A Saturday demonstration outside of a Lowe’s home improvement store in a Detroit suburb brought out more than 150 local residents and religious leaders and even one state representative — all of whom were protesting the chain’s decision to pull its ads from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim after receiving numerous calls to do so by the Florida Family Association.

The group demonstrated outside of the Lowe’s in Allen Park, a Detroit suburb adjacent to the city where All-American Muslim is filmed.

The protestors chanted and held signs that read, “Boycott Bigotry” and, “Remember, All-American Muslims Shop” during the rally, which was attended by Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups.

Via the Huffington Post:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat and the first Muslim woman elected to the Michigan Legislature, said it was “disgusting” for Lowe’s to stop supporting a show that reflects America – the conservatives, liberals and even “the Kim Kardashians” in the Muslim community, she said.

“We’re asking the company to change their mind,” said protester Ray Holman, a legislative liaison for a United Auto Workers local. He said he was dismayed that the retailer “pulled sponsorship of a positive program.”

A local rabbi extended his support to clergy at the protest and local Arab Americans, saying he and other Jews would have been at the protest had it not fallen during the Jewish Sabbath.

“I hope that they would likewise stand up and demonstrate should something outrageous like this take place against another religion,” Rabbi Jason Miller said in a statement.

Lowe’s spokeswoman Karen Cobb said Saturday that the company respected the protestors’ opinion.

“We appreciate and respect everyone’s right to express their opinion peacefully,” she said.

According to a press release sent out by People for the American Way,  a handful of counter-protesters — including armed members of the Michigan Militia — came out to defend Lowe’s.

Critics have blasted Lowe’s for pulling its ads, saying that caving to a fringe group like the Family Association sets a negative precedent.

In a press release sent out last week, in which the group called on a complete boycott of Lowe’s, People for the American Way said that Lowe’s “should have ignored the canned emails and gone about its business,” but instead chose to cave “to a group of fanatics who want to make everyone live in accordance with their narrow and rigid religious beliefs.”

(Photo: Flickr Getty Images/Dave Delay)

The United Auto Workers has made it official: Its 41,000 members at Ford Motor Co. voted to accept the tentative agreement, the union announced Wednesday.

Results concluded Tuesday at the 58 UAW-Ford locals.

The final tally after two weeks is 63 percent in favor of the agreement with 22,031 “yes” votes to 37 percent voting against or 12,957 “no” votes, including 4,243 skilled trades voting in favor and 2,268 against. Total number of votes cast was 34,988.

The plan includes $16 billion in new investment intended to create 12,000 more jobs for autoworkers. UAW members have just begun voting on a proposed deal with Chrysler.

The Detroit News reports:

General Motors Co. rank-and-file approved the automaker’s proposed four-year contract with the United Auto Workers by a 2-to-1 majority, the union said Wednesday.

In the final tally, 65 percent of production workers and 63 percent of skilled trade workers voted in favor of the deal, ratifying a tentative agreement struck two weeks ago by GM and UAW bargainers. The new contract becomes effective immediately.

“The UAW and GM entered into this set of bargaining as America struggles with record levels of unemployment and an economy that shows little sign of improvement,” said UAW President Bob King in a statement released Wednesday morning.
In all, 48,500 workers from 81 locals got a chance to vote on the contract, which along with providing new jobs and more work for UAW members, boosts the entry-level pay by about $3 an hour, offers $75,000 buyouts for skilled trade workers, and includes a $5,000 signing bonus — to be paid out Oct. 14. Workers also will get a $1,000 “inflation protection” lump sum for the next three years of the agreement.

Negotiations continue on a new contract with Chrysler and Ford.

General Motors Co. will give its hourly workers a $5,000 signing bonus, if they approve a tentative contract agreement reached by the company and the United Auto Workers union Friday night, people familiar with the pact said Saturday.

Under the agreement, GM also has agreed to reopen its Spring Hill, Tenn. plant; base profit-sharing checks on North American profits, rather than on U.S. earnings; and give entry-level workers a $2-$3 an hour increase. Those so-called tier two employees, who are paid $14-$16 an hour, will be boosted to $16-$19 an hour.

Also, a person briefed on the deal said Saturday, the proposed contract includes buyout offers to GM’s skilled trade workers. The Detroit automaker has about 1,000 skilled tradesmen working on the line, rather than in skilled trades positions that it no longer needs. GM hopes to pare back the number of skilled trades workers on assembly lines. The tentative pact still must be approved by a vote of the union’s rank and file.

Ford and Chrysler are also in active negotiations with the auto worker’s union.

What does this all mean? Well, it means that GM is headed for bankruptcy. The government will try to push for a speedy reorganization and sale, but the company is a big, complicated beast, and so a standard Chapter 11 process, taking several years, could instead be the result. It’s difficult to sell cars while in bankruptcy (one presumes), so  a protracted process could ultimately lead to liquidation — that is, selling off GM assets down to the last lugnut-affixing robot.

