4LT GS RoadsterLaid-off workers at General Motors Co.'s Orion assembly plant may not feel like the vanguard of an uncertain future for unionized autoworkers, but they probably are.
Not because their leaders are conspiring to "sell them out" or because managers of recently bankrupt GM are scheming to "ship their jobs overseas," two familiar (and oversimplified) scapegoats. They're trying to do just the opposite, as deeply offensive as their method is to generations of autoworkers seeing lower wages offered to those without enough seniority to resist.
Hundreds of UAW members laid off at Orion this week faced a deadline to decide whether to take a spot at GM's Lordstown, Ohio, plant. Their choice: Move 250 miles to ensure their current wages and benefits or risk being the lower-seniority members offered a reduced compensation package to stay at Orion and build a next-generation subcompact.
This is a glimpse of the new order governing the Detroit auto industry after its ignominious fall, taxpayer-financed resurrection and a conviction to bury for good a business model that was broken long before it collapsed under its own enormous weight.
DNAI
Not because their leaders are conspiring to "sell them out" or because managers of recently bankrupt GM are scheming to "ship their jobs overseas," two familiar (and oversimplified) scapegoats. They're trying to do just the opposite, as deeply offensive as their method is to generations of autoworkers seeing lower wages offered to those without enough seniority to resist.
Hundreds of UAW members laid off at Orion this week faced a deadline to decide whether to take a spot at GM's Lordstown, Ohio, plant. Their choice: Move 250 miles to ensure their current wages and benefits or risk being the lower-seniority members offered a reduced compensation package to stay at Orion and build a next-generation subcompact.
This is a glimpse of the new order governing the Detroit auto industry after its ignominious fall, taxpayer-financed resurrection and a conviction to bury for good a business model that was broken long before it collapsed under its own enormous weight.
DNAI
