Veteran Saturn Workers Lose Their Alpha Status
According to the Detroit Free Press, back in '96, GM workers moving to Saturn's Spring Hill, Tennessee factory agreed to give up their seniority. As part of the Delphi settlement, GM agreed to let 300 workers at a plant in nearby Athens, Alabama transfer to the Spring Hill factory as jobs became available. BUT, since Spring Hill is no longer a Saturn-only factory, the old transfer rules are out the window. Any UAW member who heads over to the Volunteer State keeps their GM seniority, while workers who gave up as much as 20 years seniority to work for Saturn find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order– even though they may have more than 30 years with GM. At least this time the workers aren't blaming management for the problem: "The union needs to fix this. The local allowed it … and I feel like International turned their back to me." None of this in-fighting can be good for morale or product quality.
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One of the crazy things about UAW contracts is that they are negotiating for a whole lot of people who don't get to vote on union leadership or the final contract: the retirees.
Just who is the union working for anyway? I'm amazed they would let anyone lose their seniority in the first place, and now to let this huge loophole emerge just makes the mind boggles. Non-unionized workers at the transplants are probably laughing their ass off at this.
Blunozer "I’m amazed they would let anyone lose their seniority in the first place" Why are you amazed? They wanted to transfer. Every time there is a national union convention in my industry, all the northern locals try to amend our contract to allow members to retain their seniority if they transfer. That's because they want to move down to Florida before they retire, and every year all the southern locals unite and defeat the proposal to allow "universal seniority. To do otherwise would mean someone could work 25 years and always be at the bottom of seniority because someone else from New York or Chicago with 30 years of seniority would constantly be transferring in. jthorner "One of the crazy things about UAW contracts is that they are negotiating for a whole lot of people who don’t get to vote on union leadership or the final contract: the retirees." Why is that crazy. Why would I want someone who is not currently working in the workplace to have a vote on my contract for my workplace. Where I work (non automotive)virtually nothing is done the same way it was 10 years ago and it is even vastly different from 5 years ago. Retirees from where I work would not be able to recognize it as the same place they retired from. The working environment is completely different the issues affecting the workplace are different. The retirees of any workforce of course would rather current workers give up something, rather than the retirees. The problem I believe is the national UAW is stepping on the toes of the local UAW. That local is in a right to work state. I live in a right to work state which means my membership in my union (not the UAW) is by my choice. I would quit my union if they simply decided they would allow retirees to vote on my contract. Giving retirees the vote would guarantee losing the current workers in the South who don't have to belong to a union.