General Motors (GM) is sparring with its main union over plans to shut US plants and outsource production to Mexico and Asia as bankruptcy looms over the troubled automaker, union sources said.
Negotiations were also complicated by a long-standing feud between GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) as they raced to fashion a new labor agreement ahead of the June 1 deadline imposed by US President Barack Obama’s automotive task force.
“This is really about the shape of GM in the US and its footprint in North America in the future,” said a senior UAW official who asked not to be identified.
Neither the UAW nor GM would comment on the status of negotiations that formally began last week, although two senior union officials went public with their criticism.
“The UAW strongly objects to GM’s restructuring plan because it essentially means that GM will be shifting more of its manufacturing footprint from the US to Mexico, [South] Korea, Japan and China,” UAW legislative director Alan Reuther wrote in a letter to Congress.
“If GM is going to receive government assistance to facilitate its restructuring, along with the benefits from tremendous sacrifices by UAW members and other stakeholders, we believe it should have an obligation to build in this country the vehicles it will be selling in the US,” he said.
The comments were echoed by UAW vice president Bob King, who is widely expected to become the UAW’s next president next year.
“There are some companies that want to sell cars here that they are not going to build here,” King said during a celebration of Ford’s plans to re-tool a plant near Detroit to build small cars instead of trucks. “There are some restructuring plans that are saying they want to take the jobs out of America and they want to build [cars] in China and [South] Korea and Mexico rather than building them in the US.”
Ford’s new product plans also call for building a new subcompact car at the Cuautitlan Assembly plant near Mexico City.
But relations between the UAW and GM have traditionally been more acrimonious than those between the UAW and Ford, which has not faced a strike since 1976 and was the first of the Detroit Three to obtain major concessions from the union even though it hasn’t sought federal aid.
The UAW has said it will use a “historic” deal with Chrysler and Fiat — that gives it 55 percent of the stock in the auto company when it emerges from bankruptcy in exchange for major concessions — as a template for negotiations with GM.
And Reuther said the union was “prepared to make similar sacrifices to facilitate the restructuring of General Motors” to the concessions granted Chrysler and Ford.
However, union officials are still fuming privately over the role GM played in a long, bitter strike last year at supplier American Axle Manufacturing & Holding Co Inc in Detroit. More than 75 percent of American Axle’s revenues come from GM and union officials were angered by the fact that GM never tried to mediate the dispute.
Instead, the strike lasted more than 80 days and cost GM more than US$2 billion in lost sales. American Axle came back this spring to ask the union for more concessions and then announced plans to close a major factory in Detroit that once belonged to GM, eliminating more than 700 jobs.
The lingering bitterness and suspicion from past disputes is clearly shaping the current negotiations, union sources said.
Jerry Tucker, a former member of the UAW’s executive board, said he wasn’t surprised that GM was trying to take advantage of the current crisis to shift more production outside the US over the union’s objections.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique