Soliders of Solidarity: The Truth About the UAW Jobs Bank

Greg Shotwell is my kinda guy. He’s a GM employee, United Auto Workers member and the founder of the Soldiers of Solidarity pressure group. I don’t agree with half of what he says, but man does he know how to say it. “When the tantrums are over, President Bush will appoint a ‘Car Czar’ to strong arm the ranks into a marching band for martyrdom-layoffs, plant closings, bank-ruptured dealers,” Shotwell writes in an advance copy of his next polemic, attained by TTAC. “It’s uncanny how heavy handed politicians are with irony. A Russian title for the federal agent assigned to dictate demands to the auto industry? What next? Hammers and sickles for hood ornaments? But don’t worry, Wagoner, Nardelli, and Mullaly won’t be hawking their options at the low end. They’ll fleece the cons and field dress the union. Before you know it, they’ll be bitching about taxes and regulations and clearing their nostrils with Ben Franklins.” Shotwell is just warming up his rhetorical Howitzer. And the jobs’ bank is in the crosshairs..

“UAW-GM told the Internal Revenue Service that $85.6 million of the $186.9 million it spent in 1999, or 46 percent, was for ‘management,’ or ‘overhead, expenses.’ Which sounds excessive, but ‘Union officials say there are adequate checks and balances within the centers: No money can be spent without the approval of both union and corporation.’

Management and overhead exceeds 40% because they place two people, one union and one management, on every job. And they like to party. ‘Joint-funds business also takes hundreds of UAW officials to the Riviera Resort and Racquet Club in Palm Springs, Calif. Hotel officials say UAW members and auto company representatives fill the 475-bed hotel every January, and at least one week a month through March.’

The reason that Gettelfinger can dismantle the Job Bank without the approval of the members is because joint funds was never ratified by the members. Joint funds is “a contract within the contract” between the companies and the UAW Staff.

In 2006 the president of UAW Local 2151 was approached by the plant manager and the personnel director. Management wanted to put all the local union appointees into the Job Bank. Since they would be paid out of a different set of books, it would make the plant’s bottom line look better. To his credit, the Local Union President, Robb Betts, refused. He didn’t think it sounded ethical. At which point he was informed that ‘everybody else is doing it.’ Robb said, ‘That doesn’t make it right.’

If we are going to eliminate Job Bank, we should concede all the joint funds and dissolve the CHR and its counterparts at Ford and Chrysler. The entire jointness apparatus with its thousands of appointees should be dissolved. UAW staffers can be funneled down the Job Bank Drain with the rest of the rank & file.”