Corporations attempt to frame earned benefits as "legacy costs"

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Workers Independent News

Lede: WIN’s Doug Cunningham reports from Michigan on corporate efforts to rip off earned autoworker retiree benefits by tagging them as so-called “legacy costs”.

By Doug Cunningham

Stan Marshall is a retired Vice President of the UAW who now oversees retiree issues for UAW Region 1-C. Marshall says autoworkers, retired and active, are dead set against taking moiré away from retirees.

: “They know that it’s tough times for the bargaining team. But on the other hand they think that we’ve gave enough, when you see your corporate executives still rippin’ off the millions and millions of dollars that they do and always takin’ away from the worker on the floor or the retirees.”

Marshall is against the UAW taking over retiree health care with a trust fund called a VEBA like the USW agreed to do at Goodyear.

: ‘That’s a no-win situation. If you do that eventually you’re going lose your health care. And at Goodyear they might have had to do that. I don’t think we’re in that kind of position.”

Marshall former auto executives now calling themselves auto industry analysts are wrong to call the earned benefits the auto companies owe retired workers “legacy costs”.

: “They’re earned benefits. When we had a chance that we could have put them into our billfolds in wages, but instead we slacked off on the wages and put it into health care and also pensions. Ya know, when they’re tryin’ to take away those things those are things that we have paid for over the years. They’re ours.”

AUDIO story here: http://www.laborradio.org/files/lo/winsheadlines.ram



Read more: http://www.laborradio.org/node/6469

---

This story is not copyrighted and may be distributed freely.

[antigop]

1. You're damn right those are earned benefits

Workers took less pay over the years because they were *supposed* to get retiree health and pensions.

Now the companies want to renege.

And no thanks to Congress for passing the so-called Pension "Protection" Act last year. Thanks for nothing, Ted Kennedy.

[SharonAnn]

2. Yes, that's what needs to be said again and again. They're ours! We paid for them!

They're trying to steal them from us.

[LiberalFighter]

3. I voted yes on the contract with the knowledge I was receiving less in current wages

for the express purpose of the difference going towards our pension and other retirement benefits.

If I knew we weren't going to receive our pension and other benefits I would had wanted the difference up front. The problem is that it might had been spent by the time I retired.

We have a 401k program but that isn't mandatory. And the companies don't match our contributions.

We don't receive much in the way of profit sharing. At least with GM.

We don't receive stocks. Probably a good thing considering the way the business is operated by those in Detroit and the management idiots they hire at the plants.

[AwakeAtLast]

4. A 5th K & R for you!

:kick:

Corporations will never stop unless workers stand strong together!

:kick:

[Sherman A1]

5. Precisely

It's another example of how the issue is worded and we know that our dear leaders are great at the spin game. Estate taxes become "death taxes" etc.

I Love this quote......

“They’re earned benefits. When we had a chance that we could have put them into our billfolds in wages, but instead we slacked off on the wages and put it into health care and also pensions. Ya know, when they’re tryin’ to take away those things those are things that we have paid for over the years. They’re ours.”

I have seen a shining example in my own workplace (St. Louis Union Grocery Stores). The Meat Cutters (UFCW Local 88) always had great wages and these guys always had all of life's toys it seemed, but did so at the expense of their pensions. A couple of years ago they wanted to merge their pension plan with our (the Retail Clerks UFCW Local 655), imagine the uproar from us. We get over twice what they do in $'s per year of service because it was set up wisely to protect our retired workers. Nevertheless these are indeed "earned benefits" and not anything else. The Unions need to make sure that they counter spin this in the press and show how it affects their current, soon to be and retired workers. These are real people not just an amount added to the price of a car because their previous management couldn't do their math homework and figure the future very well which of course is shown by their wonderful gas guzzling designs we see on the road today. It's not the workers who have blame here it is inept and greedy management who want again to cheat the system (as was done with the introduction of SUV's to get around the CAFE standards) and that can't plan beyond the next quarter.

Take away of few of those CEO's golden parachutes and put them in Gitmo for the sun and water sports as THEY are and have been the real national security threat.

:toast:

[jody]

6. Agree! n/t

[DemoTex]

7. My pension stolen on 3/31/2003. CEO then took $10-MIL golden parachute.

My pension was part of my union (Air Line Pilots Assoc) contract. Like the rest of the contract (salary, benefits, working conditions, scheduling, etc), the pension was negotiated with the company. And here is what "management" knows, but won't say publicly: Contract negotiations are just the slicing of a finite pie. As the company grows and prospers, Labor's pie grows. In hard times, at least at my airline, labor agreed to shrinking the pie. In fact, in the post-9/11 contract, the US Airways pilots' agreed to the largest give-back in airline history. Of all airlines, all time..

But on 3/31/2003, US Airways management (under then-CEO Dave Siegel) stole the slice of pie that we always, at whatever cost to us, protected. They stole the slice of pie that we counted on, and in some contracts sacrificed for, to sustain us in later years. They did it with the help of a Republican bankruptcy judge.

And then the Board of Directors fired Siegel. He walked with almost $10-million.