Category Archives: labor issues

Volvo Brazil Metalworkers Strike Ends Well

The National Confederation of Metalworkers at Volvo Brazil have successfully ended the longest strike in the company’s history with an agreement on pay job security that was called in response to company threats to dismiss workers. Continue reading

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New Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice

The Council said it recognizes that employers, politicians and the 1% have always used race as a means of division, adding that the voices of all working people must be heard on complex racial issues in order to advance the fight for workers’ rights. Continue reading

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IG Metall Gets 3.4% Industry Pay Rise

“This is, by a wide margin, the biggest real wage increase for years,” said Suedwestmetall president Stefan Wolf, of the the region that got the increase and bonus. The industrial and automaking area is home to Daimler and Bosch, among other firms with 800,000 metal and electronics workers. Continue reading

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Oil Strike Escalates Nationwide in US. Biggest since 1980

The United Steelworkers (USW) oil strike over demands for improved safety provisions has escalated as it entered its second week. Workers at BP refineries in Ohio and Indiana have joined the oil strike that began on 1 February at nine other refineries. From California to Kentucky, this is the first nationwide strike in the industry for 35 years. Continue reading

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Mercedes Benz Headquarters Fleeing New Jersey for Georgia

Mercedes-Benz USA said it would relocate its corporate headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia from Montvale, New Jersey, claiming it will “strengthen the company’s position for long-term, sustainable growth.” Continue reading

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Globalization Comes at last to Unions. UAW Growing in South?

Taking a play from multinational corporations who have used globalization and misleadingly named ‘Free-trade’ agreements to evade taxes and drive down pay rates in the U.S., trade unions are now using their global clout to organize non-union auto plants in the Southern U.S. The latest example comes from Mississippi where the UAW has been campaigning for four years to establish a company-recognized trade union into the Nissan plant in Canton and its 4,000 workers. Nissan reported more than $1 billion in profits during the Japanese Q1. Continue reading

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Mercedes-Benz Charters a UAW Local in Alabama

The strategy that is emerging is a long-term UAW play involving pressure from IG Metall on German automakers. AutoInformed bets that coming will be a similar deal at the BMW plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Continue reading

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August US Auto Sales Up as Detroit Loses Share

The bad news for Detroit supplicants and the UAW came from the fact that offshore brands took a 56.5% share of the August auto market, up from 55.9% last month and 53.8% in June. Continue reading

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New VW SUV Goes to Chattanooga. UAW forms a Local. Further State Subsidies in Anti-Union South in Doubt?

In a compromise that involves the formation of a UAW local, Volkswagen Group has announced that its new midsize SUV will the built in Chattanooga starting at the end of 2016. The expansion was held up over the lack of a union and a works council structure that exists in every other VW plant in the world. State and local officials – including the Governor and Senior Senator – threatened to withhold subsidies if a union was formed for the expansion that doubles the workforce to 4,000. Continue reading

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Arena Football Players Join AFL-CIO

The Arena Football League Players Union, AFLPU, has joined the AFL-CIO following a unanimous vote by its Board of Player Representatives. The move comes as the league is about to add six teams in China to the fourteen teams that play indoors in the U.S. Continue reading

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Did Tennessee Governor Haslam Violate Worker’s Rights?

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and other Republican state lawmakers are charged with trying to prevent Volkswagen workers from obtaining union representation by threatening to withhold state aid for the now stalled expansion of the Chattanooga plant where the Passat is assembled. Continue reading

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Clean Diesel Technologies to pay $1.9 million to ex CFO

OSHA’s investigation found that the company violated the whistleblower provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act when it wrongfully terminated the former CFO for warning the board of directors about ethical and financial concerns raised by a proposed merger. Continue reading

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U.S. July Jobs Numbers are Dreadful

Even though the latest economic data show that the contraction during the Great Recession was slightly less severe than previously reported, it remains the largest decline since quarterly data became available in 1947. Cumulatively, real GDP fell by 4.3% during the recession. Moreover, the jobs lost then have never been recovered. Continue reading

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Opel Union Members in Germany Vote Down Labor Deal

Today, IG Metall union member employees of Adam Opel AG in Bochum voted against a revised labor agreement that would have offered their location some long-term jobs while cutting others. Since Opel management at the loss making GM subsidiary previously said that no further negotiations on the proposed labor agreement will take place, the production of the Zafira Tourer and the exclusion of compulsory separations will run out by the end of 2014. Continue reading

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GM Cuts Powertrain Locations in Efficiency Move

General Motors will close three leased facilities in Wixom, Michigan; Castleton, Indiana, and Torrance, California and consolidate their powertrain engineering activities into a Global Powertrain Engineering center in Pontiac, Michigan. GM R&D’s Propulsion Systems Research lab in Warren, Michigan will also relocate to the Pontiac campus, including its electric motor engineering . Continue reading

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