Senin, 07 Oktober 2019

China to narrow scope for trade deal ahead of talks - Fox Business

The next round of talks between U.S. and China trade representatives is scheduled for later this week in Washington.

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A major result from the upcoming meeting may fall short of expectations.

Chinese officials are signaling they’re reluctant to agree to the kind of  broad trade deal that President Trump wants, according to Bloomberg.

People familiar with recent meetings say senior Chinese officials have indicated the range of topics they’re willing to discuss has narrowed considerably.

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Vice Premier Liu He will lead the Chinese contingent in high-level talks that begin Thursday.

The Chinese delegation reportedly won’t be looking to include commitments on reforming Chinese industrial policy or the government subsidies, according to Bloomberg.

That offer would take one of the Trump administration’s core demands off the table.

People close to the Trump administration say the impeachment inquiry isn’t affecting trade talks with China.

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China’s markets will return to trading on Tuesday following a weeklong holiday.

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https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/china-to-narrow-scope-for-trade-deal-ahead-of-talks

2019-10-07 07:21:41Z
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Minggu, 06 Oktober 2019

The Trumponomics experiment is failing before our eyes - Business Insider

Trump at manufacturing lab IvankaPresident Donald Trump at a tour of an advanced manufacturing lab in Iowa in 2018.AP

  • Economic data is pointing toward a recession, and no one should be surprised.
  • Yes, it's late in our economic cycle, and that matters. But President Donald Trump's policies are also very much to blame here.
  • Trump promised to buck economic thought and go full protectionist. Economists warned him this would damage the global economy, but he didn't listen.
  • Feel free to walk by the White House and scream "I told you so!"
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States, he promised to launch an economic experiment.

Ignoring the past few decades of economic liberalization, multilateralism, and openness, Trump promised to close the economy, renegotiate our trade deals nation by nation, and refocus the US economy on a relatively small sector, manufacturing, which makes up less than 20% of the economy.

To some, that experiment was a refreshing turn from the steady plod toward globalization that Americans have experienced for the past 50 years. To others — especially to economists — this was folly.

Protectionism, as experts well know, is bad news. They reminded Trump that steel tariffs have only brought the US pain — but Trump slapped them on our allies anyway. He was warned about his tax policies; about disrupting the North American Free Trade Agreement, our trade deal with Canada and Mexico; about ripping up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal forged by the Obama administration and supported by members of both parties; and about confronting China alone. But Trump did it all anyway.

And so the world found out what happens when the most powerful country in the world takes 100 years of economic knowledge and flushes it down the toilet. Experiment, on.

Voila, America

Here we are, three years into the Trump administration's experiment, with a recession rapping at the door of the US economy. How do we know?

  • The pesky yield curve keeps inverting, showing us that investors are worried about what's around the corner for the US economy.
  • For the first time in a long time, Wall Street waited with bated breath for one number, from the ISM services survey, which told us that 80% of the US economy had slowed to levels unseen since 2016.
  • The services contraction came amid manufacturing's slump, which has been with us since last year and just reached its lowest point since 2009.
  • People have lost interest in buying big-ticket items like washing machines.
  • Chief financial officers across the country are feeling gloomier than they have in three years.

consumer appetite for durable goodsDeutsche Bank

Employment numbers remain strong — though hiring is slowing — and consumer confidence remains somewhat steady. But allow me to remind you that those are lagging indicators. When a recession comes, the consumer is the last to know.

Running with scissors

Recessions are cyclical; that's a fact. But there are things you can do to hasten them, and the Trump administration has done all it can to do that. His policies have basically been the economic equivalent of running at breakneck speed with a pair of very sharp scissors.

Trump ran on a platform of ignoring the rules of economics and turning personal grievances into policy. Now we know what that can do to the mightiest economy on the planet.

Trade wars have disrupted agriculture and manufacturing, ripping up supply chains and costing the government billions in aid. Erratic policies have spooked Wall Street and exhausted and frustrated our allies. The world is now a place where the United States cannot be trusted, and that is a world where growth is slower. Just about every respectable economist in the game told Trump this would happen, but he and his allies didn't want to hear it.

