Former US House Speaker and REpublican party nominee Newt Gingrich recently touched on the auto industry at a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa. At his first real test as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Gingrich responded to a question about jobs leaving the United States and targeted the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Gingrich praised the international automakers with nonunion plants such as BMW, Mercedes, Honda and Nissan, and then stated that “the real problem is the UAW. It’s a work-rules problem; it’s not an hourly cost problem,” he told a Rotary Club breakfast meeting. “You can’t have continuous improvement if you’re not allowed to constantly modify and improve.”

The UAW has yet to respond to Gingrich’s comments.

[Source: Automotive News]

Despite the United Auto Workers (UAW) claiming that they’re backing off trying to organize a foreign auto plant in America by year’s end, the mission to do so isn’t off the table entirely. UAW has continued to plot a plan to unionize factories owned by Daimler and Volkswagen, it just won’t happen before 2012 comes.

In the past, the UAW had looked at unionizing plants belonging to Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota, but now the German automakers are considered easier targets. UAW is looking to take advantage of their close relationship with IG Metall, the German union that staffs the plants for both Daimler and Volkswagen, for its organizing efforts.

Overall though, things aren’t looking positive for the UAW, with membership dropping over 75-percent in the last 30 years. Organizing plants in the South has been difficult and foreign plants are largely against joining the UAW.

[Source: Reuters]

UAW’s focus on unionizing a foreign auto plant in America by year’s end has been dropped, showing a major shift in their strategy in the union’s recruiting efforts.

We’re shifting our strategy a little bit,” UAW President Bob King said. “We are not going to announce a target at all. We are not going to create a fight.”

The announcement by president Bob King comes days after Michele Martin, UAW spokeswoman, said that the union fell short of its year-end goal of unionizing a foreign plant on American soil. Martin’s words only solidified that the UAW is backing away from its original and aggressive campaign.

Originally one of King’s biggest priorities since becoming president in July of 2010, the UAW has faced major complications in its goal of unionizing a foreign plant with a majority of their workers declining to even negotiate with the UAW. Membership for the UAW continues to drop with a 42-percent decline from seven years ago. They currently sit at 377,000 members.

[Source: Left Lane News]

UAW members are scheduled to picket outside General Motors’ Orion Township Plant today, where the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano are built. Negotiations have stalled between the union and an in-house supplier owned by the Ambassador Bridge’s Moroun family.

According to Pat Sweeney, president of Orion’s UAW Local 5960, current LINC Logistics employees make $9 an hour working at the GM plant and lack health care benefits. The workers have been in the process of negotiating for months for their first contract, but last month an agreement was turned down because its proposed raises were offset by a high health care premium.

The LINC workers have unanimously voted back in June to strike if UAW leaders call for a walkout, though the union is still contemplating that decision. The union is working hard in getting both LINC and GM to be more generous, ultimately seeking fair wage and fair benefits.

GM is not involved in the negotiations but continue to monitor the situation. The Orion Township plant has always emphasized low costs since there is such little profit margins on the small cars being produced. Chevy’s Sonic is actually the only car of its size to be built in the United States; its competitors, such as Ford‘s Fiesta, turn to production in Mexico.

[Source: Detroit Free Press]

Local 551 of Chicago’s Ford Plant gave a resounding “no” to the new four-year labor contract. Local 551 represents about 6 percent of Ford’s United Auto Workers (UAW) employees and according to  secretary-treasurer Scott Houldieson of Local 551, the two-tier pay scale was one of the biggest reasons the plant’s workers voted against it.

The current agreement would pay less experienced second-tier employees $19.28 per hour, 70 percent less than the first tier. According to Houldieson, that wasn’t enough to sway many second-tier voters. There was also no cost-of-living allowance and a provision for profit sharing and a signing bonus instead of wage increases for veteran employees.

The negative vote might seem like a sign of things to come, but there are still two weeks left for the agreement to be ratified. “The Chicago vote is a troubling, though hardly fatal sign,” said Harley Shaiken of the University of California-Berkeley in an interview with Reuters.