The main problem is that the government is providing the bulk of the bankruptcy financing (some $50 billion), which could give it as much as a 70 percent stake in the new automaker. This is tricky business. For one thing, it means that if the reorganized company doesn’t do well, the taxpayers take a big hit. It also means that the government has a big interest in keeping the reorganized firm afloat, which increases the likelihood of political meddling in the industry and continued cash infusions or subsidies. But the real rub is that GM’s obligations are large while its potentially successful sub-units are small. And those potentially successful sub-units will not be successful if they are saddled with too many of GM’s large obligations. So, for this to really work, the government has to swallow a lot of GM’s baggage and let free a new, trimmed down, unburdened GM. If that new company does well, the equity stake will have value and taxpayers will get back some or most of their investment. If it doesn’t — and in this economy, it will be swimming up a waterfall — then the government will have shelled out tens of billions of dollars just to prop up GM for a matter of months and delay the inevitable reallocation of workers and capital away from an utterly failed enterprise.

High risk, tiny chance of breaking even. What’s not to like?

This United Auto Workers advertisement printed in The New York Times on December 3 was accompanied by text that described the auto industry crisis as a Main Street issue, not a Wall Street one. (uaw.org)

When the chief executives of the Big Three automakers first came to Washington to ask Congress for a $25 billion-bailout, they arrived in town on private jets.

When 16 active and retired members of the United Auto Workers headed to Washington on Sunday night to press the need for government help, they drove the 500-plus miles from Detroit in four American-made cars.

Dressed in baseball caps and UAW T-shirts and showing signs of fatigue after the nine-hour drive, the workers appeared at a press conference Monday morning on Capitol Hill to make their case for government assistance. The blue-collar image these members of the Auto Workers Caravan projected contrasted sharply with that of the well-heeled auto and Wall Street executives who had preceded them.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

It helped to underscore the difference between how they see the proposed bailout of the auto makers and that given Wall Street. Taxpayer money wouldn’t go to highly paid managers and executives, as it did on Wall Street. Instead, it would be a temporary loan to keep their industry afloat through the economic crisis and protect the jobs of rank-and-file American workers.

“The [auto] companies are asking for a fraction of the money that was given to Wall Street,” said Bill Alfred, president of UAW Local 35 and a member of the Auto Workers Caravan. “They’re only asking for a loan — not a free gift, not a free ride. They want to get this money to protect the industry and pay it back [to taxpayers]. … Those folks from Wall Street came and asked for money for free.”

UAW member Tony Browning emphasized that the money would be paid back to taxpayers once the companies get past the current economic downturn. “I work for the Chrysler corporation,” Browning said. “And we’ve been through this before, in 1979. … We got a loan in ’79, and we paid it back in record time, plus interest and everything. So that shows our credibility.”

During the debate over whether to bail out the car manufacturers or allow them to fall into bankruptcy, some lawmakers have blamed the UAW for the financial struggles of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. They say that workers’ overly generous wages and benefits have drained the companies’ resources and made it difficult for them to compete with manufacturers overseas. These union critics want concessions from the UAW as a precondition for any bailout.

Union leaders, not surprisingly, reject the notion that concessions are needed. “Talk of more givebacks by our union ignores the cuts we made just one year ago, when our union agreed to a 50 percent wage cut, down from $28 an hour to $14 an hour, and no pensions for new hires,” said Hammer. “Reducing our quality of life would have a ripple effect on our entire economy, and would just make things worse. The reality is that our labor constitutes just 8 percent of the price of a new car. We could work for free, and it wouldn’t solve the crisis.”

UAW local president Alfred rejected calls by some lawmakers for the ouster of GM CEO Rick Wagoner as part of any bailout. No such demands were made of the financial industry as a condition for receiving taxpayer money, he noted.

“General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are asking for $34 billion, and [some lawmakers] want to remove the executive of General Motors. So how many people do they want to remove from Citigroup for wanting, what is it, $400 billion? I’m thinking that’s a lot of floors they’re gonna have to clear in that building. So before they start calling for resignations, they’ve got to check what they’ve already done and correct that situation.”

It is not every day that the UAW defends the management of a Big Three company. Yet the automakers’ dire emergency has brought the leadership of the UAW and the companies to the same table at congressional hearings to plead for help. “At this point in time, we agree with the auto industry executives that yes, they need the bridge loan, that yes, they are truly in financial difficulty at this point in time, and therefore that the government needs to intervene,” said former UAW Local 235 president Wendy Thompson. “We agree on that question.”

But the auto workers made sure to hammer home their contrasts with the executives. “We didn’t fly here in our jets,” said Chrysler employee Browning. “We left them at home.”

The thinking is that if the union isn’t willing to cede some of these benefits as part of a larger bailout strategy, then Republicans will be unlikely to support it.

But Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, voiced concerns yesterday about a plan that would cut workers’ incomes.

“The union to its credit did just renegotiate the contract and new workers are going to take less,” Frank told CNN. “But frankly, I think there’s already been too much income inequality in this country to give them a tool to start undercutting what people already have.”

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger has wondered why critics of a Detroit bailout didn’t ask similar concessions from workers of bailed-out Wall Street firms, according to reports.

“Let’s go to AIG, Bear Stearns, active and retired workers: Did anybody go in and ask them to give back wages and benefit levels?” Gettelfinger said on WDIV-TV in Detroit. “What about the bond traders? Did anybody ask them? What about the cleaners in the building? Why would the UAW be any different?”

Democrats hope to take up legislation next month to help Detroit survive the downturn. If one side doesn’t give on the workers’ pay issue, however, it won’t likely move very far.