#RonGettelfinger

Ford’s executive chairman Bill Ford, Jr. told CNBC this week that former United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger “ doesn’t get enough credit for helping save Ford.”

Most employers have vigorously opposed unions with every means at their disposal. These pro-employer, anti-union forces continually attack unions and workers that want to form a union…

…Let’s be clear, the contempt for the UAW was so deep that some of them were willing to let the industry collapse in the hopes that they could destroy us. Even the former president recognized the insanity of what they were willing to do.

Ron Gettelfinger fires up the troops in his final address as UAW President, as quoted in the Detroit Free Press. It might have been a moment for reflection and self-examination, but Gettelfinger served up some old-school, union-hall fire-and-brimstone instead. Only Ron didn’t look in the mirror before giving out his enemies’ description. Gettelfinger’s paranoid take on the auto bailout is actually eerily similar to that of the far right wing, in that they both place the UAW at the center of the bailout.

UAW Boss Ron Gettelfinger plans to retire next year, and the search is on to replace the man who led the union through the political minefield that was the auto bailout. But the union’s support for Bob King, who led negotiations with Ford, could open up divisions within the union, reports Automotive News [sub]. King followed the Gettelfinger line, offering Ford many of the same concessions it granted GM and Chrysler during the government bailout that transferred large stakes in those companies to the union’s VEBA fund. Those concessions to Ford, which would have preserved the UAW’s decades-long policy of treating the Detroit automakers equally, were rejected by the same union rank-and-file that must now ratify King’s nomination.