DETROIT, March 31 (Reuters) - The head of the United Auto Workers union warned on Monday that free trade with China was creating a "race to the bottom" that threatened the livelihood of its members and the companies they work for.
In a rare news conference, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger also suggested the union would not make concessions in its contract negotiations later this year with Detroit's Big Three automakers.
"There will be some tough issues that will be coming up, but we're not out for our mansions and estates," Gettelfinger said before a speech to the Detroit Economic Club. "We want to have a good standard of living for our membership...We intend to move forward, not backward."
The UAW has about 700,000 members and represents nearly all of the hourly workers at the U.S. plants of General Motors Corp. , Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler arm . The four-year contracts that the automakers signed with the union in 1999 guaranteed no plant closings and enhanced health care benefits.
Since then, Chrysler and Ford have gone through painful restructurings, cutting thousands of workers to get back to profitability, while GM has continued to push for cost cuts. All three face billions of dollars in underfunded pension liabilities as well as billions more in health care costs for current and retired union members.
Gettelfinger reasserted that the real problem facing U.S. corporations was a lack of a national health care system, and said once again that the UAW would expect no changes in its benefits.
"Everybody recognizes you can't resolve that issue at the bargaining table, and certainly shifting costs onto the backs of workers is not the answer to their problem," Gettelfinger said.
Gettelfinger said China posed the greatest risk to the UAW's membership, with wages of 60 cents an hour and no environmental or worker safety protections.
The UAW has long fought free-trade agreements, and has seen its membership dwindle as automakers and their suppliers opened new factories in Mexico. Several automakers and suppliers have opened joint ventures in China, and a few are already shipping parts back to the United States.
"What this leads to is a race to the bottom. You now see work shifting from Mexico to China," Gettelfinger said.
He said the loss of jobs in the United States threatened the standard of living that supported auto sales in the first place, and if allowed to continue would hurt the industry far more than any short-term benefit from low-wage production.
"If you don't have a strong labor union, an independent labor union in those countries, we are all headed for disaster," he said.