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Came home this evening from the match (see previous post) and saw that the contract has been settled. Per the Detroit News:
A new four-year national labor contract between Chrysler LLC and the United Auto Workers has been ratified by rank-and-file workers, overcoming significant opposition.
The agreement was approved by 56 percent of production workers and 51 percent of skilled trades workers, the UAW said in a statement Saturday. Ninety-four percent of office and clerical workers approved the pact and 79 percent of UAW-represented Chrysler engineers voted for the contract.
At least that’s settled. We’ll see what happen to Ford now…
My wife competed in her first Olympic-style weightlifting meet today, and won a silver medal for her age & weight class!! For a person who does not have an athletic background and has never competed before, this is a great accomplishment.
For those of you who are asking how did I do, I didn’t compete – I’m on injured reserve. Next time…
…because I just do not understand today’s generation, especially those out on the Left Coast.
I turned another year older this past week, and it seems that I always do what I would call an “internal assessment” of what I have done or witnessed in the past year or so. And this, of all things, popped out under the category of “I just don’t understand…”
Several weeks ago, I was channel-surfing and came across a “reality-show” on what I think was an MTV derivative channel. This show was holding a contest to see who, among some fairly attractive women, would become the main girlfriend of wrestler (I think) Shawn Michaels. Curious, I watched long enough to see the following.
Shawn left his girlfriend-to-be contestants in a room while he went off to perform. Of course, the girls decided to party, becoming quite inebriated along the way. He comes back to find just about everyone wasted, and one girl getting very sick. He helps her to the restroom just in time to have her heave the contents of her stomach into the porcelain god. During this episode, she turns her head and tells him “I love you” before turning her head back to heave some more.
In a stand alone cut-away where the he is commenting on the party and subsequent throne visits by this girl. His comment (and I’m paraphrasing here) is that while he was helping this girl throw up into the john, she turned to him and said, “I love you.” He then stated that that “was one of the most romantic moments of my life.”
!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
One of the most romantic moments of his life? Is he nuts, or is he just hamming it up for the cameras? But on further reflection, I wouldn’t doubt it.
I know that if I helped a gal throw up in a toilet from having too much to drink (and I have), the last thing on my mind is romance. And having the gal tell me that she loved me at that very moment would make me think that it’s the alcohol talking. The last person that I would want as a girlfriend is someone who can’t control themselves and drinks themselves sick.
But then again, I’m an old fart with outdated values who doesn’t know anything about today’s world…
What passes today as entertainment does not teach our children about life, real life. Entertainment today passes off the ridiculous and profane as normal, which it is anything but. But with today’s TV generation, and the parents either absent because of jobs or indifference, the TV now becomes a teaching window on life. And the children now model this behavior.
Why else is there the inability to understand that every little problem cannot be solved in an hour or less? Then there is the increased reporting of violence to resolve problems (more school-related shootings, for instance). And then there is the over-reliance on computers and technology to solve the problems of the world if not the individual. It may sound idealistic and very Star Trek, but reality has been skewed to the equivalent of sound bites on the 6 o’clock news. More’s the pity.
Our society, in general, appears to be headed to Hell in the hand-basket on the express-train, and no one seems to care. I found this quote (in part) over at Praesidium Respublicae which seems to sum up our society:
The average of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.
I think where we are at is somewhere in the selfishness / complacency / apathy portion, and are rapidly descending to the dependence mode. Independence is rapidly becoming passe, where self-reliance is seen more as an aberration than an asset. And if in doubt, let someone else (preferably the Government) take responsibility for it. The mantra seems to be: “Live for now, and let the future take care of itself.” Somehow, I cannot do that. It isn’t the way I was brought up, nor is it in my nature to have someone else control my life. I value my independence. But I digress once again…
Reality is not a TV show. It doesn’t follow a story-line, and all the characters in the white hats do not live happily ever after. It is unfair and very biased. There are no guarantees, no reruns, and the channel cannot be changed. It is hard, but with the right breaks and hard work, it can be comfortable. The Declaration of Independence stated that:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Not everyone will be happy, nor will they be a success. Sometimes the best you can do is hold your own because happiness is not a sure thing. It can be worked at and achieved with difficulty, but there are no guarantees. And TV distorts this reality.
