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UAW to Hold Meeting

Next week, the UAW union will be holding its meeting in Detroit to discuss what they are going to do about contracts with US automakers. UAW President Bob King will be directing the meeting and plans to discuss approaches to dealing with contracts that are expected to come up this year. King has said that he plans to discuss contracts with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. The main point that King wants to make is that the workers should be getting some kind of monetary value since the workers are the main reason that these companies were able to avoid bankruptcy. He pointed out that most workers for these companies sacrificed anywhere from $7,000 to $30,000 of their normal income in order to make sure that the company survived. 

When the automakers were having such hard times, the UAW did agree to certain reductions in what they were used to in order to allow the automakers to use that money to regroup and refocus on the cars that they were producing. For example, they did agree to the two tier pay system in which new hires were getting paid half as much as those that have been with the company for years. 

King has also said that he is talking with other companies that do not have the UAW in order to attract more attention to the union and hopefully increase their memberships, as they have been faltering in recent years. King has said that he hopes to add at least one automaker each year to the union. The peak of the union came in 1979, when they had around 1.5 million members, now they are lucky to have around 300,000 members. 

The current contracts with automakers does not expire until September. However, the union is making sure that they start early in their battle to get more rewards for their union members that they believe that they deserve.