So now we're here, in a moment that the World Trade Organization says could produce "a destructive cycle of recrimination." When there is no trust between counterparties in markets and everyone gets desperate, there can be unintended consequences. Monetary and fiscal policies will shift as countries try to get used to a world growing more slowly, and this could, the WTO said, "destabilize volatile financial markets" and "produce an even bigger downturn in trade."

Sometimes rules are rules for a reason.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-economics-experiment-failing-us-recession-2019-10

2019-10-06 12:01:09Z
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World's Best-Run Pension Funds Say It's Time to Start Worrying - Yahoo Finance

(Bloomberg) -- Back in 2012, the world’s best-managed pension market was thrown a lifeline by the Danish government to help contain liabilities. That was when interest rates were still positive.

Seven years later, with rates now well below zero, even Denmark’s $440 billion pension system says the environment has become so punishing that it may be time for a change in European rules.

Henrik Munck, a senior consultant at Insurance & Pension Denmark, an umbrella organization, says the way liabilities are currently calculated “could cause a negative spiral” that forces funds to keep buying low-risk assets, drive yields lower and the value of liabilities even higher.

The warning comes as pension firms across Europe struggle to generate the returns they need to cover their growing obligations. In Denmark, some funds saddled with legacy policies guaranteeing returns as high as 4.5% have had to use equity to meet their obligations.

To calculate liabilities, pension firms use a complex mathematical formula constructed by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). The formula is intended to shield funds from erratic market swings that artificially inflate or hollow out balance sheets. But with negative rates more entrenched, there are signs the EIOPA curve, as it’s called, may not be working as intended.

“When pension funds across Europe de-risk simultaneously, it may actually become pro-cyclical: it increases the price movements, and it could result in yet more downward pressure on the EIOPA yield curve, exacerbating the problem,” Munck said.

The curve is comprised of several elements. Its backbone -- the euro interest-rate swap curve -- has sunk since its implementation about four years ago, driving up the value of liabilities.

Sinking Swap Rates

The European Commission has started reviewing the regulatory framework around insurers -- Solvency II -- with a view to proposing improvements by the end of next year. Insurance Europe, an industry group, is urging the commission to address the curve in its evaluations.

In the meantime, pension funds have been coping by buying up riskier assets. The Dutch, ranked with Denmark as the world’s best performing pension providers by Mercer, have complained to the European Central Bank about the fallout on the industry.

And Then...

And then there’s the headache of what’s called the volatility adjustment (VA), which is set on a country-by-country basis and is designed to cushion the impact of erratic markets. According to Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Charles Graham, there’s “widespread” agreement that VA is “flawed.”

“It is something that EIOPA is considering recommending changing, but the challenge is still what to replace it with, or how to fine tune it,” Graham said.

Earlier this year, EIOPA unexpectedly slashed Denmark’s VA to roughly a third its previous level, causing considerable alarm in the industry.

According to Anders Damgaard, the chief financial officer of Denmark’s biggest commercial pension fund, PFA, which has about $100 billion in assets, EIPOA’s reason for the adjustment made sense: The new VA incorporates call options that let Danish borrowers buy back the bonds that fund their mortgages. The long-term covered bonds to which those call options are attached are a cornerstone of Danish pension funds’ investment portfolios.

With interest rates at unprecedented lows, a record number of borrowers are now taking advantage of those call options to refinance their mortgages. Damgaard says the way EIOPA calculates the volatility adjustment means the very device that’s intended to mute market swings has itself become more volatile. Worse, because it’s “an artificial number,” pension funds can’t hedge it, he says.

“That’s really where the main challenge is for us,” Damgaard said. “We have an unhedgeable component of the yield curve -- which is actually active on the entire yield curve -- and you can’t hedge it, which means that the balance sheet posts are very volatile.”

