Late Sunday evening, the United Auto Workers and General Motors reached a tentative four-year agreement shortly before the union's 11:59 p.m. strike deadline.
The agreement was expected, simply because the financial and political blowback of a strike at a company bailed out by taxpayers at a cost running into tens of billion of dollars back in 2009 would have been severe. Also expected: the press buying into and perpetuating the myth that the union made significant concessions to GM and Chrysler during the course of those two companies' respective corrupt bankruptcies.
Two specific references to "concessions" include the following:
- Associated Press — "The union has given the company several major concessions in contracts dating back to just before the big recession and the company's subsequent bankruptcy and taxpayer bailout. Union officials have made clear they're looking for something in return this time around."
- New York Times (as carried at the Boston Globe) — "The union had said it would seek compensation for concessions it made that helped the automaker survive bankruptcy in a government-backed bailout."
The bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler were corrupt because, thanks to moves orchestrated by the Obama administration — moves described as "Gangster Government" by highly-respected columnist Michael Barone — certain creditors, specifically Chrysler's "secured non-TARP lenders" and GM's unsecured bondholders, were shortchanged in favor of more politically connected parties, the most obvious of which was the UAW itself.
As I noted 6-1/2 years ago when the press first began pretending otherwise, currently employed UAW workers at GM and Chrysler did not have to make any meaningful sacrifices as a result of those bankruptcies. Then-UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said so himself in his announcement to GM workers:
Let me repeat the key sentences found inside the box at the bottom (bolds are mine):
"For our active members, these tentative changes mean no loss in your base hourly pay, no reduction in your health care, and no reduction in pensions."
"... Unfortunately, in this process our retirees are required to make difficult sacrifices as is explained later in the summary."
As I wrote in May 2009:
In other words, the UAW protected its currently working members, the ones who get to vote on contracts, from any meaningful sacrifice, while hosing its retirees, who don't get to vote.
How hard were retirees hit? This hard, according to a May local news report out of Detroit:
(UAW President Ron) Gettelfinger said the contract is a difficult one for the active members and retirees, who will give up some 25% of their health care benefits. "This was a matter of salvation as much as we possibly could for our retirees. I am regretful that we had to do anything and I think it's a disgrace we had to do anything," Gettelfinger said.
Spare us the pseudo-tough talk, Ron.
... Thanks to press coverage that has been almost completely derelict, almost no one knows this.
Since then, some press reports have highlighted the fact that GM and Chrysler (now Fiat Chrysler) hourly workers have seen no increase in their base pay for nine years and did not receive cost-of-living increases. That's true, but the press has only rarely noted that instead, "auto workers receive lump payments of about $2,000 a year" — over and above any profit-sharing-related payments.
The terms of the UAW-GM settlement haven't yet been disclosed. Regardless of what they are, the idea that any improvements for workers achieved in these negotiations represent some kind of "payback" for past sacrifies made by those who were employed at the time of GM's and Chrysler's bankruptcies has no basis — and the union's president at the time said so.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
