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NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2007
GM to dump retirees
Shreveport, La.--We have not been told details of what GM and the UAW have agreed to, but we will look to see what givebacks the new contract contains. Even new benefits hide givebacks.
For example, in the 1988 contract the big benefit was a new two-week vacation. Then we found out the vacation was exactly when we would normally have model changeover and be paid unemployment and supplemental unemployment pay, and it was in place of an annual $600 Christmas bonus. It was more new company benefit than benefit for us.
They already sharply reduced retiree medical benefits in the last contract--we do not know what this change will mean. I know more than most about how job conditions lead to health problems in retirement. My brother just died this summer. He is the fourth family member to die of lung cancer or emphysema after working in the Colorado uranium mines--my father, an uncle and a cousin had preceded him.
For workers still in the plant, GM has gone beyond replacing many production jobs with robots to eliminate most supervisors. They have been able to get production with fewer and fewer supervisors.
When I retired a couple years back the Shreveport plant already had just one supervisor for every 60 workers. Now any problem that comes up, like a team member being absent, the team leader is expected to solve, even though he is a union member. We have joked in the past that GM’s ideal would be two or three people in the office to handle payroll, and nobody else in management, yet still control production.
--GM Shreveport retiree
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