PFA, like many Danish pension funds, started scaling back guaranteed products for retirees many years ago. That’s given it a buffer to help absorb some of the shock of growing liabilities. But not everyone’s as well prepared. “If the discount curve is more volatile and you can’t hedge it, you can -- if you don’t have enough capital -- be forced to lower risk on the more hedgeable space, to compensate,” Damgaard said.

Olav Jones, deputy director general of Insurance Europe, says the pension industry “does not see any need to change the way the risk-free curve is generated, but there is a need to improve how the VA is generated.” Right now, it’s “generally too low and generally leads to liabilities that are inflated” and creates artificial volatility in insurers’ balance sheets, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Frances Schwartzkopff in Copenhagen at fschwartzko1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net;Paul Sillitoe at psillitoe@bloomberg.net

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/worlds-best-run-pension-funds-040001720.html

2019-10-06 08:13:32Z
CBMiS2h0dHBzOi8vZmluYW5jZS55YWhvby5jb20vbmV3cy93b3JsZHMtYmVzdC1ydW4tcGVuc2lvbi1mdW5kcy0wNDAwMDE3MjAuaHRtbNIBU2h0dHBzOi8vZmluYW5jZS55YWhvby5jb20vYW1waHRtbC9uZXdzL3dvcmxkcy1iZXN0LXJ1bi1wZW5zaW9uLWZ1bmRzLTA0MDAwMTcyMC5odG1s

World's Best-Run Pension Funds Say It's Time to Start Worrying - Bloomberg

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World's Best-Run Pension Funds Say It's Time to Start Worrying  Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-06/world-s-best-run-pension-funds-say-it-s-time-to-start-worrying

2019-10-06 04:00:00Z
CAIiEBG_SOnxl0GAHqF4yaQo0lUqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow4uzwCjCF3bsCMIrOrwM

Sabtu, 05 Oktober 2019

Will ending curbside pickups for Uber, Lyft and taxis help LAX's traffic? - Los Angeles Times

Even in a city infamous for its traffic, the congestion at Los Angeles International Airport was growing dire.

Spurred by extensive construction, a surge in air travel and the arrival of Uber and Lyft, traffic volumes at the nation’s second-busiest airport rose by half over a decade, turning a drive through the 1.5-mile terminal area into a half-hour ordeal.

Without major changes, airport officials warned, traffic at LAX on an average summer day would soon resemble the bumper-to-bumper crawl on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

On Friday, city officials unveiled a plan aimed at reducing the congestion.

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Starting at the end of October, travelers leaving LAX will be required to board a shuttle or walk to a waiting area east of Terminal 1 to hail an Uber, Lyft or taxi. Drop-off policies, and pickups for family and friends, will not change.

The plan will remain in place until the completion of an elevated airport train, scheduled for 2023. The people-mover will arrive every two minutes and will whisk passengers between the terminals, a car rental facility, a ground transportation hub and a Metro station.

The sleek train and a $14-billion overhaul of the aging airport are major parts of L.A.’s efforts to improve transportation in traffic-choked Southern California before the 2028 Summer Olympics. Where pickups will occur after the people-mover opens is still unclear.

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The idea of transferring to a shuttle bus to catch a ride home has frustrated and dismayed many travelers, who say more schlepping will make LAX more stressful.

“It’ll be a lot less convenient, and it will probably take a lot longer to get home,” Kristi Nichols, 23, an engineer who travels frequently for work and to visit family, said at the airport Friday.

Starting next month, she said, she’ll try to get picked up by family or book a SuperShuttle instead.

Officials are asking travelers to give the new system a try. Frequent bus service and a well-organized pickup area may be more efficient than today’s crowded curbsides, they said, where riders can wait for a half-hour or more while Uber and Lyft drivers inch through traffic.

“You will no longer have to fight the traffic to get out of the central terminal area,” said Keith Wilschetz, deputy executive director of operations at Los Angeles World Airports. “Once you’re in your car, you’re right on Sepulveda.”

Uber and Lyft account for 27% of the 100,000 vehicles in the LAX terminal area on an average day, Wilschetz said. Taxis make up 4%. Shifting pickups to a parking lot will eliminate about 15% of the vehicles in the terminal, he said.

