US auto union sets strike deadline for GM

DETROIT:
Eighty thousand production workers at General Motors were braced to be called
out on work stoppage Monday after negotiation with the chief car labor union failed to attain a new
pay accord. The United Auto
Workers labor union said the arrest would begin at 11:00 am (1500 GMT) if no deal
were reached by then. But Dan
Flores, a spokesman for the indisposed United States auto giant, said the company was determined
to seek a negotiated solution until the last minute. "We will go on focusing
our attempts no stretch an understanding as soon as possible." he told the press. gram have been pressing the UAW
for important concessions, including two-tier wages and moves to do it
easier to put off workers. But
the head stumbling block was a projected voluntary employee benefit association
-- known as a VEBA --that would presume duty for the wellness care
benefits of more than than 460,000 gram retirees. The issue is critical to both
sides. "We sat down with (GM executives) respective calendar months ago and they told us the
top issues were wellness care, wellness attention and wellness care. Nothing else came
close," said Saint David Cole, manager of the Center for Automotive Research. Harley Shaiken, a labour expert
from the University of Golden State at Berkeley, said that while the labor union has
accepted the thought of a health-care trust the inside information of its operation are
critical. "These are not minor
details," he said. "It's wish purchasing a house: If you can't hold on all the
other footing like ... who pays for the new roof, you don't have got a deal." Union traders have
reservations about support the trust with blocks of company stock. "The thought of
building the trust company stock in the post-Enron human race just isn't workable
from the labor union point of view," he said. Cole, however, said using
company stock to finance the health-care trust could actually work to the
union's benefit and assist easiness the fiscal load on GM, Chrysler and Ford,
which have got lost 25 billion dollars since the start of 2005. "It would be transparent. You
wouldn't have got any of the trickery that characterized Enron," Kale said. Kraut Tucker, laminitis of the
Center For Labor Renewal, a heretical labour group, in Saint Louis, Missouri,
said labor union members have got small assurance in the industry's executive directors or their
management skills. "Toyota
hasn't go the dominant automaker because they pay less than the American
carmakers. They're winning because they're building vehicles people desire to
buy," he said. Benjamin Ricketson Tucker said a
bankruptcy at gram parts provider Delphi, while nominally resolved, have also
colored the talks. Delphi filed for bankruptcy in 2005 in an attempt to interrupt its
labor contracts, and the labor union finally signed a new work understanding this year
that imposed deep pay cuts. "If the Big Three automakers
are ever going to be competitory in the planetary marketplace, it isn't going to be
the workers that are going to have got got to have their reward and benefits reduced,"
said Woody Allen Nielsen, an UAW member from Buckeye State in a missive this hebdomad to UAW
president Bokkos Gettelfinger. "Management also are going to
have to have got got their wages, benefits and Numbers reduced to the same corresponding
levels as the foreign competition," Nielsen said. The tendency in recent months,
however, is for United States automakers to increase the wage and bonuses of cardinal executives. Two recent high profile executive director engages include Jim Press and Henry Martin Robert Nardelli at
Chrysler, and Woody Allen Mulally at Ford. Shaiken states labor union members are
aware of the tendency and its impact on executive director pay. "There have always been a
element (of social class warfare) in these discussions," he said