UAW targeting automakers’ two-tier wages. Abolition of the two-tier wage system at the “Detroit 3” car companies, raising all workers to the top scale, seems to be the top bargaining goal of the United Auto Workers in opening talks with General Motors this week.
The UAW and GM, Ford and FiatChrysler agreed on the two-tier systems when carmakers were losing money during the Great Recession. Under the system, new hires at the firms make half of what veteran workers in the same jobs make. The Detroit 3 have been adding jobs ever since they recovered from the recession. GM earned $6.6 billion on U.S. operations last year.
New hires are “not middle class the way they should be,” said UAW president Dennis Williams, who added, “These negotiations will not be easy. But they are no more difficult than those we’ve had in the past. After the last two bargaining periods, UAW members made a lot of sacrifices to help GM achieve prosperity. Now, we feel like it’s our time.”
A new contract with GM would replace the current four-year pact which expires Sept. 14.
Pro-worker network slams capitalism – and unions. If there’s a message that came through from Jacobin, a pro-worker discussion group in 60 cities, it’s that they hate capitalism, its excesses and its exploitation of workers. However, another message is that unions fall short, too.
An outgrowth of Jacobin magazine, the group has 10,000 subscribers and a web audience of 600,000.
Washington Jacobin David Kaib moderated a discussion based on a few articles, including “The New Militant Minority” by Charlie Post of the City University of New York, which blasted unions for failing to confront capitalism during and after World War II. The consensus of the group agreed with Post. Participants said socialism is preferable and would benefit most people, but that it got a bad rap from track records in China and the former USSR.
“People have lost faith with trade unions because they got in bed with the capitalist class,” one Vietnam veteran said.
Participants agreed that labor education, including the history of workers’ struggles, is generally missing from classrooms, from middle school through graduate school.
AFGE says it’ll work with feds to prevent cyber attacks. The top union representing federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, says it will work with the government to probe a massive cyber-attack and breach of workers’ personal data and to prevent future incidents.
“Personal information of federal employees and an additional two million federal retirees and former federal employees may have been compromised during a Chinese cyber-attack in April,” said AFGE President J. David Cox. “AFGE will demand accountability and will take every necessary step to see the interests and security of the nearly 700,000 people we represent are addressed.”
AFL-CIO, ally protest cuts in pro-worker programs. The AFL-CIO and Public Citizen are protesting deep cuts in pro-worker programs in a money bill in the GOP-run House.
The measure, which sets funds for the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services Departments and related agencies – including the National Labor Relations Board – shortchanges programs vital to workers and ends important protections, said the AFL-CIO’s Bill Samuel and Public Citizen’s Keith Wrightson.
The legislation would cut employment and training funds, job services, and job safety and health funding; it kills health-care quality evaluation and funding for disease-prevention programs under the Affordable Care Act; it also cuts the NLRB’s funds by 27 percent.
The GOP-run House Appropriations Committee approved the bill June 24 on a 30-21 party-line vote.
“Congress should support policies that will help our economy grow, will raise wages, and will work for all people – not just the affluent,” Samuel said.
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper in Peoria