Hard bargaining ahead in Detroit

As talks begin over autoworkers' contracts, the industry's generous benefits are under scrutiny.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 23, 2007 edition

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This week, automotive executives will sit down across from union workers to bargain over pay in an industry that seems to live on its own planet.

At a time of record corporate profits, Detroit's Big Three domestic automakers are losing billions of dollars.

As the broader US economy boasts an unusually low jobless rate of just 4.5 percent, auto–plant shutdowns have pushed unemployment in Michigan above 7 percent.

Growing numbers of US workers lack health insurance or traditional pensions. By contrast, the United Auto Workers (UAW) enjoy both these benefits. They can retire fully covered as young as 49 years old.

Yes, this industry is a world apart. Its ritualized labor talks are artifacts of a time when Big Labor and US automakers were more powerful economic forces.

But this year's negotiations are focused on financial survival, and they do have relevance for the rest of America. The tribulations of Detroit are also those of the overall economy: How to pay for healthcare. How to keep jobs from moving overseas.

These concerns have captured attention nationwide, as well as in Midwestern union halls. How Detroit navigates these issues in this summer's choreographed bargaining could bring lessons for the nation at large.

"This is a defining moment" for Detroit, says James Womack, an automotive expert at the Lean Enterprise Institute in Cambridge, Mass. "It could be the end of an era for a lot of things," he says, including "the idea that most healthcare costs are going to be borne by the employer."

For decades, the UAW has been one of the most successful unions in the nation, building and preserving an array of strong pay and benefits. The arrangement worked fine for both sides, as long as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler faced relatively little outside competition.

But since the 1970s, foreign competition has risen relentlessly, the Big Three have made mistakes, and the generous worker contracts have weighed on the companies' financial health.

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