Oh, No You Don't: GM Isn't About to Let Fiat Chrysler Off the Hook

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

Fiat Chrysler wants to see General Motors’ racketeering lawsuit dismissed, but the automaker’s crosstown rival isn’t in a charitable mood.

GM contends that bribery of United Auto Workers officials by FCA over years of contract talks left that automaker sitting pretty, with extra labor costs dumped on its Detroit competitors. While FCA claims GM can’t prove it’s a victim, The General says otherwise.

In a filing earlier this week, GM rejected FCA’s motion to dismiss the racketeering lawsuit. That motion came in January, two months after GM filed suit.

As reported by Automotive News, GM’s filing claims FCA’s bribery of UAW officials gave it the upper hand while at the same time heaping “outsized and asymmetrical costs” on GM via its 2015 labor contract. The automaker believes FCA, which was angling for a merger with GM at the time, hoped to weaken its rival and pave the way for the tie-up. Brokering the strategy, GM claims, was former CEO Sergio Marchionne.

An ongoing federal corruption investigation revealed plenty of illegal back-scratching between FCA and the UAW going back to 2009. That probe recently saw charges laid against former UAW president Gary Jones.

“Our brief points out a very large number of factual errors and legal deficiencies in the motions filed by FCA NV, FCA US LLC and Al Iacobelli,” GM said in a statement. “We are very confident in our position on these matters and in our RICO case as a whole, and we look forward to the next steps in the case and ultimately preparing for trial.”

In its motion to dismiss, FCA claims GM’s suit falls outside the four-year statute of limitations, claiming it must have known about its lopsided labor costs back in 2015. GM countered by saying it only learned the real story in 2017, when the federal probe collared FCA labor relations boss Alphons Iacobelli. Tasked with keeping the right UAW officials “fat, dumb and happy,” Iacobelli pleaded guilty and in 2018 received a sentence of five-and-a-half years.

Calling GM’s lawsuit “groundless,” FCA said it will continue to defend itself. This ain’t over by a long shot.

[Image: GM]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Akear Akear on Mar 11, 2020

    Well, at least the mob is not involved.

  • Detroit-X Detroit-X on Mar 12, 2020

    GM's incompetent executives and their culture of fear they created has done far more damage to GM in any one year than this FCA thing. GM will always leap at every chance to point to an outside excuse for their lame performance. Here come the "extraordinary items" against earnings, again.

  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
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