If happiness is holding someone’s head while they are throwing up because they’re drunk and telling me they love me between retchings, I think I’ll pass…
Voting is almost done. I goofed – there’s one more plant over in Illinois that will be voting tomorrow.
But the votes are close. However, it does look like the contract will be ratified. And I have mixed thoughts on that as well.
The contract isn’t the best one that I think could have been agreed to, but given the economy and a new company, maybe it was the best one. At the same time, I really didn’t want to head back out to the picket line either.
We’ll know how the voting numbers turned out soon enough.
As I write this, the last Locals of the UAW will be voting, and 24-hours from now, we will know if the contract that was negotiated was ratified or not.
At this point in time, the voting has been very close. Quite frankly, it can go either way.
If the contract is not ratified, then there are several scenarios that can happen:
- We will continue to work while the negotiation committees work out another agreement.
- We would immediately go on strike.
- We would go on strike if negotiations break down after a couple of weeks.
I personally hope that it is number 1 and not 2 or 3…
This was posted at my old blog:
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By the time you read this post, I will be in the process of moving Tom’s Common Sense to another site. The last post with it’s screwy formatting finally did it. I can’t find the problem, and that’s it. I’ve had other mysteries as well with Blogger come up over the past couple of years, but enough is enough.
The new blog is Tom’s Fireside Chat at WordPress.com. It’s “a place for intelligent discussion and inspired ranting.”
There will some delays in moving all the comments over to the new site since my time is limited. I hope that everyone will visit soon and update their links.
Last, I will check back with this blog from time to time to catch the comments that people make in the interim, but please find and make your comments at Tom’s Fireside Chat .
See you there!
Coming into work this morning, I heard on the radio that Chrysler’s St. Louis Plant “overwhelmingly” voted down the national contract by an 81% vote while the Kenosha Wisconsin plant approved it with an 82% margin. Our voting will take place tomorrow afternoon, and it will be interesting to say the least.
I received a copy of the summary of the contract (salaried summary and hourly summary) a couple of days ago, and from what I read, I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I was alarmed. Of course there are numerous items that I read that didn’t strike me as being favorable to the Union Membership, and there just didn’t seem to be much that the Company was giving up.
One of the items that I noticed was a change in COLA. COLA is very important to me – no one likes to see their paycheck lose it’s purchasing power. The new formulation could actually reduce what I take home.
The next item I noticed is the wording of job security concerning life cycles of products. Who determines life-cycles of products? Management does. While there is a moratorium on idling or closing plants, that doesn’t mean that the plants cannot be cut back to a minimal production and staffing level. While this can happen underneath the auspices of a revised business climate, and the company is certainly entitled to take these actions, what bothers me is that the Union Leadership is touting an increased job security level for its members through this agreement. Last, the summary does not state any commitments by Chrysler to the plants beyond the terms of agreement, which is true job security.
And it goes on…
I understand that one of the Union’s chief negotiators is speaking out and wanting a return to the bargaining table, and a website (www.soldiersofsolidarity.com) has posted his letter to the rest of the Union leaders advocating this action. Additionally, the website has posted the following objections to the proposed contract agreement:
UAW-Chrysler 2007 Lowlights
Rather than compare what we got to what we had, the UAW-Chrysler “NEWSGRAM” makes bread crumbs look like meat and potatoes by comparing what bargainers gave away to what the company wished to take away.
“Chrysler had an agenda that was nothing but cutbacks.”
“Your bargaining team successfully resisted the company’s demand to cut your pay.”
Ignore the sales pitch and study the numbers. Not only will .10 cents per quarter be deducted from COLA raises but an additional $1.01 will also be deducted. As a result “your bargaining team successfully” cut $2.51 per hour over the life of the agreement. That is $100 per 40 hour week.
Lump sum payments are here today, gone tomorrow. Raises and cost of living adjustments are here today, and grow tomorrow. COLA and annual raises compound quarterly and pay dividends, week after week after week. COLA diversions compound deductions, month after month after month.
On top of that, new hires will start at $14 per hour, a standard well below the nonunion manufacturing average of $19.62 as cited by the UAW Research Department [www.uaw.org/facts/index.cfm]. Wages will be frozen for the next four years, but in 2011 everyone will be degraded.
