“Like it or not, these challenges aren’t the kind that can be ridden out,” said UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, referring to plans by these U.S. auto giants to close or downsize two dozen plants in order to reverse their drop in market share and credit ratings downgraded to “junk status.” The officials offered a perspective of accepting buyouts in exchange for lost jobs, seeking to preserve current members’ pensions, and promote protectionist measures.

A few days before the convention, UAW officials signed a pact with GM and Delphi to offer buyouts and early retirement incentives to the 24,000 UAW members at Delphi. An agreement in March had covered only about half that number, along with 113,000 unionists at GM. Delphi, a GM spinoff and the largest auto parts manufacturer in the country, filed for bankruptcy last October, calling for the voiding of its union contracts and has demand 40 percent wage cuts. In mid-June the judge in the case postponed a decision until August.

On June 23 the Wall Street Journal reported in an article titled, “Buyouts Promise a Big Boon for GM,” that so far 37,000 workers—28,000 at GM and 9,000 at Delphi—have accepted leaving their jobs as part of the plan. “GM in the past had said it hoped to cut 30,000 hourly jobs by 2008,” the big-business daily gloated, “but the buyout program has put it near that goal after less than a year.”

Over the past three decades the UAW membership has dropped from 1.5 million to 600,000 today. Only about 35 percent of auto workers are currently union members. Companies such as DaimlerChrysler and Toyota have opened nonunion factories in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. About one-third of U.S. auto production is now in the South.

The UAW convention promoted a strong protectionist theme, with many convention delegates wearing T-shirts that said, “American jobs are worth fighting for.” At the convention Gettelfinger argued that steps were needed to prevent “American” jobs from being “exported to Mexico, China, Thailand, Vietnam, India, and other low-wage nations.”

UAW convention delegates approved a proposal to take $60 million out of a nearly $925 million strike fund. Robert Betts, president of Local 2151 near Grand Rapids, Michigan, told the Free Press that the funds would instead be used to lobby Congress for anti-import laws—including trade measures against China—and to try to organize the U.S. plants of Toyota, Honda, and other Asian-based manufacturers.
 
 
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