How responsible is the UAW regarding Ford's situation?

[spongebob]

Ahhh... first of all, that does suck.

My guess (and yes, i'm totally guessing here) is that if you were leaving a union job for another non-union (or different union, for that matter) job they probably didn't want to champion your cause since you would no longer be a card-carrying, dues-paying member.

Could that be it?

no. my first recourse should have been thru the union and although i was leaving they would have still been obligated to follow the grievance. i chose to go to the state, i was told, that company policy is what they would go by.

it was an issue actually covered by the policy and the contract though. both were very vague in description though. they were somewhat in line with each other though.

 

[spongebob]

Non-union companies prefer the use of "salary bands" to address wages. For example, during my time at General Electric, we had bands such as "Professional", "Senior Professional", "Executive", and "Senior Executive" just to name a few. The idea is to state a pay range by band, but then give the company maximum wiggle-room to work with the employee within that band. GE used a few bands, with wide pay ranges.

In the previous management job, we had something like 28 different employment bands (and corresponding pay ranges). It was actually wierd, because you couldn't just give someone a raise -- you had to move them from "industrial sewer" to "double-needle tacker" and crazy shit like that. Both of these band-based approaches are nifty ways to set a company's wage policy without locking them down to a specific number.

Unions generally frown on "banding" and prefer specific wage tables based on job description and time in job (and sometimes other metrics that are performance-based). They take a lot of flack over scales that are purely-based on "time in job" -- and rightly so since there is less discretion over subjective measures such as an employee's attitude.

sorry i had to go on that last post, it was left short.

the last company and now this company i worked for had a somewhat vague(compared to the contract) and minimal company policy. it only covered items like vacation(which was echoed exactly by the union contract) drug use(which was not covered by the contract), and behavioral items, which are generallly not covered by a contract from what ive seen.

you've pointed out some good points, but could be open to interpretation because some of it is not matching up to what ive seen.

im not sure about salary wages being covered under company policy, i never saw it but i do know that company policy never covered hourly wages.