Tentative Agreement With CAW And GM

[Liberalman]

Canadian Auto Workers or CAW reaches a deal with General Motors or GM.

I watched the press conference on CBC Newsworld http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/03/08/caw-gm.html where the president of CAW was announcing the deal and he went on to say that he approached GM before their contract was up and he went on to talk about the details before the membership even heard about it.

CAW President Ken Lewenza went onto to say that this union had to accept significant sacrifices and the union membership will vote on this later this week

With all the money that CAW is getting in union dues you would think that he might get some advice on how to conduct a proper press conferance. Ken should have asked Buzz Hargrove he has a lot of experience in this area.

Then Ken went onto say that he took this initiative to impress the Conservative government like that would really happen.

Canada still has to wait to see if the American government will let GM go into bankruptcy protection because we have to remember that it was President Obama that said that there should only be two car companies in America.

 

[Ron in Regina]

When President Obama said that there should only be two domestic
car companies in America, I think he meant GM and one other...not
the other two and no GM.

It's good to hear that the CAW is now willing to work at also helping
to try and save GM, but the timing is pretty goofy. It comes upon the
heels of news that GM's implosion is pretty much immanent in spit of
the bail-out cash to date. It would make you laugh if is wasn't so sad
and pathetic. Oh well...
____________________

 

[Tyr]

They didn't really have a choice in the matter. If GM goes under in the USA, it goes under in Canada as well.

In the short term, their "concessions" probably won't be enough to stave off massive layoffs at GM.

GM will survive as will Ford. In order for Chrysler to even be marginally viable they would have to merge with Ford and even then they'd be a bit player (as a division of Ford)

What is more crucial and possibly more damaging is how Linmar and Delphi will cope. They supply parts to ALL the automakers (European, Japanese, Korean and American)

 

[petros]

GM will get a large military contract soon enough to pull it out of troubles. The military won't be bringing all those used Abrams, Bradlys or Hummers back from Iraq. They wil need to be replaced and soon if they want to keep this war BS going.