UAW: Prepare to strike Delphi (DetFP headline article)

[Bozita]

front page, above the fold:

http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/delphi12e_20051012.htm

UAW: Prepare to strike Delphi

BY MICHAEL ELLIS
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

October 12, 2005


Hourly workers at Delphi Corp. should begin preparing to strike the auto parts maker if a bankruptcy judge throws out their contract, the UAW local at one of Delphi's largest U.S. plants told its members Tuesday.

-snip-

"We had a preview of what a Delphi strike looks like in 1998 when the UAW struck just two plants including a Delphi facility in Flint, Michigan," said Harley Shaiken, professor at the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in labor issues. "A strike by the UAW at Delphi could mean the end of the company."


Those strikes at two Delphi parts plants virtually shut down GM across North America for nearly two months, causing its U.S. sales and market share to drop and costing millions of dollars.


But Delphi may be putting its factory workers in much the same position Northwest Airlines put its mechanics and plane cleaners this summer: demanding concessions that are so drastic, workers can't possibly accept them. In Northwest's case, it wanted to wipe out nearly half the union's jobs and cut the pay of those who remained by about 25%.

-snip-

more...

[Delphinus]

1. I recall that strike,

but I wonder what good it's going to do for the workers at Delphi? How is a strike going to help them?

[Sadie5]

2. GM owns

a lot of money making concerns that they don't want shut down. They have lucrative Gov contracts at some of these places.

[Bozita]

3. It's not "what good it's going to do for the workers"

Not any longer. These people are pissed. If they're going down, they're gonna take someone/something along.

[anotherdrew]

4. they might as well do it now

hell, burn the damn place down if their contract is thrown out, delphi plans to move everything overseas and screw the American worker again. why? so that their god-damn greedy execs can pocket millions upon millions of dollars for doing what we'll generously call "their jobs". Apparently their jobs were to run the company into the ground. They and their ilk have just about finished turning this country into a third world nation. Fuck them

Why in hell the unions ever agreeded to let the damn blood sucking companies manage the pensions funds in beyond me, they should have been payuing that into a union managed pension fund.

[sarcasmo]

5. Here in Michigan with the #2 Unemployment rate in the Country.

I doubt a strike would last very long before some crossed or scabs were hired.