http://labornotes.org/node/910
...as incarnated by the proud new owners of Chrysler Motors, namely Cerberus Capital Management:
In its 15 years of operation, Cerberus has bought up companies in a range of industries, from real estate to governmental outsourcing services to firearms to transportation .... Cerberus .... institutes cost-cutting measures and sells the restructured companies back to investors at big profits.... Last year it began making bids for a number of pieces of the U.S. auto industry.... GM's lucrative financing arm, GMAC, Tower Automotive, and Delphi.... GDX Automotive, CTA Acoustics, Guildford Mills, and Peguform....A metal eating Wall Street ogre indeed. While you're reading, savor well my favorite new wrinkle in the benefit strip fob-off department: introducing la VEBA, aka the Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association: if Cerberus can stir one of these into the mix, the flatfooted UAW itself will end up assuming "a huge chunk of Chrysler's health care costs."
Mark this gimmick down: you're likely to see it a lot in the next few years, at least until Uncle Sam sweeps all this unfunded corporate liability onto the taxpayers' plate. (BTW, "GM and Ford have sought similar agreements in the last two years.")
To get an idea of the money at stake if this Big Three offload on to the UAW goes through, "the UAW'S VEBA would assume an estimated $95 billion in current and future health care costs." Result: "the UAW could be forced to administer health care concessions to its own members."
So much for the treaty of Detroit, eh? Can it get any richer, uncle Walt?
I doubt it. So is our noble UAW ready to rumble -- ready to take all those fuckin' plants down with 'em, if that's what it takes?
Do you have to ask? Seems Gettlefinger's gang of lawful resolutes prefer -- drum roll please -- a vigorous legal gambit. Their model: those paragons of hard-biting, bare-knuckle struggle, the steelworkers, who though not having conducted any "successfully waged full-scale fightbacks", have had none the less "some limited success in using" -- grip something well bolted down now -- "strong successorship language in contracts"! Oh, and they've come forth to battle fire-breathing "financial tactics" too!
Oh sister Flynn, where be the likes of Big Bill and Jolly Joe Ettor when the mates really really need 'em?
