Chrysler and the UAW have a tentitive agreement.
Chrysler LLC and the UAW agreed to establish a company-funded, union-administered trust to handle Chrysler's $18 billion in unfunded obligations to cover health care expenses for retirees and surviving spouses.The UAW pressed for job-security guarantees similar to those it obtained from GM, which made product commitments to certain U.S. plants. The UAW said it won unspecified job-security provisions for its 45,000 Chrysler rank-and-file workers.
Without giving specifics, the UAW said the deal protects wages, pensions and health care for active and retired workers. The UAW likely sought the same cost-of-living adjustments obtained from GM. The GM deal included bonuses but no basic wage increase and Chrysler likely received a two-tier wage deal similar to GM's, in which workers assigned to "non-core" manufacturing jobs will make as little as $14 an hour.
If you think that striking is bad, this strike just saved at the minimum 45,000 manufacturing jobs. Without Chrysler agreeing to new product at the american plants, all those plants within a couple of years would have been in China.
Ford is up next, bargaining is still probably 2 weeks away as they will not start bargaining at Ford until the Chrysler agreement is voted on and approved.
And this is going to be ugly. For the past 2 weeks Junior Ford has been saying that they will accept nothing less then the $30 in benefits and wage cuts to make them "equal" to the Japanese.
And you know what? Screw it, let Ford and their greedy little asses go out of business. Because you know just weeks after an agreement is signed the executives will be getting bonuses.
Posted by Quality Weenie at October 11, 2007 09:11 AM | TrackBack