Days after General Motors announced its proposed restructuring plan the United Auto Workers union responded. It said, “The UAW and our members will confront this decision by GM through every legal, contractual, and collective bargaining avenue open to our membership.” The UAW didn’t wait long. This week, UAW President Gary Jones announced the union had contacted GM to object to the proposed plant closures.Â
“We have been clear that the UAW will leave no stone unturned and use any and all resources available to us regarding the future of these plants,” said Jones. “Today, we wrote to GM formally objecting to its unilateral decision regarding four U.S. manufacturing facilities. There are issues related to this and to collective bargaining that we cannot discuss in detail at this point.”
In GM’s $6 billion restructuring plan, the Detroit automaker announced it wanted to lay off workers, discontinue six models, and close plants, except the company didn’t explicitly say that. GM used “unallocated” to describe the plants—a very specific term. The automaker cannot unilaterally shut down plants. The term means the automaker does not plan to build any models at these facilities. GM will have to negate the four plants’ official closures with the UAW. The current contract is set to expire in September 2019. The UAW will use the nearly 15,000 production worker layoffs as leverage just as the automaker will use the “unallocated” plants as leverage against the union.Â
“Characterizing these plants as ‘unallocated’—rather than closed or idled—does nothing to relieve the company of its obligation to comply with the Plant Closing Moratorium,” wrote the head of the UAW’s GM department, Terry Dittes, in a letter sent to GM’s vice president of labor relations, Scott Sandefur, that was obtained by The Detroit News.Â
GM’s announcement has riled lawmakers on both sides of the aisle with some UAW-endorsed Michigan Democrats attacking the company à la U.S. President Donald Trump. However, no amount of threats can thwart changing consumers trends. Much of GM’s plan rests on moving resources away from slow-selling cars and sedans to profitable crossovers, SUVs, trucks, EVs, and self-driving vehicles. The production facilities and models affected by GM’s $6 billion restructuring are tied to those low-selling models such as the Cadillac CT6, Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Impala, Chevrolet Cruze, Chevrolet Volt, and Buick LaCrosse. And you can’t peacefully make people buy what they don’t want.Â
Comments
Good for the UAW and President Trump in going after the criminals like Machete Mary Barra (pictured in the article above) who had no problem stealing billions from the American taxpayer in a bailout but screw over the American worker and American communities by firing them without prejudice. Yup, they “saved money” and kept their exec pensions, millions in stock options that went UP after the announcement of the plant closures, and most importantly THEIR jobs. How convenient when it was the workers they fired en masse that saved them before.
So what happened to the “controversial decision”, “thousands lost their jobs” “slashing people’s futures, and all the other key vocabulary that is used usually in this situation by the political types?…Notice how the article takes great pains to hide that Miss Mary Barra is CEO of GM and made these decisions, effectively killing good workers’ jobs and family futures ahead of the Christmas holidays? Instead, we get another massive photo of Miss Mary as if she somehow is the union leader…Where are the photos of the union leaders (and even President Trump as referenced by others) that actually give a damn about the common man, who the leftist elites seem to sneer at and throw away???!!!
MISS MARY BARRA IS A FAILED CEO AND NOTHING MORE. Under her leadership she has seen declining profits, lower vehicle quality scores, reduced market share and profits, and the firing of so many hard-working Americans and Canadians that saved GM multiple times and paid the taxes to the tune of billions to bail GM out. Noticed the execs like Mary dont fire themselves for poor performance?
Personally, I do not know how people like Barra can live with themselves. Then again, I have a conscience.
So let’s get this straight GM remains building low to non profit cars and goes bankrupt again and everyone at GM loses their job. Lordstown is at 31% capacity with nothing that fits their line to get to 80% capacity needed to make the vehicle profitable.
What about future product they can not speak of yet? Can they not clear these plants and bring in product at a later time when it is ready for market like they did at Springhill?
Assembly lines are and have never been a life time job. Works comes in waves and lay-off are a regular part of the job many places.
Odds are good that all these plants may come back accept for Oshawa due to many union issues and size.
If you look at the mules posted here on this web site many will need a plant to be built in. All are not going to lines already running.
Big picture guys. It is generally what you don’t know that is key as a web CEO.
If your foot has a toe with gangrene you lose the toe to save the body. You fail to fix failing plants you lose everyone’s job like we nearly did in 2009.
The fact that shoddy reporting continues to refer to all of these plants as “closing” when the term GM has used is “unallocated”. It’s very likely many of them will be retooled in the future to produce some kind of new CUV people seem to think they need to buy.
This is a hoax between the UAW. And GM. To pretend to have the interest of the members in mind. But the uaw.has stock in GM. Why would they not stop forward to make this look good. Its contract time people they know we been seeing the quarterly profits reports GM. AND UAW WILL USE THIS TO GET MORE CONCESSIONS.