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Automotive News & Views United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)
16729 messages, Last post on Dec 02, 2009 at 5:21 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 04, 2009 6:44 am) $2300 is in addition to pension and ERISA. Which would total $2,300 + $700+ $1500 = $4,500 as an example for an early retiree. The $700 would go away at 62 plus age creep and SS would replace it, and you would be at or about $5,000 monthly. This is a typical example of how to pay the least amount of taxes and a smart man would start shifting their 401K/IRA funds into better investments. Just because your getting $4,500 or $5,000 a month doesn't mean you have to spend and or consume it all. This is where the human factor comes in and discipline is virtue. The UAW and society in general needs to educate folks about the responsible thing to do with their income/investment funding. Its so simple, that I just don't see how folks get into dired straits when it comes to money. I've also designed/developed a wealth builder plan. One for the masses which would pay into future generations. Instead of the annuity, a perpetuity which given two or three generation would free many from the toil of working for others to pursue more worthwhile meaningfully endeavors. |
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Replying to: tlong (Jan 03, 2009 8:15 pm) While the UAW may support the Big Three in their quest for these loans/bail outs, they aren't asking for taxpayer money. In fact they have been running the international in a prudent fashion. While membership/income have declined they have adjusted to the current conditions. They're all living their continuing lifestyle while you, I, and the rest of the American people try to pay our bills on time and live within our means. You fail to mention the positive externalities of unions. The prevailing wage in any give area is calculated from an average. This very average is kept high by high paying employment. This is but one of the benefits that non union folks get from union/UAW folks, there are more. So to envy for the sake of keeping up with the Jones is silly and you bring them down to your level, your not going to make your lot any better. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 04, 2009 5:45 am) i wonder if either party was satisfied with the settlement as a result of the strike. it sure seems like the company had a whole lot more to lose than the union. the government wasn't happy to be underwriting all those uinemployment checks, either. the workers probably made up most of their losses by working overtime to catch up on production numbers. i am not sure if either party was unaware of the growing retiree pension/benefit bubble, or were not willing to face it. Wagner is still there, so he didn't just take the money and run. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Jan 04, 2009 6:44 am) With the Uaw takeing over the health care even though we will use union hospitals we must get BEST deal for are people. The union must hire a health care manager at National level and local level. Just like me I have not attended many meetings do to doing things with family but I will now be a thorn in there side to make sure the buddie system does not work. We but these people in office to take care of ALL of us not the select few. This is a buisness not good old boy's club |
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i have played golf at the uaw center. it is a great course and i can't break 100.i have been retired up here for 8 years and i play only 3-4 times a year --too busy now that i'm retired and it is a little pricey for my level of ability. the legacy cost issues are somewhat complex: the lifetime health care packages for uaw retirees were negotiated in the 50's as part of the ongoing treaty of detroit. back then the monthly costs were only about $30 a month. remember we went to an employer financed health system when truman's attempt for national health care was scrubbed by the republicans as "socialized medicene". stupid stupid stupid look where we are now: health care costs the usa about 14% of gnp versus canada's 7%. and we have 46 million without coveragel same car built in canada by same auto company has an almost $2000 price advantage. that is on big problem for domestic auto companies-but they too fought national health care as part of our failed republican tradition . just the same the employers made a promise to workers that when they retired they would have health care for life. like 99% of employers who have made that promise, they decided not to fund this cost over the work life of that worker but rather deferred it to retirement age. employers could have set up funded health care trust funds but didn't. thus it is logically and ethically wrong to consider past retiree health care costs as a current cost of operations--but almost everyone does. OK a bankrupt company can't pay as you go so UAW agreed to VEBAS in 2007. But UAW will never NEVER ever negotiate away a vested benefit. If you can negotiate away health care for a past retire--why not agree to reduce the pension?