During the first half of 2019, LAX saw 10% more vehicle trips than in the same time period in 2016, the first full year that Uber and Lyft operated there. The number of Uber and Lyft trips soared 123% over that period, while taxi trips fell 39%, according to city data.

Meanwhile, ridership plummeted on high-occupancy buses and shuttles, data show. Trips on LAX’s FlyAway buses fell by two-thirds, as did rides on shared vans such as SuperShuttle and Prime Time. Courtesy shuttles to car rental facilities, parking lots and hotels saw a 20% decline.

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Passengers hoping to go home in an Uber or Lyft should order a ride as they pick up their bags, then board a shuttle on the lower level of the airport, Wilschetz said. Travelers looking for a cab should proceed directly to the waiting area, where there will be a taxi queue.

Curbside lanes on the arrivals level will be converted to bus-only lanes to speed travel times. Bright green shuttles are supposed to arrive every three to five minutes, and will make a maximum of two stops before going to the pickup lot.

The pickup area, at the corner of World Way and Sky Way, is a parking lot converted into a plaza with umbrellas, trash cans, bathrooms and phone charging stations. The area will offer food trucks that will operate from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m.

Many travelers will form their first impression of L.A. based on the waiting area, Wilschetz said, so “we want it to be a good one.”

City airport officials in August awarded a $65.5-million contract to set up and maintain the lot, operate the passenger shuttles, direct traffic and offer customer service for travelers who are lost or frustrated.

Uber has some concerns with the plan, a spokesman said, and company officials hope LAX will “listen to and incorporate” input on how to improve the system. Lyft said the company has been “working closely” with the airport to reduce congestion and shorten wait times.

Drivers for both companies currently wait near the airport, in an area that some drivers call “the pig pen,” until they are assigned a rider. Matching with a passenger and fighting through terminal traffic to reach the curb can take up to an hour, and drivers are not paid for that time.

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“You should see Monday mornings,” said Lyft driver Jorge Ferran, 63. “It’s horrendous.”

If it works, the new system could help drivers pick up passengers more quickly, which would increase their earnings, said Harry Campbell, who publishes the Rideshare Guy website.

But that depends on whether passengers give the shuttles a try, he said. Already, he said, people are talking about being picked up by friends or family again, or trying buses that carry travelers from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

“There’s a psychological barrier to having to take a shuttle to an Uber,” Campbell said. “It’s just a hassle.”

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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-05/lax-ending-uber-lyft-taxis-curbside-pickup-traffic-construction

2019-10-05 12:00:00Z
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The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars - MarketWatch

From the outside looking in, the talks between the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) striking members and the management of General Motors look like normal disagreements over pay. In reality, they’re really about the future of cars in the U.S.

UAW members’ anxieties and uncertainties are actually shared by GM GM, -0.20%  and most other automakers, which know that it’s no longer a question of when internal combustion engine cars will be replaced by electric vehicles, but how quickly the changeover will take place.

The shift to electric means a fundamental transformation of what workers will do and how many are needed to do it.

Electric cars have far fewer parts, which means far fewer people are needed to put them together. When one analyst took apart a Chevrolet Bolt and Volkswagen Golf, he found that the Golf had 125 more moving parts than its electric counterpart. What’s more, the electric vehicles’ parts are often easier to put in place using automated machines. The UAW’s own estimates that the move to electrification may cost 35,000 members to lose their jobs may not be the most scientific study ever done, but it’s also probably not far off.

Fewer workers needed

GM has attempted to appease the UAW with specific promises, including the construction of an electric battery plant in one of the Ohio cities hit hardest by recent factory closings. But even this tactic has only confirmed the UAW’s worst fears: The battery plant won’t need as many workers, and GM would prefer to pay them less than what other workers make at plants that require more complicated assembly.

None of this is anyone’s fault. GM is trying to respond to a global trend that it needs to follow in order to stay relevant. The UAW is trying to protect its members. But it’s crucial that the parties work together, because they collectively represent a part of the American automotive industry that’s falling behind its global competition.

