UAW, labor blast bonuses

United Auto Workers in Kenosha protested what they see as corporate excess Thursday, tearing up a “blank check” from taxpayers.

Union leaders from the Chrysler Kenosha Engine Plant and members of Local 72 said they were outraged that corporate executives were receiving big bonuses in the midst of federal bailouts, while lawmakers were demanding that autoworkers take cutbacks as part of the package of loans made to Chrysler and General Motors. Union members held a rally at the UAW Hall, inviting members of the labor community to attend.

Employees at the Engine Plant are facing layoffs, contract concessions and the possible shutdown of the factory as Chrysler and other American automakers are battling bankruptcy.

News of big bonuses being paid to white-collar executives at companies receiving federal bailouts has riled the membership. Earlier this month word that AIG financial products executives received bonuses totalling $165 million set off a storm of criticism.

“We are being forced by the government to reopen our contracts and give concessions,” said Vern Fisher, a Local 72 member for 36 years. “Then you hear these executives are getting bonuses and they say ‘well, they have a contract.”

Electrician Cale Kollman said he lost his job at Chrysler at the end of January. “We opened up a contract that was due to expire in 2011” as part of bailout negotiations. “And because they reopened the contract I was laid off from my job. I kind of find it disgusting that these other companies just get the money.”

At the Chrysler plant, workers are facing an uncertain future even if the company emerges from its current crisis. The engines built in Kenosha are scheduled to phase out of production with the launch of the company’s new Phoenix six-cylinder engine. Although Kenosha was expected to be one of three plants to put the Phoenix into production, Chrysler has now backed away from that plan, saying it is unclear whether there will be enough demand to support three factories.

Meanwhile, the two other plants slated to build the Phoenix — one in Trenton, Mich., a second in Saltillo, Mexico — are already getting ready to produce the engines for the 2010 model year.

For Kenosha workers, that plant in Mexico is source of frustration. Chrysler had originally come to Local 72 in 2006 asking for work rules concessions in exchange for securing the Phoenix plant here, changers workers agreed to. The state and local communities also agreed on a series of economic incentives to bring the plant here.

Kenosha had originally been expected to be the first of the new plants to begin construction, but when the company canceled plans for a new factory in Somers, deciding to retool the existing plant instead, it pushed Kenosha further behind the other sites.

“The work that we were promised is going to Mexico,” said Local 72 President Glenn Stark, saying that the possibility of a Mexican plant had never been mentioned as the union was negotiating the agreement to bring the new plant here.

Now, he worries, taxpayer bailout money is going to financial industry executives and in helping the auto industry at the expense of autoworkers. “It’s U.S. taxpayers’ money, it should be going to U.S. jobs,” he said.