The deal reached between the United Auto Workers and General Motors this week should serve as a blueprint for future negotiations between labor and management.
The UAW wisely realized that GM could not be competitive and could not maintain a reasonable level of job security for its workers if it had to maintain the growing burden of health care costs for its retirees. The cost was estimated at about $50-billion. GM said that $1,500 in health care costs was built into every car that it manufactures.
Now the burden of those costs has been shifted to the union with a more than $30-billion payment by GM into a union run trust fund, a Voluntary Employee Benefit Association also known as VEBA. The additional $20-billion will come from investments made by the union.
GM can now considerably reduce its hourly labor costs, bringing them closer to what the Asian companies pay their workers in right-to-work states. Having been able to shift $50-billion in health care costs off its books, GM will now be a more competitive company. It is a significant development for the future of the auto industry as well as for all other domestic manufacturers. GM and the UAW have provided a blueprint for how retiree benefits and liabilities can be negotiated and handled in the future.
The deal is good for GM, good for the UAW, and good for America.
A panel in the House of Representatives has approved a bill (H.R. 1644) that would make it more difficult for companies to classify workers as supervisors; because supervisors are considered management, they cannot join unions.
The Education and Labor Committee of the House voted 26-20 to overturn a 2006 National Labor Relations Board decision that classified many nurses as supervisors, if they work as part-time shift managers. As managers, union representation has not been an option for them.
As I have recently written in a previous blog, many in organized labor were angry that the NLRB ruling would spread and apply to all industries, not just nursing.
Now under the proposed new House bill, supervisors would only be those who spend the majority of their time performing supervisory work. Part-time supervisors would be classified as workers who can join unions.
The bill was strongly backed by Democrats who depend upon organized labor’s personnel and treasure for their elections.
Having opened the door to the further unionization of U. S. workers, Congress has laid the groundwork for increasing unemployment at home, while further hampering Corporate America’s ability to compete with third world companies.
The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have again asked their political beneficiaries, Democrats who owe their positions to the unions and who want union support in the future, to pass a new piece of legislation, which they are calling the RESPECT Act. Its official term is the Re-empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers Act.
It will, in effect, change the definition of a supervisor, turning white-collar professionals into blue collar workers. It defines anyone who is both a supervisor and a worker as someone who can join a union. Under current NLRB rules, a supervisor is anyone who works one or two shifts as a supervisor and so is not eligible to join a union. Part-time supervisors could not join unions because they were part of management.
If the RESPECT Act passes, it will mean that hundreds of thousands of workers will be eligible to join unions, significantly augmenting the rolls of union membership while also adding significant sums to union coffers. It is obvious that as blue collar union membership declines, the unions will do what they can to recruit white collar workers. Congress should show respect for the NLRB and not change rules to satisfy the political demands made by unions.
The Senate would like all firefighters, police officers, and Emergency Medical Technicians to be unionized. To that end, it has proposed legislation known as
the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2007. It has already been passed in the house.
The proposed bill, H.R. 980, would mandate the unionization of those aforementioned public sector workers; and if local governments refused to go along, they would be penalized, and the Federal government would impose unionization.
As private sector union membership drops to almost 10%, public sector unions have been increasing their membership roles. Now more than 35% of all public sector workers are unionized. This new bill would dramatically increase that number and give unions a powerful economic weapon for influencing political decisions.
Of course, once public sector employees are unionized, they will be able to go on strike if they don’t like the contracts that are offered to them. It would be a disaster for the public welfare if police, firefighters, and EMTs went on strike.
They are, in effect, a monopoly in all their locales. If they go on strike, there are no other entities to replace them. In the private sector, if one company’s workers go on strike, there are other companies that can fill the void. Not so in the public sector.
President Bush would be wise to veto H. R. 980. In fact, the public safety and welfare depends on him doing so.