Dear Brothers and Sisters,

There has been a lot of energy around the recent appointment for HRD. This appointment was open to everyone, and quite a few people applied for it. The same type of assessments that were applied to our leaders and any new hires, we eventually get decided the outcome. These assessments were conducted under the auspices of DDI. Specifically, the role back of the Recognition responsibility back into the position that it belonged to, which looks like Quality Network. There was much ado about the person who was overseeing the Recognition System. That person was put into the position without the benefit of a posting after the appointment he had went away. So instead of going back to the floor then, he slid into the Recognition position that didn’t actually exist and without being opened up to the membership. Although he applied for the position of HRD, it is unfortunate that he did not qualify for the entire job, but those are the facts.

It was never brought to our attention as to how he got into Recognition until after he failed to make the short list for the final selection. This was not a good old boy selection, as a member of the Civil Rights Committee alleged, nor was it a skilled verses production as other people have said, and finally it wasn’t anything to do with minorities as that same Civil Rights person had suggested. Not one of the appointments I’ve been involved with could be attributed to my favoritism, racial, or minority prejudice. There is a full 30% of our appointed jobs that belong to minorities. I have taken personal feeling out of the equation, which is something I thought was supposed to happen. I look at who is best suited to do the job with their qualifications and what is their Local Union involvement for my portion of the appointment process. It isn’t only important after someone is appointed that they support the Local, it’s all the time.

That same Civil Rights Committee member alleged that people in the minorities didn’t apply for the job because they wouldn’t get appointed anyway. Is there anyone in this membership that can honestly tell me any person who was appointed thought I would appoint them. I think it would be just the opposite. Some of those appointed never thought I would have anything to do with appointing them. Nonetheless, they were appointed based on their qualifications and union involvement. There can be no place for personal or prejudicial feelings when it comes to making union appointments, which is again how I thought the membership would want me to act. I have supported the Civil Rights Committee in the past, and asked this membership to understand when they are conducting an investigation and to please cooperate. I’ve asked this membership to be tolerant and understanding when dealing with racial or minority issues in the past. I ask the Civil Rights Committee to do the same and have all the facts before making accusations.

V CAP Check Off is the only way we can donate money directly to the UAW Community Action Program out of our checks. This program helps candidates who help and support our union. Today, legislators are trying to change overtime rules. CAP needs help to fight it.

I know everyone is working hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Hopefully, we have all learned a valuable lesson from this spill. Mainly that our dies and processes were not stable. We have been very lucky that there haven’t been more spills. Management is aware that we can’t depend on luck to keep spills from happening, nor can we keep trying to inspect in quality. We can certainly try to protect our customer, the assembly plants, but at a tremendous cost. Our survival is based on our ability to make high quality parts at competitive prices. There are a lot of other stamping plants that would like our parts, and we can’t let them have them. We have placed a lot of pressure on production techs to inspect parts merely because they are being paid inspection wages. Giving everyone the raise and expecting them to inspect parts was easy, much easier than getting the job done.

Taking our inspectors out of the equation was even easier, maybe too easy. The ironic part is we have more people involved in inspection today than we have ever had. Until all of our dies are stable and the processes are in control, we will continue to have problems.

The selection process has started, and even though there was some confusion in the beginning, it is moving along smoothly now. After having conversation with the International Rep, it looks like we are the only plant who is having multiple applications. Everyone else was told the same thing we were originally told - "Only one application per person".

Vice President Shoemaker’s comments during the recent meetings on the economy were dismal at best. Nothing was said though that we don’t already know. We will still have to negotiate an agreement whether the economy is booming or floundering. Hopefully, Saddam will relent, and we won’t need to fight yet another war with Iraq. World opinion is turning against us, and this is something we haven’t had to deal with since Vietnam. Somewhere along the line we need to regain the moral high ground and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

There were elections in both sub councils that we are a part of. One for Alternate Top Negotiator for Maintenance in Sub 7. In Sub 4, elections for Vice Chairman and Sergeant at Arms. In Sub 4, George Brown was elected Sergeant of Arms. Congratulations to him for the honor.

There are packets of demands on the floor for the membership to look over. If you did not get one or cannot find one, let your committeeperson know and they will find you a copy. On Sunday, March 30^th at 1:00 p.m. we will have the demands meeting at the union hall.

Well, we are in and it is better. At least I think it’s better than being up front. There were a few hiccups like I still don’t have a key to my desks, and it’s hard finding all the stuff I moved; but it’s okay. Everything will come together, and it will be back to normal, only better.

The Health and Safety six month check will come starting April 2. It is important that we are all vigilant and aware of the things that can hurt us every day. Many times we get so used to doing the same job over and over again we take it for granted that everything will always work the same. Murphy’s Law says that if it can go wrong, it eventually will. That’s when we end up getting hurt, because we forgot for that instant what we were doing; and it usually costs us.

We have the five Millwrights we were authorized and even though they weren’t apprentices, I’m sure they will all do good jobs. We will focus on apprentices for all the trades where the numbers are dropping fast. During sub councils, I talked with many of the other Chairmen, and we are all in the same predicament when it comes to people. I’m sure in every local negotiation, people will be a big issue.

Vehicle sales are down and GM has reduced their projected volumes. If sales don’t pick up, it will only get worse. Last year we were glad we weren’t going into negotiations after September 11. If the economy doesn’t pick up soon, we won’t have to worry about working overtime. We’ll be worrying about working - period.

Remember, if you have a question, ask it. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Yours in solidarity,

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