The major auto talks are now over in North America. After 3 months, the GM / American Axle strikers of New York and Michigan were bought out for about $365 million, with $215 million coming directly from GM. The GM Malibu employees in Kansas settled their strike over local issues reataining some seniority clauses. The GM workers in Ontario, Canada ratified their three year agreement by giving back vacation, and not getting any pay increase. Reports from the June 3, 2008 annual shareholder meeting will provide greater details about the net results of what GM gained from their attacks against the workers, and the what GM lost to the fightback mounted by the workers. GM appears to be primed for an all out global offensive against its workforce.

Here are two recent news articles that cover the GM results in fairly broad strokes:

---

Detroit Three shell out to Canadian autoworkers
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
By Rick Haglund
The Grand Rapids Press

Canadians have a long-held reputation for being exceedingly pleasant, civilized people.

But in the recently completed labor talks between the Canadian Auto Workers and the Detroit Three automakers, it was the Americans who turned out to be the big-hearted ones.

Last year, the automakers engaged in tough negotiations with the United Auto Workers, wringing out major concessions from the union in wage structures and health care.

But it's going to be a worry-free summer for 30,000 autoworkers to our north because the CAW this month wrapped up favorable three-year pacts with the Detroit Three. And the current contracts don't expire until Sept. 16.

Earlier this year, GM Chairman Rick Wagoner predicted negotiations with the CAW would be difficult because of the strengthening Canadian dollar, which has virtually eliminated Canada's long-held labor cost advantage over the United States.

And although Canada has universal health care, automakers pay certain costs for special drugs, private hospital rooms and other services for their retirees. Those costs are rising rapidly, much like here.

But automakers didn't push the CAW for a union-run trust to pay for retiree health care or a two-tier wage system, two major concessions they squeezed from the UAW.

"We were determined not to let that happen," CAW President Buzz Hargrove said in a telephone interview.

I'm still incredulous that the CAW gives Hargrove's cell phone number to reporters. You'd have a better chance of scoring George Clooney's cell number than UAW President Ron Gettelfinger's.

The CAW did agree to freeze base wages for three years and give up a week's vacation in exchange for a $3,500 payment. Workers will get cost-of-living raises in the second and third year of the contracts.

Still, the contract puts the Detroit Three's overall labor costs in Canada at about $10 an hour per worker higher than in the United States, said Dennis DesRosiers, a veteran analyst of the Canadian auto industry.

"It's an unbelievable contract," said DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. in suburban Toronto.

Hargrove credited Ford Motor Co. with agreeing to start negotiations early and drop proposals for a two-tier wage structure and a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) retirement health care trust. After Ford and the CAW reached an agreement on April 28, GM and Chrysler "had no alternative" but to follow the pattern set at Ford, Hargrove said.

"They would have had to go to war in Canada" to win deeper concessions from the CAW, DesRosiers said.

The Detroit Three automakers had no stomach for that, he said, but their beneficence may prove costly down the road.

"Canada is now the highest-cost place in the world to build vehicles," DesRosiers said. "That's not a good place to be."

Detroit Three shell out to Canadian autoworkers
---

May 24, 2008

GM Warns That Strikes Will Hurt Its Results
By JOHN D. STOLL
May 24, 2008; Page A3

General Motors Corp. shares hit their lowest level in 26 years after the auto maker said strikes against the company and one of its big suppliers would cut pretax results in the second quarter by $2 billion.

Shares fell 83 cents, or 4.5%, to close at $17.60, a new 52-week low. At one point, GM stock fell to $17.38, its lowest intraday level since Aug. 19, 1982.

The drop represents a setback for Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, who has been trying to turn around GM for three years, and reflects increasing investor frustration. The auto maker now has a market value of $9.95 billion -- about one quarter of its value when Mr. Wagoner took the helm in 2000.

Investors will get a chance to confront Mr. Wagoner on June 3, when GM holds its annual shareholders' meeting.

GM's woes stem from consumers' accelerating shift away from trucks and sport-utility vehicles, the bedrock of the Detroit auto makers, to small cars and other more fuel-efficient vehicles. Thursday, Ford Motor Co. said it won't return to profitability in 2009 as it had previously forecast, in reaction to the rapid decline in truck sales this year.

In a regulatory filing, GM said the 11-week strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. cut GM's truck production by 230,000 vehicles in the second quarter. GM estimated that drop would lower its pretax earnings by $1.8 billion, and warned it won't be able to make up that lost production later in the year because of slack truck demand.

GM contributed $215 million to help American Axle and the United Auto Workers reach an agreement. A new contract was ratified Thursday.

The auto maker also said two separate strikes by the UAW against GM plants near Lansing, Mich., and Fairfax, Kan., resulted in lost production of 33,000 crossover vehicles and Chevy Malibu sedans in the second quarter, and would cut pretax earnings by $200 million. The company said it expects to make up the lost production later this year.

The June 3 shareholders' meeting comes as GM is assembling a game plan for raising even more liquidity to weather the U.S. economic downturn, according to a person familiar with the situation.

On March 31, when the first quarter concluded, GM had $24 billion on hand, or $6 billion less than it had at the end of the third quarter of 2007. The company is expected to continue burning cash at a high rate throughout 2008, and some analysts see the trend continuing through next year if the U.S. market fails to perk up significantly.

As GM seeks additional capital, it may be forced to sell assets or even pledge its current assets to secure loans. GM spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem said the auto maker "continues assessing our liquidity alternatives."

In selling assets, GM's options may be limited, given that it sold off most of its noncore units in recent years. One possibility: selling closed factories. GM has a handful of its shuttered plants on the market and recently hired a firm to help it market its Doralville, Ga., assembly plant, where the auto maker will build minivans until it closes late in the third quarter.

The company hopes to complete the sale of the Georgia plant by the end of the year, a person familiar with the situation said.

GM Warns That Strikes Will Hurt Its Results

---
Thank you,
John Martyn