Delegates to the United Auto Workers’ national Ford Council opposed reopening their contract in early August to make more concessions. Ford made a $2.3 billion profit in the second quarter of 2009, though the company attributes that to debt swaps and one-off cuts.
In 1978, then United Auto Workers (UAW) President Douglas Fraser, frustrated with corporate America's new aggressiveness, accused employers of waging a "one-sided class war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society." In response, he warned, "we in the UAW intend to reforge the links with those who believe in struggle: the kind of people who sat-down in the factories in the 1930s and who marched in Selma in the 1960s." . . . .
Negotiations between the Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) were anything but predictable this year. Nationwide strikes at both General Motors and Chrysler, givebacks on an unprecedented scale, and the stirrings of a strong “vote no” opposition inside the union rocked the old auto pattern agreement playbook. . . .
After a brief two-day strike in late September, United Auto Workers (UAW) negotiators signed a tentative agreement with General Motors. Members began voting on the proposed contract local by local in early October. . . .
For the first time in 37 years the United Auto Workers (UAW) launched a two-day nationwide strike against General Motors in late September. More than 73,000 production workers poured out of GM plants after an 11 a.m. strike deadline was passed on September 24. . . .
We regret the decision by the UAW negotiators to tentatively agree to place the future health care protection of hundreds of thousands of UAW retired members under a union run Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA. . . .
After a convincing demonstration that strikes are not some outmoded tool of the past, 87,000 telephone workers at Verizon Communications have new contracts. The agreements provide the unions with a strategic foothold to organize the new wireless communications industry. And they place new restrictions on the kind of life-dislocating, family-unfriendly policies such as forced overtime that corporations like to impose in the name of flexibility.
Last year was a very good year for the 7,200 workers, members of UAW Local 1853, at Saturn's Spring Hill, Tennessee manufacturing complex. A string of victories was capped by the late December ratification of a new contract. This contract closely mirrors the master agreement in place at every other General Motors facility. Before, GM's Saturn plant was the poster child for labor-management cooperation, or team concept, in place of negotiated rights.