THE REALITY OF OBAMA AND HIS ASSAULT ON GM WOKERS ON BEHALF OF THE CORRUPT GREED DRIVEN GM MANAGMENT:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/02/obama-gm-reality-of-this-obama-con-job.html
THIS IS OBAMA’S REAL BAILOUT OF
G.M.:
“The record profits owe
largely to the cuts imposed on auto workers in the United States and Canada,
under the auspices of the United Auto Workers and Canadian Auto Workers unions,
including a new starting wage of barely $14 an hour, half the basic wage for
longtime workers, and cuts in health benefits, pensions and health care for
retirees.”
GM posts record profits, prepares
more cuts
By Patrick Martin
18 February 2012
18 February 2012
General
Motors reported a record $7.6 billion profit for 2011 Thursday, but the largest
US automaker made clear that it would continue to pursue cuts in jobs, wages
and benefits for its worldwide workforce, with the direct assistance of the
United Auto Workers.
It
was the eighth consecutive quarterly profit for the company since its forced
bankruptcy in 2009, but the smallest during that period, a signal that further
cost-cutting measures will be demanded by the financial markets. Worldwide
revenues rose 11 percent to $150.3 billion, but profits soared 62 percent
compared to 2010.
GM
was fueled by record pretax profits of $7.2 billion in North America. Asian
operations also posted a significant profit, about $1.8 billion, but GM lost
money in South America and particularly Europe, where its subsidiaries have
accumulated losses of $14 billion since 1999.
Global
sales rose 7 percent to 9.03 million vehicles, putting GM once again in first
place, surpassing Toyota. But fourth quarter revenue was only $500 million, or
28 cents a share, significantly below analyst expectations, which averaged 42
cents a share.
Chairman
and CEO Dan Akerson—whose own salary and bonus approach $10 million—hailed the
results of 2011, which included cost-cutting measures that had the effect of
“reducing our break-even level in Europe and South America and driving higher
revenues around the world.”
The record profits owe
largely to the cuts imposed on auto workers in the United States and Canada,
under the auspices of the United Auto Workers and Canadian Auto Workers unions,
including a new starting wage of barely $14 an hour, half the basic wage for
longtime workers, and cuts in health benefits, pensions and health care for
retirees.
While
the company made a $7.2 billion profit in North America, nearly $150,000 for
every one of its 47,500 US production workers, these workers will receive a
derisory $7,000 in profit-sharing checks in March.
No sooner than it broke its
previous record for profits, than the company announced a new attack on white-collar
workers. GM
said Wednesday it would freeze its pension plan for 19,000 US workers hired
before 2001, shifting them to a 401(k) plan with a defined contribution and no
guaranteed benefit. Salaried workers
hired after 2001 are already denied a pension. The company will also
institute annual bonuses rather than pay increases for its 26,000 salaried
employees.
GM
spokesmen emphasized the company’s focus on improving margins in its European
operations, which lost $727 million last year. Last month Akerson placed Vice
Chairman Steve Girsky in charge of the European management board, and shifted a
group of US-based executives across the Atlantic.
Particularly
critical will be the role of United Auto Workers President Bob King, who is to
be named to the supervisory board of GM’s German subsidiary, Adam Opel AG,
according to a report Monday in the German publication Handelsblatt. The
supervisory board has 20 seats divided equally between GM management and the IG
Metall union, which will nominate King as one of its representatives.
Press
coverage of the King nomination suggested that his selection was “another sign
of how serious the Detroit automaker is about restructuring Opel,” the Detroit
News observed. “The company is reportedly working on a major restructuring
of Opel and its broader European business that will likely entail plant
closings and significant concessions from unions—the same sort of concessions
that GM won from the UAW during the economic crisis in the United States.”
The
Detroit Free Press headlined the same decision: “GM putting new team in
charge of Europe; UAW President Bob King to join Opel board.” As the title
demonstrates, King is regarded as an integral part of the GM “team” that will
spearhead the company’s cost-cutting drive at its German subsidiary.
Reuters
news agency put it even more bluntly, reporting the selection of King under the
headline, “As Opel losses mount, GM seeks union-backed cuts.” The article noted
that an IG Metall leader visited King in Detroit before his appointment,
confirming that the German trade union executives are joining forces with their
American counterparts and the corporate bosses to gang up against the workers
on both continents.
The
most likely outcome of these backroom consultations is a decision to close
several GM plants in Europe, most likely the Opel plant at Bochum in the Ruhr,
with 3,100 workers, and the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port near Liverpool in
Britain’s blighted industrial northwest, with 2,100 workers.
The
collaboration of the unions is essential to GM to strangle resistance from the
workers. An analyst for HIS Global Insight wrote Wednesday, in a research note,
that the shakeup in GM’s European leadership “would indicate that the company
is foreseeing some major industrial unrest as a result of the expected
restructuring plan.”
Under
the impact of the global financial collapse and the crisis in the euro zone,
car sales have fallen 15 percent in 2011 compared with 2007 and are projected
to decline another 6 percent this year.
“There
is increasing frustration with Opel and a feeling that the cuts two years ago
did not go nearly deep enough,” one company official told the Wall Street
Journal. “If Opel is going to get fixed, it is going to get fixed now and
cuts are going to be deep.”
No comments:
Post a Comment