GM Strike Ends As UAW Members Ratify Contract
The longest General Motors strike in half a century came to an end late Friday as production workers and skilled trades employees voted in favor of a contract agreement forged between the automaker and the UAW last week.
GM assembly lines should be back up and running soon, but the end of this labor dispute only serves to throw the ball into Fiat Chrysler and Ford’s court. They’re next in line to head to the bargaining table.
“General Motors members have spoken,” said UAW Vice President Terry Dittes, who’s also head of the union’s UAW-GM Department. “We are all so incredibly proud of UAW-GM members who captured the hearts and minds of a nation. Their sacrifice and courageous stand addressed the two-tier wages structure and permanent temporary worker classification that has plagued working class Americans.”
GM can order workers back to work as it pleases, now that the contract ratification process is complete. While the agreement didn’t meet with overwhelming support, but it did garner enough approval to pass. The four-year contract includes such goodies as a $11,000 per member signing bonus, performance bonuses, two 3-percent annual raises and two 4-percent lump sum payments. The healthcare arrangement of the previous contract, in which workers pay 3 percent of their healthcare costs, carries over.
According to a tally of votes compiled by Automotive News, production workers voted 56-percent in favor of the contract, while 66 percent of skilled trades employees gave the deal a thumbs-up.
While the ratification means things can start getting back to normal at the automaker, GM’s decision to close three assembly plants — Lordstown Assembly in Ohio and two transmission facilities in Maryland and Michigan — will mean bad blood between the company and a subset of workers.
[Image: UAW]
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CEOs of major auto companies are not the same as entrepreneurs. Yes workers are expendable and so is our economy if all we have left is low paying jobs. Getting more and more people in lower paying jobs means those workers have less discretionary income to spend and that hurts the economy overall. I am not saying that everyone should be paid the same or that workers should be paid millions but if you lower people's earnings enough then you hurt everyone. Question do you want to go back to the time where people worked 7 days a week over 12 hours a day for a dollar a day and put children back to work? How long do you think we would last as a country if we went back to that? Sounds like your opinions are very extreme. If you get too extreme and people are not able to exist on what they make then you have a revolution which is not good for any of us. Extremes seem to be what is popular whether it be to the extreme right or to the extreme left. Extremes are dangerous.
Did I say that CEOs should be paid the same as UAW workers? The following is what I said: " I am not saying that everyone should be paid the same or that workers should be paid millions but if you lower people’s earnings enough then you hurt everyone." Where in the above statement did I say that CEOs and UAW workers should make the same? Do you believe that all CEOs earn their pay? Do you believe that Bob Nardelli or Ed Acker of Pan Am were good CEOs? I would not argue about CEOs like Lee Iacocca who saved Chrysler or even Sergio Marchionne but I would not put Mary Barra or James Hackett in that category. Lee Iacocca wrote a book several years back called Where Have All The Leaders Gone is a very good read and an informative book. A good leader motivates workers to do a better job and a poor leader demoralizes workers. True workers can be fired at anytime but if that is what you expect and you treat those workers accordingly then you will get exactly what you expect which is subpar and unmotivated workers. There is a difference between coddling workers and motivating them.