UAW Wants to End Two-Tier Wages in Next Contract
Norwood Jewell, a nominee to become a UAW vice-president, said that the autoworkers want to eliminate the two-tier wage system that pays new hires at a lower rate than higher seniority workers. The wage system was agreed to by the union to help the domestic automakers as they went through financial troubles when the economy turned down in 2007. New workers are paid slightly more than half of what veteran autoworkers earn.
“The international executive board hates two-tiers,” Jewell told Automotive News at a General Motors Co plant in Flint, Mich. as the automaker was announcing $1.3 billion in investments in some of its plants in the U.S. midwest, mostly in Michigan. Jewell is currently director of UAW’s Flint region. “We didn’t do two tiers because it’s a wonderful thing,” he said, explaining that the financial circumstances six years ago more or less forced the two tier wages on the union. “We hate them. We intend to eliminate them over time.”
Current UAW contracts with GM, Ford and Chrysler expire in 2015. The union’s resentment of the current two level wage structure combined with strong profits at all three domestic automakers in recent years along with the fact that higher tier workers haven’t gotten a pay raise in ten years means that negotiations on the new contract will be difficult.
The car companies say that the lower tier entry level wages are necessary for them to be able to compete on labor costs with the transplant assembly plants operated by German, Japanese and Korean automakers. New hires start at just under $16/hr, rising over time to over $19/hr. Veteran workers make about $28/hr.
Jewell said that a key tactic in eliminating the two-tier wages will be the unions organizing those non-union transplant facilities, mostly located in the southern U.S. “If we don’t organize them and bring them up to our standard, we’re never going be able to totally eliminate the second tier,” he said.
Jewell also said that the companies’ profits will help the union make its case when contract talks are opened.
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I have to say it is amazing what a year or two and less openly anti-union posts can create. Nearly half or possibly a slim majority are pro-union or atleast neutral to it. I'm always intrigued yo read these because I work with unions and academia...and...academic unions though to a lesser degree becausr I like my job and I'm only closing in on tenure. When we're discussing the UAW we have to deal with two issues of which neither is set in stone. One is that globalization does not mean cars made here must be more expensive. If we look at supply channels if car makers made closer to their home base while paying competitive wages there wouldn't be a need to outsource costs. The second is that if we account for inflation the 1960s UAW worker made far better than his 2013 counterpart. The fact that they're paid even modestly close to their productivity is a testament to the benefits of unionization. As a third subject that is such a hardened meme...GM and the rest entered the malaise era due to corporate capitalist greed. Nothing unions or liberals or whatever else you want to blame made Detroit build terrible cars. There is more proof to the argument they got sloppy because the independents closed up shop in the 1950s and by the end of the 1960s the basic trends that supported their marketing trends were engineering-wise nearing their limits (I.e. 500ci big blocks just aren't that efficient). So they were flat-footed and the relationship of southern politics to the poor became a focal point of discussion and an accepted ideological standard even though basic economics countered it. But I digress...
The two-tier world is not just seen in unionised manufacturing plants . Have personally worked in office jobs as a perma-temp making considerably less , esp. considering benefits , than the regular , full-time staff . Oddly , they seemed to harbor great resentment towards the contract workers and often seemed to be under the delusion that we were being paid more then they were , and it may well be the contract company I worked for was billing them more for my pay than they were getting , not that I was seeing that kind of money .