Some GM Workers Uneasy About Health-Care Shift

WARREN, Mich. -- For nearly a decade, Michael Mineer followed an unwavering script at his job at General Motors.

"I shot the same three screws for nine years, 60 to 65 times an hour, five days a week," said Mineer, 57, a retired United Auto Workers member. "Three screws doesn't sound like a lot. It was a whole lot of screws."

Just as Mineer's day was planned for him at work, his retirement -- and that of 270,000 other retired GM workers -- had been set in stone for half a century: a lifetime, gold-plated health-care package that included full benefits not only for retired workers but also their families, with minimal payments for prescriptions and doctor visits.

Now, that security is being rattled. Yesterday, union leaders approved a new labor contract and sent it to the UAW's rank-and-file for ratification, which is expected by Oct. 10. The contract for the first time would shift the management of retiree health benefits from the company to the union.

The plan is called a voluntary employees' beneficiary association, or VEBA. GM would start the trust with about $35 billion over the next few years, money the union could invest to pay benefits. Its operation would be monitored by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

GM and UAW President Ronald A. Gettelfinger agreed on the four-year contract on Wednesday. It also includes guarantees that GM will continue to make cars and trucks at 16 unionized plants in the United States. Once approved, the deal with GM would be the template for upcoming talks with Ford and Chrysler.

The agreement would change what drew many workers to the Big Three automakers in the first place and helped create the blue-collar middle class, the idea of putting in 30 years of work in exchange for a company-backed retirement package.

"I support Ron Gettelfinger and what the international union is doing for us," Darrell DeJean, 54, an electrical technician at GM's Spring Hill, Tenn., plant, said this week. "But GM is a big corporation that's been around for a long, long time."

DeJean said of health-care funding: "If GM couldn't manage it, then how will the UAW do it?"

The VEBA is under attack from a small group of UAW activists. They think it would be significantly underfunded.

"They'd have to get Warren Buffett to manage this when its underfunded by 30 percent to beat health-care inflation," said Gregg Shotwell, a worker at a GM parts warehouse in Lansing, Mich., and a leader of the UAW Soldier of Solidarity opposition group. Soldier of Solidarity is urging workers to vote against the contract. "It's too much for the rank-and-file to swallow," he said.

In a radio interview in Detroit on Wednesday, Gettelfinger said he was looking forward to making the VEBA's case to his members. "I will be glad to stand up in front of anybody and defend that VEBA and show people they are going to be secure with their retirement benefits," Gettelfinger said on WJR-AM. "We are not afraid of that battle at all."