Gore's Garage Galls Gettelfinger

LAS VEGAS – If Al Gore decides to make another run for the White House, he’d better think twice about the vehicles he drives, warns Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers union.

Plugging his hit climate-change documentary June 13 on “Larry King Live,” the former vice president said he and his family own three gasoline-electric hybrids: a Lexus RX 400h cross/utility vehicle and a pair of Toyota Prius sedans.

“That would be disappointing to me if he did,” Gettelfinger tells Ward’s, here at the UAW’s 34th constitutional convention.

If Gore pursues the presidency in 2008, as supporters are urging, Gettelfinger says the candidate’s purchase decisions would pose a problem if he sought the UAW’s support.

“Certainly we’d raise that issue with him,” says Gettelfinger, who until recently owned a UAW-built Ford Escape Hybrid.

A UAW spokesman says Gettelfinger’s HEV was destroyed in a crash and the waiting list to obtain another was too long. So he opted for a Ford Five Hundred sedan.

The spokesman says Gettelfinger easily could have used his clout to jump to the front of Ford’s queue, “but he doesn’t work that way.”

Al Gore says his family drives a Lexus hybrid and two Toyota hybrids.

News of Gore’s vehicle preferences appears to eat at Gettelfinger. Even if Gore doesn’t seek to reclaim the White House for the Democrats, the union chief adds: “We’re still going to talk to him.”

The debut last weekend of Gore’s anti-global-warming flick, An Inconvenient Truth, was the most successful debut ever for a documentary.

Gettelfinger makes his remarks here on the day he is re-elected for a second term as UAW president.

The election comes at a critical time in the UAW’s history, as it faces a declining membership and a corresponding drop in revenues. The leadership blames the falling numbers on a political climate that is hostile to union organizing and collective bargaining rights.

Gettelfinger and other speakers at this week’s convention also are critical of policies here and abroad that encourage trade imbalance and currency manipulation.

As a result, Detroit auto makers, with whom the UAW has a relationship that spans more than seven decades, are viewed with suspicion as they consider investment – with increasing frequency – in low-wage countries.

In particular, delegates are unsettled by a recent internal report leaked to a Michigan newspaper, although unconfirmed by Ford Motor Co., that the auto maker is formulating a major investment plan for Mexico.

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