Are you “core” or “non-core”? First class or second class? And what is the value of seniority if you can never transfer to a better job? The parties agreed “to consolidate classifications” [pg 121].
There will be two classifications among “core” workers: Team Member or Team Leader. “Every employee is a Team Member; there are no specialty job classifications.” [pgs 227-228]
Core workers will not be allowed to transfer to the better “non-core” jobs. If a worker is currently in a non-core job, they will be “red circled”. Management will have a powerful motivation to remove you and replace you with someone who will earn half as much.
“The parties have identified Non-Core product and process work totaling 8,000 jobs represented by the UAW that will be retained through a moratorium on outsourcing” [pg 159]. BUT in an “UNPUBLISHED LETTER” the parties agree “to meet and establish initial guidelines and parameters within 120 days of ratification that will be used to determine the application of the MOU” [pg 308]
In other words, we haven’t heard the last word. There’s more to come, including, “The parties will also determine appropriate application of core/non-core provisions to future Temporary Part Time (TPT) employees” [pg 308]. The future is increasingly temporary [see pg143].
Three facilities— Toledo Machining, Detroit Axle, and Marysville Axle — will be designated entirely non-core [pgs 154-155]. Nineteen Parts depots will be designated entirely non-core [pg 168]. All transport workers will be designated non-core [pg 151].
Despite the job security brouhaha in the “Newsgram”, all insourcing is “dependent upon a favorable business case” [pgs 159-160]. And despite the so called moratorium on outsourcing, the parties have “agreed to exit” janitorial, cardboard disposal, trash handling, ground, lawn care, snow removal, line sweepers, booth cleaning, machine cleaning, and chip handlers [pg 302]. But that’s just the beginning.
Skilled trades will be systematically reduced [pgs. 274-280]. “…any given classification may perform work normally belonging to another classification” [pg 275]
Forty-eight skilled classifications “will be incorporated into the Work Group Model based upon plant needs” [pgs 276-277].
“Implementation of the basic trade classifications into the Natural Work Groups is expected to occur no later than the end of the 2nd quarter, 2008” [pg 279].
Retirees were not spared. The VEBA is less than 50% funded. “In reality, the $11 billion you paid to get the health-benefit liabilities off your books will soon look outrageously cheap” [www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2007/10/11/Rescue-Memo]. But in reality, it’s $7.1 billion cash for $19 billion in liability. What’s a “debenture” to a private equity company? They can print stock at Kinkos. A seventeen year old prom queen wouldn’t buy that line from a quarterback in a tux.
According to Newsgram: “The company will pay an additional $1.5 billion to pay for retiree benefits from now until 2010 when the VEBA becomes operational.”
The company was already legally obligated to pay for retiree health care as a result of previous contracts. There was nothing “additional” about it.
If $1.5 billion is needed to cover retiree health care for the next two years, $8.8 billion will not last more than twelve years. Hence, the repeated phrases, “provide benefits at modified levels,” and “trustees will have the authority to make benefit adjustments” predict further rollbacks.
Stand your ground. There’s nowhere to run.
Labor Donated by Soldiers of Solidarity [www.soldiersofsolidarity.com ]
During our brief strike, many of us mused on the picket line what was going on at the bargaining table. After finding ourselves back at work the next day, it seemed that the strike was only for show. A comment in this article seemed to echo this sentiment:
The short strikes may have been more for show than an actual inability of the parties to agree on a new labor contract said David Cole, chairman of Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
“It’s hard to know what the real rationale was for the strikes, but it seems they were something designed to show that what the automakers and the union had agreed on was really important,” Cole said. “Now they can go to their members and say we have made concessions on wages and on health care costs, but we have fought for an agreement on job security.”
Did the Union negotiate a good agreement? I personally don’t think so. Did they negotiate in good faith to the Membership? I think they did, but I also think that they gave up too much in wages and COLA for the sake of VEBA.
Whether or not we will ratify this agreement will depend on the voting this week, or if it’s back to the table. In either case, it will be interesting.
