By Doug Cunningham

GM,America’s fourth largest company in annual sales, said Tuesday that it’s making more deep cuts to survive a harsh economy. GM jobs have gone from 107,000 hourly jobs in 2004 to 74,000 today. Buyouts and early retirement incentives will slash even more of those as some new workers are added at half the pay. The new cuts include selling off $4-7 billion in assets, slashing salaried jobs and benefits and suspending the GM stock dividend. GM CEO Rick Waggoner called this an “unprecedentedly difficult time”. He said these cuts are necessary for GM’s survival.

Canadian Auto Workers have pledged their support for U.S. autoworkers even as their plants close due to lack of auto parts flowing north. Jesse Russell reports:

[Hargrove1]: By the end of this week we could have anywhere between eighty and 100,000 people unemployed.

That was Canadian Auto Worker President Buzz Hargrove addressing reporters on Monday after news hit his country of the United Auto Workers walk out at GM plants throughout the United States. According to Hargrove, GM plants in Canada receive roughly 50 percent of their parts from the United States. Without new shipments coming in plants will begin turning off the lights and sending workers home as stock runs out. Hargrove said the UAW has given more than enough, but GM doesn’t seem to want to offer the same commitment. He said what is happening in the US could be a sign of how GM plans to approach Canadian autoworkers in 2008:

As the country debates which presidential candidate has a better health care plan, General Motors and the United Autoworkers are closing in on their own. The leaked plan would include a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association that would pay medical benefits for retirees, but remove long-term health care liabilities from GM’s books. GM would give the UAW an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the liability costs so the union can assume responsibility for retiree health care. If Ford and Chrysler follow suit, the UAW could walk away with more than $60 billion in assets. It would be one of the lar

By Doug Cunningham

As the UAW negotiates an historic U.S. auto industry labor agreement, the company is reportedly pressing hard to get rid of its retiree health care liability with a trust fund called a VEBA. GM also reportedly has floated proposals to freeze cost-of-living wage increases, create a a two-tier wage system that would pay new hires less and also wants to be free to eliminate as many as 30,000 more jobs. That’s according to former UAW International Executive Board member Jerry Tucker.

[Tucker 1]: “Why should workers have to bear the brunt of their shifting their capital to China, to India, to the Eastern bloc, the old Eastern bloc in Europe, just to manufacture more money and, in this country, less cars?"

By Doug Cunningham

As autoworkers, already hit hard by plant closings, prepare for new contract negotiations with the U.S. automakers it’s clear that GM and Ford will be looking for more concessions and givebacks. Neither the auto executives nor the UAW leadership is talking publicly about exactly what the concessions are likely to be. One likely target of the auto companies are retiree health benefits, even though the UAW already agreed in 2006 to cut retiree health benefits.

By Doug Cunningham

Did Delphi plan its bankruptcy by under-funding its pension system while draining huge amounts of money from U.S. to overseas operations as a way to dump both its pensions and its American union workers? Soldiers of Solidarity activist Gregg Shotwell thinks that it may have, and he says Delphi cannot be allowed to get away with it.

[Gregg Shotwell]: “They were undermining the competitiveness and the value of the U.S. operations. So this really looks like a plan. If they are allowed to succeed in bankrupting the United States and dumping the responsibility for retirement in the taxpayers other multinationals are going to look at this as a business plan.”

By Jesse Russell

Just in time for the United Auto Workers convention in Las Vegas this week, the union reached an agreement with General Motors and Delphi that offers buyouts to all 24,000 of the auto parts supplier’s workers. The new agreement potentially averts a strike by the workers. Although GM does not know how much the buyout will cost the company, reaching the agreement will help discussions move onto wage and benefit cuts. After those cuts are made, Delphi can determine how much the buyouts will be. Workers with at least 30 years experience are eligible for the buyout plan.

By Doug Cunningham

More than 20,000 UAW workers have accepted buyouts offered by GM as it slashes jobs. Nearly 30,000 in all are expected to take the offer by a June deadline. After a GM stock rally on Wall Street Deutsche Bank on Tuesday downgraded GM stock again. But GM stock is still up about 40 percent for the year. Meanwhile Delphi, GM and the UAW continue their struggle to reach a solution short of a catastrophic strike in the face of Delphi’s intent to obliterate more than 20,000 U.S. union jobs and drive down wages. A decision is expected in June by New York Bankruptcy judge Robe

By Doug Cunningham

In the Delphi bankruptcy hearings lawyers for Delphi stockholders and for the unions said Delphi doesn’t need to be filing bankruptcy. Glenn Kurtz, a stockholders attorney, told the court that Delphi is not in a financial crisis. Kurtz says Delphi’s financial performance is better than expected and the company still has $3.6 billion in available liquidity.

By Doug Cunningham

Bankruptcy hearings for Delphi are under way this week. The giant auto parts maker is trying to throw out its union contracts as it destroys more than 20,000 good U.S. jobs in favor of moving production to cheap overseas labor markets.

By Doug Cunningham

The United Autoworkers union says Delphi is expected to file in bankruptcy court today to throw out its union contracts but it won’t trigger an immediate worker walkout. Henry Reichard of the IUE-CWA says his union has already authorized a strike if the contracts are thrown out, but he says the court has set hearings in May to decide the issue, giving the unions and Delphi time to avoid a catastrophic strike that would cripple both the giant auto parts maker and General Motors.

[Henry Reichard] : "So we're looking at months yet. And we still have time to get an agreement. And I think that it's in everyone's best interests. And I think that all parties realize that."

