Detroit Auto Show: Demonstrations inside and out

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The contrast was striking: Featured at GM’s news conference was a group of about 600 rowdy GM employees bused in to participate in a ‘rally,’ chanting ‘100 more years!’ and waving signs -- ‘Game Changer,’ ‘Charged Up’ and ‘Here to Stay.’ The message was clearly ‘save our jobs.’ At the same moment, across the street from Cobo Center in downtown Detroit, about 50 autoworkers, union members and sympathizers stood in the knife-cold wind to demand the same thing. Only less politely.

‘What’s disgusting?!’ howled a man with a loudspeaker. ‘UNION BUSTING!!’ ‘What’s outrageous?!’ ‘SWEATSHOP WAGES!!’

The recent Washington three-ring circus over government-backed loans for the auto industry turned a harsh light on the United Auto Workers’ compensation. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), among others, argued that the government shouldn’t bail out the carmakers unless they can extract concessions from the UAW to bring members’ compensation in line with non-unionized autoworkers in the South.

It’s an argument that -- to say the least -- leaves autoworkers cold.

‘Non-union workers who make less than us are taught to resent us,’ said Dianne Feeley, a retired UAW Local 235 member at American Axle. ‘We are not enemies; we want the same things they want.’

According to Feeley, the industry’s problems aren’t its labor costs. Rather, she said, they come from overcapacity, bad product choices and the broken economy.

Kirsten Gibbs, on temporary furlough from Chrysler’s Warren stamping plant, where she works as a welder, was marching with her father, Joe. He’s a retired UAW member who also worked at Chrysler, in the Jefferson North Plant in Detroit.

‘What frustrates me is that they’re comparing us to the Southern worker. But our cost of living is higher,’ said the younger Gibbs. She said public perceptions of how much autoworkers make are greatly exaggerated. ‘It’s ridiculous that people think we’re all walking around with money falling out of our pockets.’

-- Dan Neil