“In the 2007 Chrysler ratification vote, some early plants voted ‘no’ but the later plants voted strongly ‘yes’ when, in part, they understood their vote could prove decisive. We won’t know the result until the last vote is counted,” he said.

Tom Saybolt, a former Ford attorney who now teaches at the University of Detroit-Mercy law school agreed and pointed out that some Ford plants historically vote “no.” In fact, the current tentative agreement is more generous than what workers at GM are getting and significantly better than the deal Chrysler made.

Saybolt said that gives more leverage to the UAW to push the contract with Ford forward. If that isn’t enough to convince workers to vote “yes,” it could mean Ford losing patience and moving jobs to Mexico. If the agreement passes, 20,000 new jobs will be created, but if it fails there is a chance that 12,000 jobs will move south of the border.

The plant currently builds the Ford Explorer, Ford Taurus and Lincoln MKS.

[Source: Reuters]

Ford is opening the floor to 2011′s contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers—which always ends in suspense.

Will the UAW walk away in anger? Will they threaten a strike? Will Ford shut down a couple more plants and idle production for months on end? Or will the ghost of Henry Ford send in the Pinkertons? It’s all up in the air, which makes for breathlessly thrilling news. Hey, automotive journalists have to keep themselves entertained somehow.

“We are reflecting upon our proud 70 year history of working together—a history of working with mutual trust and respect to effectively address difficult business challenges,” said John Fleming, vice president of Ford’s labor relations. ”We are committed to negotiating this year with the same transparency and honesty we always have upheld.”

The long-anticipated replacement for the Aveo, the Chevrolet Sonic, is set to drop in August. But a strike at the Sonic’s plant could delay this—thanks to a pay discrepancy among assembly workers.

The Sonic is being built by workers at the Orion assembly plant in Michigan, under the supervision of supplier LINC Logistics Co. Workers here make $10 per hour as opposed to the $14 to $28 they would make if they were UAW members at a GM plant. And today, workers at the Orion plant voted in overwhelming favor to authorize a strike, with 98% of workers voting yes.

Negotiations for a pay increase are set to increase soon, and with this authorization, union leaders could call for a work stoppage anytime. Despite this, GM spokespeople believe that the Sonic will still be released on time, as scheduled. Good luck, folks.

[Source: Autoblog]

UAW President Bob King is angling for seats on the Big Three’s respective Boards Of Directors, and will likely use this as a negotiating point when contracts are discussed with automakers this summer.

“I believe there should be workers’ representation on all boards,” King told The Detroit Bureau, arguing that German car companies employ the same practice, although German law legally mandates worker representation on car company boards. King also argued that the UAW should be given board seats as a “general principle”.

The Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association (VEBA), an organization responsible for UAW retiree health care benefits, currently holds seats at GM and Chrysler’s boards, and King claimed that VEBA would ultimately decide whether Chrysler can issue its IPO later this year.

[Source: The Detroit Bureau]

General Motors will invest $2 billion across 17 plants, as the company retools existing plants to build new products and hire more workers. GM confirmed that their Toledo, Ohio plant would receive $250 million in improvements and create 250 new jobs.

CEO Dan Akerson didn’t announced which plants would be infused with new capital, but the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant that builds the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS will almost certainly be one of them. The plant also builds the Chevrolet Volt, making it to be a prime contender for GM’s attention.

GM announced prior investments in other plants, including the Corvette’s factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky, but the latest round of capital is considered separate from these announcements. Some have speculated that GM’s reluctance to announce their plans could also be a means to gain publicity and avoid affecting upcoming negotiations with the UAW.

[Source: The Detroit News]

A group of 28 workers at General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio plant are suing both GM and the UAW, claiming that they were wrongly classified as temporary workers, resulting in a 40 percent pay cut.

The workers were hired in 2006, fired in 2007 and then re-hired 6 months later. The workers say they were classified improperly in June of 2008. The workers are hoping to get $3-$4 million in back pay, and are suing both GM and the UAW, stating that the Union failed to look out for their interests.

[Source: MLive Photo: Cleveland.com]