“They could afford to have these gold-plated benefits, the jobs bank and all the stuff they had because there wasn’t as much competition,” Rattner mentioned. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, we live in a different world today. It’s a question: Do you want to have the jobs or do you want to have the compensation? Unfortunately, I don’t think in the modern world you can have both.”
Rattner, an funding banker, stepped in as President Barack Obama’s “car czar” in 2009. The UAW already had agreed to many concessions in its 2007 contracts, comparable to a two-tier wage construction and no pensions for brand spanking new hires. The union and automakers reopened the contracts in 2009 for additional givebacks, comparable to well being care cuts and the elimination of the roles financial institution, which paid staff whereas on layoff.
Rattner mentioned his conversations round that point with the UAW’s then-president, Ron Gettelfinger, have been “unbelievably constructive.” He stays impressed along with his first go to to the union’s Solidarity House headquarters, the place Gettelfinger introduced a “thoughtful PowerPoint presentation” on the challenges the union confronted.
“Ron Gettelfinger knew there had to be some sacrifice by the UAW to keep these companies from disappearing,” Rattner mentioned.
While some within the union have argued the concessions made then all the time have been meant to be momentary, Rattner disagrees.
“I don’t think there was ever that promise or suggestion,” he mentioned. “Our goal was to right-size the companies from a cost point of view so they could make money, and hopefully the workers would participate [in the companies’ success]. In terms of average wages, I don’t know that they’ve participated as much as I would have hoped, but there has been fairly substantial profit-sharing bonuses over this period of time, and I think there is an outcome here that would be very much in the spirit of what we were thinking about back in 2009.”
He mentioned the continued strike might be damaging, particularly to native economies in locations comparable to Michigan, however that he nonetheless believes the 2 sides can attain an settlement.
“I don’t think what’s on the table now from the auto companies is their last word,” mentioned Rattner, the CEO of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s agency Willett Advisors in New York. “The union started out with such an extreme position that it isn’t going to be meeting in the middle, if you want to use that as some kind of goal post. But I think by every indication, the union is going to come out of this in a better position than when they went in. But like anything of this sort, it’s not going to be all they hoped for.”
Source: www.autonews.com