…Tom’s Common Sense came into being by publishing the “mission statement” for what the blog was to do. By and large, I think it’s lived up to that semi-bold goal. After 230-some posts, I might be slowing down a little, and contemplating moving the blog somewhere else. But regardless, I’m still going to hold true to my beliefs and thoughts. I just wish that I had more time to write and visit the blogs of others on the blogroll. But in the end, it’s still about the content, isn’t it? So keep reading, and keep commenting. I’ll be seeing you around the Internet!
As if we don’t have enough to decide or worry about, it’s always something new. So I’m faced with a decision…
What is it, you may ask?
Is it who I’m going to vote for in the primaries and general election? Will it be Queen Hillary, Breck Edwards, Baba Obama, Tepid Thompson, Grinning Guiliani, or Ramrod Romney? I’m not telling, but it won’t be a Democratic candidate…
Is it going to be on an issue such as immigration reform, universal health care, Union activities, or defending my Constitutional Rights? Well, sorta, but not quite.
I’m thinking about moving this blog to another service such as WordPress.com.
Don’t get me wrong!! Blogger has been a great service for this exercise in free speech. But I’m always looking for something better, or maybe just different.
Blogger does have some good things going for it. Custom templates for one. As many of you know, this blog template has been tweaked, stretched, and dinked with for as long as this blog has been in existence. HaloScan adds trackbacks and well as a host of commenting & editing features. StatCounter adds loads of statistical information on who and where the hits to the blog are coming from. Adding the JavaScript coding for the neat scrollers and graphics makes this site unique from all the others out in bloggerland.
But there are some downsides. Currently, there is no way to back up your posts, so unless you keep copies of your posts somewhere, you could lose all of your work if Google/Blogger takes an unrecoverable dump without a way to restore the posts. With HaloScan, you do need a premium account to have the capability of exporting your blog’s comments, so that is an option. But if you don’t have posts to link the comments to, you’re hosed anyway.
Another downside is that I like to write my posts offline and then upload them using Microsoft’s Live Writer Beta. Even though it is made by Microsoft, it does a pretty decent job. The part about using this editor is that it will not allow me to add tags or categories to the posts that I’m writing. After submitting the post to be published, I then need to log into Blogger, access the posts editor, and then select the post just published and select the tags for that post. Just a bit cumbersome for my taste…
Last, to view all of this wonderful information from StatCounter and HaloScan requires that I log into each service separately. Yes, maybe I’m nitpicking somewhat, especially for what I’m getting for free, but I still need to see what’s out there and may offer something better for the long run.
WordPress.com addresses some of the above, but at a price. There are a number of standard templates to choose from with limited options for customization. Gone will be HaloScan and StatCounter as well as any Javascript scripts as the standard (free) part of the site will not allow this type of custom code. WordPress.com does not offer the functionality of StatCounter’s statistical functions and hit tracking.
On the plus side, posting with tags & categories is handled very well by Live Writer as well as other offline editors. Posts and comments can be exported to a XML file for importation into another WordPress blog, whether it is another one on WordPress.com or your own private website/blog (which is a long-term goal of mine). There is even the option of importing Blogger posts and comments (not HaloScan, though) into WordPress.com, although there are some application notes for importing HaloScan comments back into Blogger and then importing everything into WordPress.
So it comes down to a couple of questions: Is WordPress worth moving to? And if it is, is it worth importing this site’s posts to the new one and either manually or automatically moving the comments, or just start fresh?
More importantly, is it content that you are looking for, or the presentation, and will you link to the new site? (Personally, I think it’s the content that’s important, but that’s me…)
Against all my fears, we walked out of the building shortly after 11:00 this morning and headed for the picket line. Not a good feeling, I assure you.
I would much rather have been at my desk earning a living. But that’s not the case.
My first taste on carrying a sign this afternoon was mixed. Yeah, there were those idiots that screamed and hollered at foreign cars as they turned in, and those that behaved like children on recess, but for the most part, things were well behaved. That could change if this lasts more than a week.
Second time around is tomorrow morning at 6:00 am. Not looking forward to it – it promises to be a cold morning with rain. Yuck…
UPDATE!!!
It appears that the strike against Chrysler is over. Details are pending, but at least I’ll be back at work tomorrow.
