Don't expect United Auto Workers chief Ron Gettelfinger to be at the wheel of a remade General Motors.
With GM workers set to approve a concessionary contract today, the UAW’s retiree health-care trust will own about 17.5 percent of the common stock in a restructured GM. All parties involved are hoping a new GM — freed from its money-losing operations — will emerge quickly from a likely bankruptcy filing on Monday.
UAW members at GM’s Fairfax plant, which has about 2,300 hourly workers, approved the agreement Wednesday.
The union’s health-care trust, called a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association or VEBA, expects to have one representative on a 12-member GM board, just as the union’s retiree trust at Chrysler will have a seat on a nine-member board. (The trust at Chrysler will own 55 percent of Chrysler after it emerges from bankruptcy.)
Nevertheless, a remade GM is not expected to translate into a remade role for the UAW, which will represent 40,000 GM hourly employees after downsizing eliminates 21,000 more jobs by the end of next year.
Read the complete story at kansascity.com
Comments