glancing over memeorandum this morning, i was surprised to see this post claiming the ford contract with the UAW is 2,215 pages long. why was i surprised? because i've seen the ford contract, as well as a lot of other labor agreements. i didn't know by heart just how long the ford contract (or any other contract) is, but i was pretty sure it's a few hundred pages long, not 2,215.
so look at the links about midway down the post. if you click on what they call "volume one" (pdf) that's the actual UAW-ford contract. and look what they've done? they've photocopies the pocket version of the contract, the slim book made for union members to carry around with them at work. but instead of putting two columns on a single page (which will easily fit, that's how i copy the contracts in my office), they've put each column on its own page. they're clearly trying to maximize the number of pages in their pdf. that's why each page has large blank areas on either side of the text. i bet i could make this post 1000 pages long if printed it on a page with obscenely huge margins.
but putting that aside, look at the page count of the pdf. with the large margins it's 377 pages long, and that includes the table of contents, the index and the various addenda. the actual contract ends on page 317 (the signature page), which is about 1/7th of the 2,215 pages that LaborPains.org claims is the length of the labor agreement.
so what all those other pages, the so-called other "volumes" of the agreement? mostly they're the benefit plan documents. there's a federal law called ERISA. it imposes certain requirements on how employee benefit plans, like pension and health plans. among those requirements is that the benefit plans publish detailed explanations of the benefits provided, and the limits on those benefits. ERISA doesn't just apply to union benefits. it applies to anyone's benefit plans if they work in the private sector.
if you have a 401(k) through work, somewhere out there is a plan document. that document contains a detailed explanation of how your 401(k) account is too be established, the rules governing your rights to direct investments in the account, penalties for early withdrawals or taking loans from your account, rules governing when you can draw on the account when you retire, when you can withdraw early if you become disabled,et cetera. plan documents can be long complicated things. even more so if we're talking about plan documents for a health plan. health plan documents list things like what medical procedures are covered and what are not covered. they list the co-payments due for each kind of procedure and visit, lifetime limits on medical coverage and deductibles. these days the appendix to the document may include a "formulary", i.e. a list of the names of all drugs that are covered, and a list of all drugs that are only covered in their generic form. there may also be lists of the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all doctors, hospitals and clinics that count as in-network to distinguish them from all other (out-of-network) health care providers. and the plan documents describe how being in or out of network affects your benefits. the documents must include information about medical privacy under HIPAA and continued coverage under COBRA. ERISA also requires that plan documents include a right to appeal a denial of benefits, what is called a "claim review," and that the documents set forth the procedure for pursuing such an appeal.
but the point is that these kind of plan documents are not a union contract. in fact, they're not something that applies only to unions, but rather are required for any private-sector job that comes with pension or health benefits. if you have a job with benefits and were to copy all the rules of your retirement plan, and then copy all of that crap that blue cross (or whoever your health providers is) sends you, it may very well exceed 2000 pages.
one more thing, j. justin wilson, the author of the LaborPains post, doesn't seem to know what a "profit sharing plan" is. (at least that's how i interpret the parenthetical "ha"). a PSP is a term of art. it's the name of a certain kind of defined contribution pension plan. it's like a 401(k), except that employees are not allowed to direct their own income into their account. and you don't need to have a union to have a profit sharing plan. that's what i have with my law firm and i'm not a member of any union.
the author is taking something that could apply to any employee and making it seem as if it applies only to the big bad union employees at ford. it's pretty typical of the intellectual dishonesty that regularly appears at these anti-union advocacy sites.
