UAW WORKERS on Strike.......
Looks like the UAW workers have launched a NATIONAL strike today.
I wish them the best of luck and also wonder if we as pilots will ever get it together to do the same thing?
I guarentee that if the auto workers withstood half of the concessions we have taken we would all be peddling around on bicycles right now......
Anyone else agree?
UAW Calls National Strike Against GM
AP
Posted: 2007-09-24 12:53:02
DETROIT (AP) - Thousands of United Auto Workers walked off the job at GM plants around the country Monday in the first nationwide strike during auto contract negotiations since 1976.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said that job security was the top unresolved issue, adding that the talks did not stumble over a groundbreaking provision establishing a UAW-managed trust that will administer GM's retiree health care obligations. Gettelfinger complained about "one-sided negotiations."
"It was going to be General Motors' way at the expense of the workers," Gettelfinger said at a news conference. "The company walked right up to the deadline like they really didn't care."
Gettelfinger added that the union and GM's management would return to the table Monday.
Workers walked off the job and began picketing Monday outside GM plants after the late morning UAW strike deadline passed. The UAW has 73,000 members who work for GM at 82 U.S. facilities, including assembly and parts plants and warehouses.
GM had been pushing hard in the negotiations for the health care trust - known as a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association, or VEBA - so it could move $51 billion in unfunded retiree health costs off its books. GM has nearly 339,000 retirees and surviving spouses.
"This strike is not about the VEBA in any way shape or form," Gettelfinger said at an afternoon news conference in Detroit.
"The No. 1 issue here is job security," Gettelfinger later said, adding that the union also was fighting to preserve workers' benefits.