Take the year 2023, for example. The UAW and GM are negotiating a four-year contract that will expire then. Meanwhile, in Germany this week, the first hearings were held in a class-action lawsuit brought by 450,000 consumers in that country against its largest automaker, Volkswagen, over the diesel emissions scandal. Legal experts believe that the lawsuit, like the UAW’s contract, will also find its resolution in 2023.

Europeans embrace EVs

This matters because it’s one small example of the cultural differences between American automakers and the companies they’re competing against. In Germany, the people are pushing the automaker to move away from the traditional toward new technology. That push has no parallel here in the U.S.

Timeline projections differ, but many analysts and auto executives believe that EVs will become comparable or cheaper than internal combustion vehicles by the mid-2020s, and most agree that electric cars will begin to outsell conventional ones by 2030 or the mid-2030s. And most of that EV growth is happening in China and Europe, not in the United States.

Sales of EVs in China in 2018 were higher than the rest of the world combined, and the Chinese government has invested over $60 billion to shape an automotive industry fueled by electricity. In Europe, France and Germany recently announced a partnership to invest nearly $7 billion to develop EV batteries that solve the problem of limited range.

China and Europe are two different sides of the same coin. The Chinese auto market is so new that many of its consumers are about to purchase their first car, and its automakers have no legacy attachments to combustible engines. European automakers and consumers are in the opposite position, yet both, thanks in part to heavier regulations, have come to grips more quickly with the electric transition, invested more heavily in its future, and are therefore more prepared for change.

Tesla as market leader

The United States has Tesla TSLA, -0.69%, far and away the market share leader in electric vehicles. But in nearly every other case, it lags far behind.

A resolution to the strike is probably imminent. That’s good news. Better news would be an increase in the amount of collaboration between the UAW and GM, and other American automakers and the workers they employ.

What looks like a fight for today is actually a fight for future American relevance. It would just make a lot more sense if the people that we need to compete globally were working together as a team, rather than fighting each other.

Daron Gifford leads Plante Moran’s automotive industry consulting services.

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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-gm-strike-is-really-about-the-switch-to-electric-cars-2019-10-05

2019-10-05 11:00:00Z
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UAW strikers in Texas watch Detroit as union leaders meet with GM - Detroit Free Press

Some 1,200 miles south of Detroit, several thousand UAW workers in Texas are intently watching daily for any news from the Renaissance Center.

Negotiators for the UAW and General Motors have been holed up in the RenCen in bargaining discussions since GM's contract with the union expired on Sept. 14. That prompted about 46,000 union members to go on strike nationwide against GM two days later.

Those strikers include nearly 5,000 workers at GM's Arlington Assembly plant in Texas.

“I haven’t heard anybody say, 'Let’s go back to work,'" said Mike Cartwright, a union worker at the plant. "They want to get back to work, but they want to hear from the bargaining table that they have an agreement.”

On Friday, Terry Dittes, the UAW's lead negotiator with GM, told strikers the two sides had made "good progress regarding the issues of health care and a path for temporary employees becoming seniority members." Work remained, he said, on wages, job security and other matters — though temp workers and health care are known to be key issues.

Some analysts estimate the strike has cost GM about $1 billion so far, while workers are getting only their UAW strike pay of $250 a week. 

More: GM can withstand losses of UAW strike — because of what it stands to gain

More: UAW rejects GM's latest offer, tells members it 'came up short'

Right-to-work

Nearly all of Arlington's 5,000 hourly workers belong to the UAW, remarkable considering that Texas has been a right-to-work state since 1941. That means that under the labor code, a person cannot be denied employment because of membership or nonmembership in a labor union or other labor organization.

Michigan is also a right-to-work state in recent years, but with a far deeper union history than Texas.

Labor leaders at Arlington say UAW members are committed to this strike.

"We were one of the plants with a higher percentage of members authorizing the UAW to go on strike," said Ken Hines, shop chairman at UAW Local 276. "Nobody wants to strike, but we felt it was necessarily to win back some of the concessions we gave during the bankruptcy period."

