49000 UAW Workers to Strike GM @ Midnight

[MrNoBody]

CBS News
UAW says its 49,000 members at GM plants will go on strike
The United Auto Workers union announced that its roughly 49,000 members at General Motors plants in the U.S. will go on strike Sunday night because contract negotiations with the automaker had broken down. The decision came after about 200 plant-level union leaders voted unanimously in favor of a walkout during a meeting Sunday morning in Detroit.

"We stood up for General Motors when they needed us most. Now we are standing together in unity and solidarity for our members," union Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement.

It's still possible that bargainers could return to the table and hammer out an agreement, but union spokesman Brian Rothenberg said at a news conference that it would be unlikely. He said it would be hard to believe that the bargainers could resolve so many issues before 11:59 p.m.

*****Meanwhile*****
Feds investigating current and former UAW union bosses for yearslong embezzlement scheme
Current and former top officials of the United Auto Workers union are implicated in a federal investigation into criminal activities involving a yearslong scheme to embezzle members' dues payments.

UAW President Gary Jones and former union President Dennis Williams are two of four unnamed senior union officials found complicit in an embezzlement and money laundering scheme that involved roughly $1 million-worth of illicit transactions, sources told the Detroit News.

"The investigation ... uncovered a multi-year conspiracy involving senior UAW officials embezzling, stealing and unlawfully and willfully abstracting and converting UAW funds to purchase luxury items and accommodations for their own personal benefit," Labor Department Special Agent Andrew Donohue wrote in an affidavit. "The outlay of the funds was not properly approved, was concealed from the view of the UAW members, and used for the personal benefit of the upper echelon of union officials who were elected to represent the members' best interests above their own."

Neither Jones nor Williams have been officially charged with a crime.

The investigation focuses on an operation to hide large expenditures on monthslong stays at villas in Palm Springs, California, over 100 rounds of golf, lavish dinners, cigars, champagne, and other luxury items. The investigation implicates UAW officials overseeing the unions largest area, Region 5, which stretches over 17 western states.
Washington Examiner

[RAMd®d]

I hope they get a decent contract, but no way will they get anything near what they want, but that's a part of collective bargaining.

[bobinmurphy]

Collective bargaining with the unions basically pushed a lot of vehicle production into Mexico and ran the manufacturers out of the car business. They can no longer compete with the "foreign" cars manufactured in non-union States. But they'll keep pushing for more and will eventually see the end of US vehicle manufacturing here in the US. In a couple of years though I see US manufacturers re-entering the US car production with new factories in non-union States. It may be with new car division or wholely owned subsidiaries like the old Saturn.

[rjmacs]

Phillips Thompson wrote:
from The Factory Slave

Hard is the lot of honest labor,
Crushed and oppressed;
Where each is taught to rob his neighbor,
Greed steeling every breast.
Each has to freedom, air and earth right,
Such Heaven gave;
Rich men have robbed us of our birthright -
Landless, a man's a slave.

All my life is full of sorrow,
Welcome seems the grave;
Oh when will freedom's bright to-morrow
Dawn on the factory slave?

[bfd]

Large parts of the dispute concern the closing of plants (that UAW wants to be either repurposed or kept open). Being replaced by cheaper workers or automatons is also a concern.

With the focus on building gas-guzzling, hi-profit margin trucks there is less need for so many car factories. This may change if there's another oil crisis.

[Rick-o]

UAW Member for life here. I, and many family, friends, and neighbors worked for GM over many years. I support the Union and their challenge of keeping (and recovering) the gains made over the last century.

Anyone who has worked for GM knows it's a badly run business. I'm surprised they are still around after all the missteps witnessed over my years spent there.

They have 49000 workers? Heck, when I hired in at The Buick in 1977, there were approximately 18,000 workers at that facility alone. GM's hourly workforce was in the hundreds of thousands.

Those workers didn't disappear because of labor's demands. They went away due to piss poor management. It made me sick how they continually shot themselves in the foot rather than do what was right for the company. So sad to see what GM has become.

[Ombligo]

I'm the first of my family not to be a GM employee. My father and grandfather were there when GM recognized the UAW in 1937. My mother still receives a GM pension 53 years after my father retired. My brother and his sons were/are all GM employees. In short, my family has some of deepest union roots in the auto industry.

But what Rick-O said is pretty much true. GM screwed this up going back to the early '70s. Yes, the union was slow to adapt to the new realities, and a sizeable portion of the membership went for short term satisfaction rather than longterm security.

I'm going to be interested to see what happens when the switch to EV takes place and there is no needed for engine plants. That is a hugely labor-intensive process whether we are talking GM, Ford, or Toyota (or John Deere, Kenworth, or Blue Bird.

[MrNoBody]

Those workers didn't disappear because of labor's demands. They went away due to piss poor management. It made me sick how they continually shot themselves in the foot rather than do what was right for the company. So sad to see what GM has become.
.this

It's bad enough to close a US plant and shift to Canada or Mexico but when you
invest BILLIONS in China to produce vehicles to ship back to the US, that's
a new level of greed and apathy for their workers.
:villagers: