DETROIT -- United Auto Workers President Stephen Yokich is giving no indication that his union's troubled relations with General Motors Corp. have improved since last year's costly strikes virtually shut down the No. 1 automaker's North American operations.
"We still have our problems," Yokich told about 2,000 union leaders Sunday as they gathered to set an agenda for this year's national contract talks with GM, Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler unit of DaimlerChrysler AG.Yokich said job security again would be the UAW's priority when it begins the triennial contract talks in June on behalf of about 396,000 U.S. workers. And he leveled his most pointed attack yet on GM's plans to reduce labor costs at its small-car plants through "modular" assembly methods.
Last summer's strikes at two parts plants in Flint lasted several weeks and cost GM about $2 billion while they idled nearly 200,000 GM workers and thousands of employees at independent suppliers.
The dispute was largely over job security and "outsourcing," the practice of contracting in-house work to outside suppliers who generally pay less and typically are nonunion. GM, which once made most of its parts, is moving toward becoming largely a designer and assembler of vehicles.
Since the strikes, GM has announced plans to convert its aging U.S. small-car plants to modular assembly, in which outside suppliers perform much of subassembly work now done on the assembly plant floor.
In a modular plant, preassembled parts clusters, such as an entire dashboard, are delivered to the assembly plant by outside suppliers and installed on the chassis. Far fewer UAW workers would be needed to assemble each car, significantly reducing manufacturing costs.
"There's nothing new about modular assembly," Yokich said. "It's just another word for ... outsourcing. It's just another way to destroy good-paying jobs and benefits, that we intend to deal with in this round of negotiations."
The UAW argues that modular assembly will give the automaker less control over design and quality, increase logistical complexity and potentially add to warranty costs.
Yokich bristled at suggestions that GM loses money on its small cars because of its labor costs.
"They claim they lose $1,000 on every small car they build themselves. It's funny, their competitors -- Ford and Chrysler -- never lose anything on their small cars. So is it our fault or their fault in how they run their plants? It certainly isn't our fault."
Yokich also chastised GM for failing to consult with the UAW before it decided to spin off its big parts unit. GM had an initial public offering of nearly 18 percent of Delphi Automotive Systems stock earlier this year and plans to spin off the rest of the company to GM shareholders by year's end.
The move has scared Delphi workers and retirees, said Yokich, who implied that the spinoff was being conducted with little, if any, consultation with UAW leaders.
GM spokesman Pat Morrissey said the company would have no comment on Yokich's remarks.
Yokich also attacked the high salaries paid to the industry's top executives, and singled out the multimillion-dollar stock options that former Chrysler Corp. executives will reap as a result of the deal that created DaimlerChrysler.
"If it was good enough for them to get all that money because they sold off to Daimler, it should be good enough for us," Yokich said.
Yokich said Mercedes-Benz, the German luxury car unit of DaimlerChrysler that operates a nonunion assembly plant in Alabama, should be under the UAW contract.
The veteran union leader had no criticism of Ford, which has the best relationship with the UAW among the three automakers.
Yokich said the union will begin bargaining with the company that presents the best initial proposal. In 1996, the UAW negotiated first with Ford and used that deal as a pattern for pacts with Chrysler and GM. The current three-year contracts expire in September.
The UAW gained more workers than it lost in 1998, the first time that has happened since 1989, Yokich said. Much of the gain, however, has come in businesses outside the auto industry, such as health care and government.