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as they should be calling these dicks with ears to task for their attempts at busting the UAW out of existence.
Always remember, Republicans are for no one but themselves and big business, period. they do not give a fuck about either you or myself getting paid a fair wage and they certainly do not care about whether or not we have healthcare through work insurance or otherwise.
In the case of the Big 3 automakers, the GOP would rather watch these companies go down the tubes with their jobs, just to put the UAW out of business. If those shitheads on Wall Street had been represented by a union, we would no longer have a Wall Street which is getting that $800 billion or so.
The leadership of the United Auto Workers has something to say about this .
A plan to give General Motors and Chrysler $14 billion in short-term loans fell apart in the U.S. Senate late last night. Senate Republicans blamed the UAW for not agreeing to reach wage parity with employees of the foreign autoworkers in United States by the end of 2009.
"The demand by the Senate GOP caucus would have no question treated workers differently from every other stakeholder instead of leaving it to the auto czar to work out the timetable and the mechanism for implementing sacrifices by all of the stakeholders," Gettelfinger said.
Gettelfinger said the union made it clear Thursday night that "we were prepared to make further sacrifices."
"But we could not accept the effort by the Senate GOP caucus to single out workers and retirees for different treatment and to make them shoulder the entire burden of restructuring," Gettelfinger said.
He emphasized that the UAW had made several concessions since 2003, including last week when he announced the union would push back the automakers’ payments to the retiree trust fund, which helps the companies save billions of dollars in the meantime.
Gettelfigner took aim at criticism over UAW wages and demands that compensation be made the same as foreign auto companies’ U.S. plants. He pointed to research that showed Toyota workers at a plant in Kentucky were making, with bonuses, $30 an hour, compared to the $28.12 an hour paid to UAW workers at the Detroit automakers.
"This was just simply subterfuge on the part of the minority in the Republican party who wanted to tear down any agreement that we came up with," Gettelfinger said.
Gettelfinger said he told U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, that if Toyota was going to be used as the benchmark for wages, the union leader was willing to send a team of his researchers to Toyota to study the automaker’s entire wage structure.
"In addition to that, if we were going to use them as a benchmark, we should be permitted to see how they pay their management," Gettelfinger said. "If we did that, we should also see their dealer contracts and as well as their supplier contracts. That would only make sense to me instead of somebody saying, ‘Here’s the wage — that’s what you have to agree to.’ "
Gettelfinger blamed some Southern Republican who are antiunion and who represent communities that are home to foreign automakers. He said it was a "two-fer" by piercing "the heart of organized labor while representing the foreign brands."
While we are looking at the auto industry, GM made an announcement today.
General Motors Corp., which is involved in a last-ditch effort to garner federal funds to help it survive through January, confirmed this morning that it is slashing approximately 250,000 units of production in the first quarter by shutting down most North American assembly plants for about 30% of the first quarter.
A cut back in hours worked will more than likely be the next step.
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