Meeting Agenda: Bush and Automakers; UAW Convention
By Michelle Krebs March 26, 2007Some important auto-related meetings are on the docket this week and worth watching.
First up, President George Bush meets again with General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner, Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda.
On Tuesday, 1,500 UAW delegates meet in downtown Detroit to discuss issues for upcoming negotiations. The UAWâs contract with GM, Ford and Chrysler expires in September.
Bush Focuses on Flex-Fuels
The focus of meetings with the Big Three and President Bush will be on flexible-fuel vehicles, capable of using gasoline and ethanol blends.
The Big Three has pledged to double production of flex-fuel vehicles to 2 million a year by 2010, but insists it could do more if E85 was more widely available. Bush has emphasized flex-fuel as a way to meet his vow to cut U.S. gas consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.
Bush is expected to have a look at flex-fuel vehicles at the White House. GM will show a flex-fuel Chevrolet Impala that runs on E85, Ford will show its Edge HySeries, a concept plug-in hydrogen fuel cell hybrid, and Chrysler will show its Jeep Grand Cherokee that runs on B5, a biodiesel blend.
Last week, Bush toured GM and Ford plants in the Midwest, where the automakers promoted hybrids. Also last week, Mulally and LaSorda testified in Congress that raising fuel economy standards by 4 percent a year, under a White House plan, would be expensive and challenging.
Critical Contract Talks
The upcoming UAW-Big Three contracts talks may well prove to be the most critical in recent history.
The Big Three claim it desperately needs help on health care and pension issues. GM, in documents filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said it needed concessions from the union.
Meantime, the union is struggling to protect health care and pensions coverage for its members and retirees as well as maintain membership. Membership in the UAW dropped 17 percent to 557,000 members from 2000 to 2005.
Soldiers of Solidarity, a group of mainly workers from GM and bankruptcy parts-maker Delphi, are planning to picket, demanding the UAW leadership take a hard line with the automakers.
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