Robert Boone, UAW 933, February 2015

Post number 28, UAW 933, Bonus for us versus a boning from them

GM WORKERS PLAN VACATIONS, REPAYING ACCLIMATED DEBTS FROM THE PAST TWO DECADES BECAUSE OF NO COLA AND/OR BASE PAY RASIES

INFO FROM Greg Gardner, Detroit Free Press 7:29 p.m. EST February 4, 2015

Tim Shoup plans to use most of his $9,000 profit-sharing to take his wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandson for a week’s vacation to the Great Smoky Mountains.
“This is much more than we were expecting. Everyone seemed to be upbeat about it,” said Shoup, a 61-year-old worker at General Motors’ Flint Truck assembly plant. “I think most of us were thinking it would be around $5,000 or $5,500.”

Like most UAW workers who were hired before 2007, Shoup HASN’T had a base wage increase in AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS. Profit-sharing, which has been substantial for GM’s hourly workers for two consecutive years ($7,500 last year based on 2013 profits), helps, but there will still be expectations among the more senior workers for a wage increase in the contract to be bargained this fall.

DETROIT FREE PRESS
GM to pay up to $9,000 in profit-sharing

The auto companies prefer incentive-based pay, such as profit-sharing and even lump sums IN LIEU OF ANNUAL WAGE INCREASES (Why, they are a onetime cost for the greedy ones, and after we pay a bill or two, provide a small bit of luxury’s for the family’s IT’S GONE, and our base rate is not increased one iota.) It enables them to contain labor costs. Management also wants to reinforce the notion that workers have a direct stake in the company’s success. (the same as they have reinforced the notion that they are going out of business if you don’t bend over and concede)

“It is about how we keep the companies competitive, and we are conscious of that,” UAW President Dennis Williams said in December. “But general wage increases are important to our members, and it is important to us as a nation, to bring our standard of living up.” (I totally agree with our Presidents thinking on this issue because while they hand us bonus checks they are 10 times out of 10 boning us.)

Kristin Dziczek, who leads the industry and labor group at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, said that in good years for the industry profit-sharing is a major supplement to workers’ earnings, but in the more than three decades since the UAW accepted profit-sharing there have been 12 years when GM paid nothing. (And years when they paid as little as $52.00 per employee) (SO $9,000.00 divided by thirteen none for 12 and $9,000 for one year averages out to $692.30 per year for a worker.) Hardly replaces the cola, days off lost, disadvantages of the tier systems, and the tons of losses within most of the local contracts seen by the same workers that are receiving this $9,000.

Workers who have gone years without a raise still want a raise. “The parties are likely hoping the large profit-sharing check might ease pressure on the size of the raise the workers expect.”

DETROIT FREE PRESS
Ford workers to get $6,900 in profit-sharing checks

Anthony Kotlarczyk, a 56-year-old pipefitter at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, expressed appreciation for the extra check.
“We haven’t had a raise in 12 years and we lost our cost of living increases,” Kotlarczyk said. “So this is a great thing, especially for the lower seniority people who make a lower wage.

“I’ll probably put some of it into my 401(k). My daughter just graduated from Wayne State with a degree in psychology and some of it may go to help pay off her loans. My wife may want to take a vacation. It’s not my money, it’s ours.”

Shoup said he probably won’t take that vacation until this summer because his plant is cranking out Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierras as fast as possible. Three crews have been rotating two 10-hours shifts and the plant will start running on two Saturdays a month beginning in March, said Shoup, who works on the paint inspection line at Flint Truck.

DETROIT FREE PRESS
FCA US net income falls 57% to $1.2 billion in 2014

Not only was the $9,000 a record for any of the Detroit 3 automakers, it exceeded Ford’s $6,900, announced last week, and Fiat Chrysler’s $2,750.

GM Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens said no set formula was used to calculate the amount. While the $2.8-billion cost of recalling nearly 30 million vehicles in the U.S, reduced its North American profit, the company wanted to reward the “significant support and hard work” of its manufacturing team, Stevens said. (WHY NOT REWARD WITH ELIMINATION OF THE TIER SYSTEM, REINSTATING COLA, HEALTH CARE AND BENEFITS THAT ARE EQUAL FOR ALL OF US, AND A DARN BASE PAY RAISE. We all like and appreciate the big boning bonus checks they lets us enjoy a better standard of living until the bill collectors gets their figures in the pie. Why such debts, when the CEO’s of corporations like Chrysler makes statements such as “In April 2009, Marchionne told then-UAW President Ron Gettelfinger that UAW members had to ACCEPT A “CULTURE OF POVERTY”.

So we live in poverty except when he decides to issue a boning check and we enjoy the thrill of paying up our bills that have accumulated because of our lack of BASE pay increases, loss of cost of living, ETC, ETC.

As old dad always said: Corporate liars figure and their figure usually lie!!!