No shortage of news reports on the General Motors (GM/NYSE) deal with the UAW. Bloomberg reports the agreement includes a "new class of jobs" that pays about half the current rate, breaking with the UAW's tradition of equal earnings for union members.
A couple of interesting bits:
"This is a really big deal,'' said David Lipsky, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "The UAW has always prided itself in being an egalitarian organization: `We all hang together, with equal treatment for everyone.'''
And:
GM will offer buyouts to entice existing workers who would
be classified as non-core to leave, and the new pay structure
would apply to their replacements, the people said. Current
workers wouldn't have their pay cut.
"The company likes it because it cuts compensation costs
and the union can swallow it because the people affected aren't
going to vote because they don't exist yet,'' said Richard
Block, a labor professor at Michigan State University in East
Lansing.
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