{"id":34452,"date":"2011-01-04T12:39:02","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T17:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=34452"},"modified":"2011-01-04T12:39:15","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T17:39:15","slug":"autoworkers-plan-auto-show-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2011\/01\/autoworkers-plan-auto-show-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Autoworkers Plan Auto Show Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UAW activists want the newly-resilient Detroit automakers to share some of their wealth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Disgruntled auto workers are planning to demonstrate outside the North American International Auto Show again this year just as United Auto Workers President Bob King is scheduled to launch a charm offensive the union\u2019s top brass hope will coax\u00a0workers from non-union plants into joining the UAW.<\/p>\n

The demonstration is set for January 9, the day before the Detroit Auto Show\u2019s official press days.<\/p>\n

The disgruntled workers are demanding greater militancy from King and the rest of the union leadership, which has committed to finding a way to compromise with executives at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler as well as other automakers.\u00a0 The UAW has made numerous concessions since 2007, when the last round of domestic contract negotiations took place \u2013 and the protests will argue that workers now deserve some of those concession back in light of the profits being rolled up by Detroit\u2019s Big Three.<\/p>\n

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Your High-Performance News Source!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Automakers, on the other hand will be under pressure to protect their new profits in order to pay off debt and to satisfy investors, looking for their own share of the carmakers income.<\/p>\n

The contrast on display at the auto show is very likely to shape the union\u2019s approach to the negotiations with the domestic carmakers later this year. King is expected to ask for a larger share of company profits in an effort to appease his critics inside the union.<\/p>\n

\u201cAuto companies are claiming a big turn-around, but what is ahead for autoworkers?\u201d asked Wendy Thompson, a retired auto worker, former local union officer and one of the organizers of the demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile CEOs at the auto show will be full of bravado over billions in profits, they are hiring, for the most part, temporary workers. When they do hire permanent workers, it will be under a two-tier pay structure — new hires will earn $14 an hour — near the poverty rate for a family of four,\u201d said.<\/p>\n

Thompson also said, \u201cThe U.S-Korea free trade agreement in no way represents fair trade.\u201d Instead the agreement, which has been endorsed by King and the UAW, will wind up hurting\u00a0workers in the United States or Korea, she predicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile worker productivity has soared over the past decades, workers haven\u2019t benefited. It is time to put workers back to work,\u201d she argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1950s the government subsidized the expansion of the auto industry with a massive highway construction program; today we need a government program to support mass transit and develop renewable energy,\u201d she said<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can manufacture buses, light rail and high-speed trains as well as wind and water turbines and solar panels along with environment-friendly cars and trucks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past twenty years, corporate America, with the aid of one-sided trade agreements, have managed to undermine the economic security of working people destroying entire communities,\u201d said David Dabney, a member of UAW Local 23 in Indianapolis, Ind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UAW activists want the newly-resilient Detroit automakers to share some of their wealth — and plan to protest outside the Detroit Auto Show to press their demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20009,"featured_media":31709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34452"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=34452"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=34452"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=34452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}