Both the unions salaries and CEO's salaries are ridiculous in regards to Delphi.

I keep hearing general comments like this and it makes me think that "education" is the ONLY thing people value anymore...it's sad. There are many people out there busting there @$$, buzzer to buzzer, day after day, and not easy "sit on your @$$" work either.
It's like this, everyone keeps saying, "anyone can do that job...", which is CRAP...

I know that technicians on the line work hard…it’s demanding labor but you can’t pay wages based just on how physically difficult the job is when the revenue generated by the product ultimately produced can’t support the wages paid it or when 1,000 other people are willing to do the same work for less pay.

It seems like this issue of “pay” is too often turned into an indication of how much someone is “worth”…the two have nothing to do with each other. Neither the NFL player nor the CEO nor some mid-level manager is worth more as a human being than the person who picks up my trash but that doesn’t mean they should all be paid the same.

The value of the outcome of the work in that position is what the person is being compensated for. A living wage is great but its economic suicide to pay a janitor $40,000 a year.....plus lets not even get into the fact that such a system would completely remove any incentives for people to work hard to advance into more monetarily rewarding careers.

Remarks of UAW President Ron Gettelfinger
Automotive News World Congress

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Thank you, Keith [Crain], for that generous introduction … and for inviting the UAW back to the Automotive News World Congress. I would like to compliment Automotive News for bringing together people from the auto industry who have a wide range of views. The UAW is proud to represent what we believe to be one of the most important voices in this industry: the workers who build the cars, trucks and auto parts.

Let me state in the beginning, the UAW will defend the interests of UAW members at Delphi. I am proud to stand with our Executive Board, especially Vice President Richard Shoemaker, our local union leadership and membership, and the five other international unions as we continue our efforts to work toward an equitable solution.

Over the years, jobs in the auto industry have enabled millions of hard-working men and women to move into the middle class and give their children not just more things, but more opportunities.

It is safe to say that many people in this room are where they’re at today because their parents or grandparents were members of our union.

There are some who say those days are over – that the very idea of decent wages, health care and retirement security for workers has been rendered obsolete by the harsh realities of globalization.

They argue that the only way to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States is to slash the wages of American workers to near poverty level.

In other words, take the low road. The UAW rejects that strategy because no matter how low you go, some other country will go lower – not only in wages but in safety conditions, human rights and environmental standards.

Harley Shaiken of the University of California at Berkeley tells of meeting two young women who worked at an automotive parts plant.

Their plant was relatively new with up-to-date technology and equipment. Productivity and quality were high. Labor-management relations were good.

One morning the workers were brought together and were told they had priced themselves out of the market, and their jobs were moving to China. This plant was in Tijuana and these workers were making $1 an hour.

As Professor Shaiken noted, globalization is creating a new reality for workers: instead of high productivity prosperity, the race to the bottom is creating high productivity poverty.

The question becomes: Is globalization an irresistible force of nature beyond our power to shape and control? It isn’t. It is the result of conscious choices by government and corporate policymakers around the world. And, in our view, U.S. policymakers have made a number of wrong choices.

Anyone who’s followed the UAW over the years knows that our union has been and continues to be an outspoken critic of U.S. trade policy. And, many of us have been on opposite sides in the debates over NAFTA, the 2000 U.S.-China PNTR agreement, the renewal of “fast track” authority and other issues.

But we have to ask ourselves: How can anyone reasonably claim that U.S. trade policy is working when it has produced year-after-year of record trade deficits?

The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services for 2004 was $617.6 billion – or nearly $1.9 billion a day. And the trade deficit for 2005 is projected to reach $740 billion – nearly $200 billion in automotive trade alone.

Some people say that’s nothing to worry about. After all, new jobs are being created. However, this ignores the fact that we have had a net job loss in the U.S..

And, we expect those job losses to mount in light of the announcements by GM and Ford that they intend to dramatically increase their foreign sourcing of parts in coming years….and in light of the plans of several major Tier 1 suppliers to shift production to China and other low-wage developing countries.

But, trade policy isn’t the only area where we need a fundamentally new approach.

We spend far more of our Gross Domestic Product – $1.9 trillion – and far more per person – on health care than any other country. Yet nearly 46 million Americans don’t have any health insurance and millions more are underinsured. And for many of those with insurance, premiums are skyrocketing while coverage is being cut.