One of those was a cost-of-living-allowance that union members want reinstated, among other issues. 

Hines said most strikers prefer to return to work, but are prepared for a long strike and will, "continue to sacrifice for as long as it takes.”

The union wants job security, higher wages and a pathway for temps to be hired permanently with better pay and benefits. GM wants to lower its costs, preferably with hiring more temporary workers.

The union also wants to protect its health care benefits, whereas GM has been said to want the union members to pay more than the 3% of total costs they pay now. 

The two sides are at odds, which means Saturday is day 20 of the strike.

Hines, 50, made sure his members would be prepared for a long strike. Starting early last year, he would remind members at any union meetings to start saving their money.

“Because you never know what the future holds and we wanted to make sure our membership was prepared in case we went on strike," said Hines.

Hines has phone numbers for about 1,700 of his union members programmed in his cell phone, he said. He has text messaged about half of them since the strike started to check on their welfare.

"There are some who are struggling," Hines said. Those are usually the temporary workers who made less and did not get overtime to save up money.

Hines said he has directed them to food banks. Also, local residents and businesses have donated food, money and other items to the local union hall for those who need help.

American dream city

Cartwright, 59, is OK financially to endure a strike. He was at those union meetings and remembers Hines saying, "Hey, remember contract time is coming up and we don’t know what to expect so save your money.’”

Cartwright has worked for GM for 34 years. He spent six years at GM's Fairfax Assembly and Stamping Plant in Kansas City, Kansas. The rest of his time has been at Arlington, a massive 5.75 million square-foot facility that sits on 250 acres right between Dallas and Fort Worth. 

Arlington is the American Dream City, according to its official government website. GM's website said the plant churns out 1,200 of GM's most profitable vehicles daily: Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet Suburban, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade full-size SUVs. 

 “We know we make a lot of money for the corporation here," said Cartwright.

Still, Hines and Cartwright said workers in Arlington want assurance that GM will invest in U.S. manufacturing and not stop assigning vehicles suddenly there, as GM did last fall at four other plants in the United States. 

GM said it would indefinitely idle Detroit-Hamtramck, Lordstown Assembly in Ohio, and a transmission plant in Warren and one in Baltimore. As part of its initial offer to the UAW, GM had offered up solutions to keep Detroit-Hamtramck running by building an electric pickup and grant a battery cell manufacturing facility to the Lordstown area. GM said it would invest $7 billion in U.S. manufacturing and create or retain 5,400 jobs.

More: Fate of GM Lordstown plant unresolved as contract talks linger: What could happen

More: GM promises UAW 5,400 jobs, $7B in US investment: What it means

More support

Cartwright has lived through past strikes. In 2007, the UAW went on strike against GM for two days. Cartwright said the community was less supportive then, wondering why the workers were on strike. 

But this time it's different. He said GM is "a great company" that pitches in with the UAW workers to do local charity.

"We do a lot of community work here and we have a connection with businesses and organizations, so we’re getting more support from the community this time," said Cartwright. "Now when we have issues we don’t have to explain them. People know what we’re about.”

Cartwright said there are 10 gates surrounding the facility in Arlington and every day each has about 10 picketers in front of them. Everyone does 4 hours a week picket duty and often union members in other industries show up to picket in solidarity with them.

The members also watch social media, their email and websites for any updated news on the strike.

"Our key issues are the pay on our benefits and the treatment of temporary workers," said Cartwright. "It’s about fairness. Most of us have been here for years, the temporary worker doesn’t affect us. But it’s about all of us and we want what’s fair. The mood is that everybody here understands that this is a process we have to go through and we have to support our leadership.”

For many at Arlington, it's their first time striking, said Cartwright. "They heard about past sacrifices, they now see and feel the sacrifices."

And in a right-to-work state, Cartwright said the strike will serve to "improve our membership and our ties.”

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.

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https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/10/05/gm-strike-update-uaw-arlington-texas/3865228002/

2019-10-05 10:00:00Z
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