Delphi, GM, UAW Agree To Cut Jobs Through Buyouts
Eager to rid themselves of workers whose contracts provide rights and entitlements, General Motors and Delphi Corp. will offer buyouts to induce workers to leave the two companies.
GM’s goal is to lose 30,000 of the 113,000 hourly workers now on its books. The company employed over 133,000 in 2000.
Buyouts, negotiated with the United Auto Workers, will range from $35,000 to $100,000, depending on seniority. Some spaces opened up at GM will be available for Delphi workers to “flow back” to their former parent company, from which Delphi was spun off in 1999. Delphi is—for now—the country’s largest auto parts maker.
The Soldiers of Solidarity (SOS) rank-and-file movement, which has campaigned against Delphi’s use of bankruptcy to gut its union contracts, will continue to agitate against concessions and for saving jobs. On April 3, Delphi CEO Steve Miller will address the elite Detroit Economic Club, and auto workers from SOS will be there to greet him.
Miller will enlighten fellow execs on how to “save” companies through bankruptcy—his specialty. Workers plan to pillory Miller for falsely claiming that they make $65 an hour and demanding drastic wage cuts.
Negotiations are continuing on just how large a wage cut Delphi (and its backer GM) will insist upon, with Miller’s March 30 deadline still on the table.
Said SOS member Gregg Shotwell of Grand Rapids, “We don’t want buyouts, we want buy-ins. Buyouts mean lost jobs, and we don’t want to lose jobs. I’m reluctant to accept any offer that will hurt the person I work next to.”
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Miller demanded last fall that unions accept massive wage and benefit givebacks or face a contract imposed by a bankruptcy judge. His original deadline for the concessions was December 16, and rank and filers say it was their protests that caused that deadline and two others, in January and February, to come and go.
Since December, rallies or large meetings organized by rank-and-filers have been held in Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Flint, Troy and Detroit, Michigan; Lockport, N.Y., St. Louis, Kokomo, Milwaukee, Peoria, Dayton, and Youngstown. Upcoming meetings will take place in Toledo and at the Labor Notes Conference in Dearborn, Michigan May 7. For more information, see www.soldiersofsolidarity.com.
IUE GEARS UP
IUE-CWA Local 717, representing Delphi workers in Warren, Ohio, held a protest rally several thousand strong on February 25. Members wore red t-shirts (which they’ve been wearing to work every Thursday) bearing the slogan “Our Jobs, Our Dignity.” UAW, SEIU, and AFSCME members and IUE members from another Delphi plant in Dayton joined the rally.
It was a different story two weeks earlier for workers represented by the UAW at Delphi East, a 95-year-old Flint, Michigan plant employing 3,000 workers and slated for shutdown. The local union had scheduled a picket and New Orleans-style funeral for the plant on February 16, but at the last minute called it off, ostensibly because of bad weather.
Despite publicity announcing the cancellation (by both the local union and Flint media), 50-75 autoworkers picketed. Some were local members who had shepherded the idea of an action through their union meeting, while others came from Flint area plants and beyond.
IUE-CWA Local 717 voted by 96 percent on March 13 to authorize a strike against Delphi’s demands, if necessary; IUE-CWA Local 755, representing Delphi workers in Kettering, Ohio, did the same in late February.
Throughout March, IUE locals representing 8,500 of Delphi’s workers will hold authorization votes local by local. The majority union at Delphi, the UAW, however, has scheduled no strike votes.
