AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

Union Politics may KO Chrysler Contract

The Chief of the UAW bargaining committee that negotiated the tentative contract with Chrysler, LLC. that was announced last week now says the contract isn't good enough, and he's lobbying union leaders to vote against it.

According to Bloomberg.com, the union official Bill Parker, from Sterling Heights, Michigan is in somewhat of a power struggle with union head Ron Gettelfinger, and he's urging union leaders to vote against the deal in a vote scheduled for today. His chief objection is that the contract does not have any of the future work guarantees that the GM contract includes. Also, there's no guarantee that temporary workers will be offered permanent status.

If I were a UAW member, both of these items would be a big deal to me. While I don't expect that Chrysler will cave on guaranteeing future cars for any given plant, it seems to me that they should give in on the point about the temporary workers.

As an outsider looking in, it seems to me that the UAW-GM negotiating team did an excellent job at not only striking the best deal available, but also working through the political problems to sell the contract to the rank and file. (Although I didn't post on the subject, the GM deal was approved last week by a comfortable margin, though locals at a few component plants (without future work guarantees) rejected the deal.) In comparison, the Chrysler deal seemed rushed. The five hour "strike" was a joke. Whereas strategic leaks prepared the way for a positive spin campaign for ratification, there was no such preparation in the Chrysler deal. Even now, I haven't seen a copy of the proposed "white paper" contract posted on the web, and if I were a Chrysler UAW member, I'd be suspicious that somebody is trying to put one over on me.

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