Large UAW local votes 80 percent to reject Chrysler sellout faces strong rank-and-file opposition

The strong “no” vote on the first day of balloting is significant. It is well known that the UAW bureaucracy attempts to line up plants to vote first where it thinks it has the strongest margin of support. The St. Louis North Assembly plant is scheduled to launch the newly designed Dodge Ram in 2009, one of only a handful of plants that are promised a new product under terms of the tentative agreement. Its sister facility, the St. Louis South Assembly plant, is threatened with closure. The UAW probably calculated this would incline workers at the North plant to approve the deal. In this case, they miscalculated.

At another smaller Chrysler facility, the Kenosha, Wisconsin, engine plant, workers voted Thursday to approve the contract. The factory has been promised Chrysler’s new Phoenix V-6 engine.

The contract, patterned after the agreement with General Motors, sanctions the destruction of virtually all of the gains made by the UAW since the 1930s. It eliminates company-paid retiree health benefits and in its place establishes a multibillion-dollar Voluntary Beneficiary Association (VEBA) under the control of the UAW bureaucracy. The VEBA, which is grossly underfunded and cannot sustain existing benefit levels for retirees, will nonetheless provide the UAW with a huge new source of income.