By Jesse Russell

Fewer than 500 salaried employees were laid off at 30 General Motor locations yesterday. Dubbed, "Black Tuesday" by the media, the layoffs follow an announcement earlier this year of plans to slash the jobs of more than 36,000 hourly workers in North America by 2008. Last Wednesday GM announced it had negotiated a buyout plan with the unions representing those hourly workers for between $35,000 and $140,000. The salaried employees laid off yesterday are not eligible for the buyout plan, but do receive a severance pay of one-month for every year they were employed by the automaker - up to 15 months.

By Doug Cunningham

Delphi’s assault on auto industry manufacturing wages and benefit standards isn’t stopping with the attrition buyout reached between GM and the UAW. Unless the UAW agrees to sharply lower wages and benefits by March 30th, Delphi still intends to file a bankruptcy court motion to destroy its union contracts. Greg Shotwell, a Delphi worker in Michigan, says the fight is still on to protect the auto industry’s good wage and benefits structure. And what’s needed, he says, is a comprehensive agreement that protects workers collectively.

[Shotwell] : “We need a comprehensive solution in the sense that it would cover wages, protect jobs, pensions, benefits, health care, everything.”

By Doug Cunningham

The UAW has reached an agreement with Delphi and GM that offers a variety of early retirement options, buyouts and “flowbacks” of Delphi workers to GM. Delphi workers will be offered $35,000 for normal or early retirements retroactive to October of 2005, a “Mutually Satisfactory Retirement” for workers 50 or older with ten or more years on the job and buyouts of $140,000 for workers with ten or more years who agree in exchange to sever all ties with GM and Delphi. Called the GM and Delphi Special Attrition Program the agreement must be approved by a bankruptcy court since Delphi has filed for bankruptcy, But it avoids an attempt by Delphi to void UAW contracts and thus prevents a strike that would cripple both Delphi and GM. The UAW says it will schedule a meeting soon where details of the program will be discussed. The union did not hold a news conference to announce the agreement. The UAW says it will file its own motion with the bankruptcy court addressing the key issues in Delphi’s bankruptcy and in support of this agreement. Delphi will file a separate motion, but also asking the bankruptcy court to approve the agreement.

By Doug Cunningham

UAW spokesman Paul Krell tells Workers Independent News that talks between the union, GM and Delphi are “constructive” and progress has been made. Krell would not say whether the UAW is actually close to a final deal that would resolve the Delphi bankruptcy situation for UAW members.

There’s speculation that a deal could come as early as today that would offer early retirement buyouts to as many as 70,000 workers. Delphi says if no deal is reached by March 31, it will move in bankruptcy court to void union contracts with the UAW and five other unions. The unions have warned that a strike is likely if their contracts are arbitrarily thrown out.

By Doug Cunningham

GM is freezing pension benefits for 42,000 non-union salaried workers to save $1.6 billion in 2006. These workers have no contract protection for their benefits. In recent years GM has also been shifting more health care costs onto these workers.

By Doug Cunningham

The Detroit News says that GM, the UAW and Delphi are in advanced stages of talks that would agree to offer buyouts to up to 20,000 hourly union auto workers as part of a settlement to get Delphi out of bankruptcy. The UAW, GM and Delphi have all declined to publicly reveal details of their joint talks to resolve the giant auto parts maker's bankruptcy situation.

But the Detroit News reports that talks are intensifying, with GM identifying tens of thousands of workers who would be eligible for early retirement buyouts. If the buyout deal goes through it would allow GM to accept back thousands of Delphi workers as part of an existing agreement with Delphi which was spun off from GM several years ago.

By Doug Cunningham

The UAW rank and file group Soldiers of Solidarity picketed a Flint, Michigan Delphi plant Thursday protesting the attack on workers wages and benefits under cover of the bankruptcy laws. Delphi worker Gregg Shotwell told Workers Independent News from the Flint picket line that the workers expect Delphi today to move in bankruptcy court to void its union contracts. Shotwell said that will kick a hornet's nest of increased worker resistance.

[Gregg Shotwell] : "This isn't a legitimate bankruptcy, it's a forced restructuring. It's a scam. That's what we're protesting. We're gonna continue the resistance.

By Doug Cunningham

A UAW retiree is suing in federal court challenging a UAW lawsuit in an effort to better protect GM UAW retiree pension benefits. Mark Beumkel is Henry McKnight's attorney in the suit. Beumkel alleges that the UAW suit was filed in cooperation with GM after a deal had already been reached without retirees' permission to cut health care benefits.

[Beumkel] : "It seeks a court order approving something which we think the law doesn't allow. And that is slashing vested retiree health benefits. GM and the UAW struck a deal to accomplish that, they now want the lawsuit so they can get a rubber stamp of court approval. We don't think that the law allows that. And we've sought to intervene to prevent that and to preserve, as best we can, the hard-fought lifetime health benefits for GM retirees."

By Doug Cunningham

[CHANT] : "GM, Delphi, you should know - we won't be your Patco!"

About five hundred rank and file workers marched at the Detroit auto show Sunday to protest the Delphi/GM concession demands. Todd Jordan works at Delphi in Kokomo, Indiana.

[Todd Jordan] : "I'm here today because of the GM/Delphi assault on the working class. We are going to work to rule and we're going to fight this back through trade union militancy on the shop floor. And we'll take it to the streets if need be."

Don Gale works at the Flint East plant.

[Don Gale] : "I've been a loyal employee and now they want to take away part of the pension, maybe all of the pension, benefits. They're takin' jobs away from America. They're just point blank trying to eliminate the working class of America. Not just the UAW. They're going after every class of worker."