And for all our health care spending, the U.S. ranks near the bottom among industrialized nations on life expectancy, infant mortality and virtually every other measure. In fact, the infant mortality rate in our nation’s capital is more than double the infant mortality rate in Beijing.

Prescription drugs cost more in the United States than in any other country. One reason is that the pharmaceutical industry has more than 1,200 lobbyists in Washington – or more than two lobbyists for every member of Congress.

And the drug industry certainly flexed its political muscles a few years ago when the Administration was putting together its Medicare drug program. Drug lobbyists were literally at the table drafting that legislation. So it’s no surprise that the legislation explicitly banned Medicare from using the leverage of mass purchasing to bargain lower drug prices.

Obviously, our free enterprise system is not working when it comes to America’s health care crisis. Some people say the answer is more market competition in health care. Well, we’ve already tried that, and it doesn’t work.

As economist Paul Krugman points out, “In health care, the private sector is often bloated and bureaucratic. … The United States has the most privatized, competitive health care system in the advanced world; it also has by far the highest costs and worst results.”

One reason for that gap between spending and results is that the U.S. spends more than $1,000 per capita – or nearly $400 billion – a year on health care related paperwork and administration. Canada spends about $300 per capita.

I should point out that the administrative costs in the private part of our health care system are dramatically higher than in our public health care programs. According to the medical literature, administrative costs, broadly defined, can be as high as 25 percent or even higher in private health plans. Whereas, the administrative cost of Medicare is only two to three percent. This is one instance where government is far more efficient than the private sector.

Others say the answer to the health care cost crisis is shifting costs from employers to workers. The argument is that if individuals have to pay more out-of-pocket for health care, they’ll be more careful consumers.

The UAW doesn’t believe that’s true. After all, health care is not like Pepsi-Cola. It is not a consumer product. The fact is, there’s been more cost-shifting in the U.S. than in any other industrialized nation, yet our costs are rising far faster.

The agreement the UAW recently reached with GM and Ford to lower retiree health care costs was a painful and difficult decision for our union. And it was only done after an in-depth, careful analysis of the companies’ finances. By giving up a pay increase, our active members showed their commitment to stand by our retirees – on whose shoulders all of us stand.

We have repeatedly said that America’s health care cost crisis can’t be solved by one union or one industry. It can’t be solved at the collective bargaining table. And it can’t be solved by employers slashing health care coverage for active workers or eliminating retiree heath care coverage. This is a national crisis that demands a national solution. So what needs to be done?

The UAW has long advocated single-payer national health insurance as the most efficient and fairest way to ensure that everyone in America gets the health care they need when they need it.

We still believe that, and we will continue to fight for it.

However, inaction is not an option. Instead, government, labor and corporate America need to work together to come up with new approaches to at least make incremental progress on health care costs in the near term.

A third area where we urgently need new national policies is energy and the environment.

Although the vast majority of Americans agree that as a nation we need to do more to reduce our dependence on oil for both national security and environmental reasons, the public debate on this critical issue has generated more heat than light.

We’ve got to address this issue and soon because global demand for oil is growing rapidly as China, India and other developing countries increase their consumption. According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for oil – now about 85 million barrels a day – will increase by more than 50 percent to 130 million barrels day between now and 2030 if nothing is done. As some U.S. senators have pointed out, the United States dependence on oil means dependence on foreign oil, because U.S. oil reserves are less than one percent of the world’s oil reserves.

We need to reduce our consumption of oil and that obviously poses a tremendous challenge for the auto industry.

It also presents a tremendous opportunity to develop bold new national policies that promote greater energy independence, improve our environment and create tens of thousands of good jobs in the auto industry.

This will make it possible for all automakers and automotive parts suppliers to move forward aggressively with investment in the domestic production of alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles.

Is this a political non-starter? Well, several members of Congress – Republicans and Democrats; conservatives, moderates and progressives – are already working on legislation aimed at these goals.

A bipartisan group of 10 senators has introduced the “Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act” and Senator Obama and Representative Inslee have introduced the “Health Care for Hybrid Act.”

While, the UAW doesn’t endorse all the specifics in these bills; we do wholeheartedly support the central thrust of these proposals: that the government can and should promote greater energy independence by providing incentives for auto companies to manufacture alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles and components in the United States.

We are not advocating a “bail out for Detroit’s Big Three.” We firmly believe that any incentives must be designed to establish a truly level playing field among all the automakers and automotive parts suppliers. We believe that, in the near term, the most important thing the federal government can do to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil would be to aggressively promote the production, sale and use of alternative fuel vehicles.

