to all the membership. Not just the top of the pecking order. My family and I have been there and I would highly recommended it to the UAW membership. Lucy and Desi honeymooned in the old/original lodge. Each week during the winter months leadership has training there. Chaplin's week, local paper editors week, and the many other sub organizations use it. The Big Three and high level union officials have also broken bread and discussed issues pertaining to the membership. FAUX NEWS is just so full of fecal matter to even think that bail out money and or any other than the members money bought, built, and maintains it. An indolent duffer reporter will do anything for a sensationalize story, which lacks research and or truth.
 
Now ask them about the AIG
 
The Walter and May Reuther UAW Family Education Center is located on Black Lake near Onaway, Michigan. It is funded from interest on the UAW strike fund. No union anywhere in the world offers an education center of this magnitude to its members. With its stunning design, beautiful location, and warm, open atmosphere it is the envy of labor educators.
 
http://www.uaw.org/about/where/onaway.html
 
Now ask them about the AIG $440,000 plus bail out blow out party.
 
http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/2008/10/02/after-federal-bailout-aig-fetes- - -in-style-in-oc/?ref=patrick.net
 
AIG American General spent:
 
$147,302 for banquets
$139,375 on rooms
$23,380 for spa services
$6,939 for golf
$5,016 at the Stonehill Tavern
$3,065 for in-room dining and the lobby lounge
$2,949 for gratuities
$1,901 at the Monarch Bayclub
 $1,488 at the resort’s Vogue Salon
Cost of prostitutes unknown
#6851 of 16663
Re: To be completely honest [chikoo] by dallasdude1
Dec 27, 2008 (8:15 pm)
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Replying to: chikoo (Dec 27, 2008 9:34 am)

>Saturn, is vital to the future of GM,
  
Really? What facts support this perception?

 
Glad you asked.
 
http://books.google.com/books?id=c36bJtWn8iAC&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=Saturn++join- t+GM/UAW+undertaking&source=bl&ots=oiPqCMlhSt&sig=jcIfzEPbdSR99yodQtuN7_-487o&hl- =en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result
#6853 of 16663
Re: Wonder what... [gagrice] by tlong
Dec 27, 2008 (8:40 pm)
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Replying to: gagrice (Dec 27, 2008 5:06 pm)

"among the union's biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union's neck
 
I would have liked to see Senator Corker asking Goldfinger about his UAW golf club at the same time he was asking the CEOs about their private jets. Let's spread the publicity around about the D3 - over the past ten years, while the CEOs were jetting and the UAW was golfing, the automobiles were filled with hard plastic, bad head gaskets, and failing transmissions.
 
Open your wallet, as a taxpayer you must do your civic duty.
#6854 of 16663
Re: Good medical & dental for UAW retirees without coverage [cheezhed] by dallasdude1
Dec 27, 2008 (8:44 pm)
Reply

Replying to: cheezhed (Dec 27, 2008 11:31 am)

I'm not sure why the AMA and the practice of medicine has been interjected into to a UAW discussion(?)
 
The AMA/UAW is the union/lobby for doctors/rank and files. So they watch over the doctors/tank and files best interests. Did you not read the link?
 
If you wish to refute any of the "PSEUDO FACTS", please bombard me with some logic and or deductive reasoning. The fact that the AMA has and will continue to limit the supply of doctors and therefore some will suffer needlessly and or die is a reality. More doctors, means lower fees/costs and therefore more health care to humans. I know right from wrong. I know that what the AMA does is wrong in comparison to the transgressions (if any) of the UAW.

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