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i have been all over the web on this UAW black lake golf course issue -trying to give some right wingers the facts. I must say that this site has the most intelligent and fair discussion of the issues. this issue is hot only because of the auto industry bridge loans. wall street, AIG, Bear Stearns etc where we dumped a trillion saw no demands that high salaries (which are about 60% of those industries costs) be reduced as a condition of the gifts of money. Only now does bush and other republicans demand that employees whose costs are but 10% of the product must start spiraling down. The right wing is bananas on the UAW issue and finds this a perfect opportunity for some good old union bashing. the credit crunch has affected all worldwide auto companies but this country and its repubs are the only ones demanding that hourly workers race to the bottom to the level of non-union transplants.--why are the transplants the standards for fair wages and benefits anyway--and why stop there, how low are the mexican and south korean rates?? soon we can go down to china rates and then finally the repubs may be happy. and its a two-fer. GET THE UAW!! THe UAW represents everything the Republicans can't stand: the UAW, almost alone, gave us the middle class in the treaty of detroit, the most consistently progressive voice for the common working stiff that has ever existed in the usa, pro-civil rights when it was not easy. anti-war when it was not easy, pro=government regulation of industry and corporate greed when it wasn' t easy and through its long history the uaw leadership has been among the lowest paid with not a single national officer being either jailed or even charged with corruption. George Romney once called Reuther "the most dangerous man in America" Nixon's enemy list for special IRS and FBI treatment had names with several sentences of explanation for then UAW President Leonard Woodcock all the list showed: "UAW President- enough said!" Both men were proud of these titles. rank and file factory workers and their families at an alleged " lavish resort" with golf. very very uppidity next thing you know they will think its ok to demand a voice in their terms and conditions of employment. |
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Replying to: lumoy (Jan 04, 2009 2:24 pm) Really, how Republican of them.  I have in-laws in the UP and it's nice country up there. But it's not exactly easy to get to. If I were UAW at NUMMI, I think I'd resent having a UAW resort like that. Well, not being a golfer, I'd resent it if it were in Fremont too. 
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Replying to: lumoy (Jan 04, 2009 2:24 pm) I do put the picking out of this one aspect on the same low level as the Congress people, enjoying all kinds of benefits from lobbyists and patronage of all sorts, criticizing the management of the B3 flying into DC on jets, private or loaned or leased. It's a trivial by media-attractive item. But I still think the UAW should shed the golf course. I'll iterate my belief that foreign car makers who have come in once again to take over an industry should help pay the freight for the legacy costs of the union workers for that industry. I see the parallels to VCR production, TV production, etc., after the foreign (Japanese) saw how to make them, made them cheaper, dumped them here in some cases, and eliminated the US industry because of the US's higher cost in most cases. The same logic applies to the auto industry and whether or not you feel the UAW is the major problem there or is ancillary, the undercutting effect is the same. It's my thinking that some of, some of the UAW retirees in this area with 2 new GM cars in the garage in the home here in Ohio and who knows what in the garage in their home in Florida and in some cases their summer home in Upper Michigan need to pay more of the freight on their retirement and healthcare as do most other people. The Good Times are over. |
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OK somebody said that Japan doesn't put tariffs on American cars ,they just don't want that crap over there . . . well how come they will not let GM or Ford BUILD cars there ? Yet we let them build cars here and some of us buy this stuff ,not caring. China lets GM build cars there ,and the number one selling car in China is the BUICK. Ford builds cars in South America and Ford does very well there ? On the CFL bulbs ,somebody said the UAW doesn't make bulbs ,true ,but this is ALL connected . . . many here are very critical of the UAW yet jobs continue to disappear in many other U.S. industries including many non-union industries in our country. There might be an environmental reason you say CFL's are not made here in the U.S. but anothor REAL reason is BIG BUSINESS like GE doesn't want to make them here . . . it'll hurt their bottom line if they have to pay a person more then a person in China. GE doesn't even want to make them in Brazil where they closed a plant ! What some of us in the U.S. are doing is killing the U.S. middle class no matter how you cut it. But if you must go buy those CFL bulbs and cars made overseas ,like I said before as long as your job isn't affected.
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Replying to: steve_ (Jan 04, 2009 2:33 pm) it's really not that lavish. the setting is great- woods, ponds, water. the buildings are beautiful with soaring roof lines, mostly wood in the interior, with huge windows. the actual rooms are rather spartan. some even have shared bathrooms. food is good, but it is served buffet style. the public restaurant at the public golf club is good but the entree range from $15-25. again i don't call that lavish. location location. where are most active and retired auto workers located midwest with michigan the winner. still perhaps indiana or illinois would have been good choices. understand when the site was bought, uaw active membership was about 1.6 million. now its about 400,000. i wasn't for the golf course at the Center. but if one was going to be added it could have been done cheaper. again this was 1998. course cost 6-7 million and has lost money every year. distress sale now would probably get half that back. Center itself probably will stay in uaw hands to the bitter end- reuther's ashes (Walter and Victor) are scattered there. hard to recover now. uaw delegates at uaw convention have always approve center improvements and financing from interest on strike fund.
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