Several automakers are already producing vehicles that can run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gas. This technology is relatively inexpensive – about $150 per vehicle.

The problem is that production and sales of alternative fuel vehicles represent only a small fraction of the market. And the actual use of alternative fuels has been hampered by the bottlenecks in processing and, more importantly, the lack of a distribution network.

The following are some possible ideas for consideration:

1. Mandating that a certain percentage of all vehicles sold in the U.S. be flex-fuel capable by a specified date. Indeed, there’s no reason why automakers can’t make 100 percent of their vehicles flex-fuel capable within a reasonable timeframe.

2. Providing incentives to encourage the creation of more processing plants to increase the supply of alternative fuels.

3. Increasing and extending the tax credit that was included in the 2005 Energy Bill to encourage the conversion of existing filling stations so they have the capability to distribute alternative fuels.

As we know, Brazil has been successful with a similar strategy that requires all vehicles sold there to run on a blend of sugar cane, alcohol and gas, and automakers have had no problem meeting Brazil’s requirements.

The UAW also believes that the federal government should take steps to accelerate the introduction of energy-saving advanced technology vehicles such as hybrids, clean diesels and hydrogen fuel cells. The government already offers a tax credit, based on a complicated formula, to consumers who purchase these vehicles. That helps demand somewhat, but because the consumer tax credit applies regardless of where the vehicles and their key components are built, it has the effect of subsidizing overseas production at the expense of jobs in the U.S.

A study by the University of Michigan indicates automotive job loss will intensify by tens of thousands of U.S. jobs as gas-electric hybrids and clean diesels gain a larger share of the U.S. market because all the key components for these advanced technology vehicles are currently manufactured overseas.

We believe that accelerating the production and sales of hybrids, clean diesel and other advanced technology vehicles is in our national interest from the standpoint of greater energy independence and a cleaner environment.

Isn’t it also in our nation’s economic interest for advanced technology vehicles and components to be manufactured here, creating good jobs for American workers and generating increased tax revenues for federal, state and local governments?

The UAW believes the federal government should provide incentives to encourage the production of these advanced vehicles and their key components.

Let me add that there is a flaw in the Foreign Sales Corporation tax legislation passed by Congress in 2004.

The FSC was supposed to encourage domestic manufacturing by lowering the corporate tax rate on manufacturing activities in the U.S. This objective had broad bipartisan support.

Unfortunately, the way the final legislation was written, the reduction in the tax rate on domestic manufacturing provides no benefit at all to GM and Ford and little benefit to the Chrysler Group because of their current financial situations. In contrast, the foreign automakers are receiving substantial tax benefits from this legislation.

To correct this imbalance, the UAW urges Congress to amend the FSC law to allow companies to either (1) receive the corporate tax reductions provided in the current law, or (2) receive equivalent assistance with health care costs.

There are a number of ways this health care assistance could be structured. For example, through existing TAA health care tax credits, through catastrophic reinsurance programs or through special loan guarantees to assist companies in financing retiree health care.

Whatever the precise mechanism, providing this type of health care assistance would help level the playing field among the auto companies. It would help ensure that retirees continue to receive the health care benefits they earned. And it would free up resources so all the auto companies can move forward aggressively with investments in the domestic production of advanced technology vehicles and their key components.

In addition, we are proposing that assistance provided to the auto companies – whether through the existing corporate tax rate reduction or the alternative of health care relief – be expressly tied to the company’s investment in the domestic production of flex-fuel and advanced technology vehicles and their key components. In closing, there are many issues that are important that I have not touched on tonight: issues like currency manipulation by China and Japan that has a dramatic effect on the U.S. auto industry; the fact that executive pay in the U.S. is 400 times greater than workers’ pay; and the fact that U.S. trade agreements include no provisions for labor rights or environmental protections.

Now, the UAW does not pretend that we have all the answers or that the proposals we’ve outlined tonight are perfect. But I strongly believe that they are at the very least a sound, sensible, fair and balanced starting point for bold new national policies to reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, protect our environment, and create good manufacturing jobs in the United States.

By retooling auto assembly and parts plants, we can help America win the battle for energy independence and a cleaner environment. And, in the process, we can keep experienced, skilled American workers working – and create the auto jobs of the future.

The UAW believes that the American Dream is about the hopes and aspirations that we all share for future generations. It is a dream that we will not give up on – not for our members and not for the American people.