GOP's demand a first in labor relations
According to Freep.com:
Just a year after the UAW agreed to historic contracts with the Detroit automakers, its leaders have to reopen the contract in the most extraordinary, even humiliating, conditions.
Republican U.S. senators, who ultimately scuttled a loan package, were in effect demanding a rewrite of the UAW contract last week, something labor experts said was unprecedented.
Richard Block, a professor in the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University, said GOP senators' attempts to rewrite the terms of the UAW contract opened a new and -- for unions -- unwelcome chapter in labor relations.
"I can't think of any time when it's happened when the government wrote a contract," he said. "On the other hand, when you go to Congress, stuff happens."
Referring to efforts by Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee to craft new union wage rates to match those paid to U.S. workers in plants owned by foreign car companies, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told CNN late last week, "Who would have ever thought that a United States senator would sit down and want to negotiate with a union?"
Once the auto companies and the UAW sought help from Congress, the clash may have become inevitable.
"One became involved in the political thicket, and I think there was a bit of retribution against the UAW," Block said. "One does not have to be a political analyst of brilliance to figure that one out."...click to continue.
