12 ms·

G.M. Strike: 50k Union Workers Walk Out Over Wages and Idled Plants

108 points by jbegley 7y ago

neogodless 7y ago
> The U.A.W. is pushing G.M. to improve wages, reopen idled plants, add jobs at others and close or narrow the difference between pay rates for new hires and veteran workers. Can someone help me understand this? I mean, I guess I have to think about this as "factory workers are doing algorithmic tasks" so there's less benefit to being a veteran worker than there would be as a "knowledge worker?" I don't want that to sound demeaning - it just seems odd to me that you'd be in a union to improve things for workers, but you wouldn't want the most senior people to be making solid money in comparison to new employees. Wouldn't you then lose some of the motivation for those experienced workers to stick around?
- momokoko 7y ago
  It's that the veteran workers got their pay hikes during earlier collective bargaining agreements. Recently, things like the crash in 2008 have caused newer workers to have different wage growth. They want to bring those wages closer to where they would have been if it had not been for the financial issues caused by the banking crisis and the renegotiated contracts.
- refurb 7y ago
  A decade or so ago, GM was looking to control costs, in particular the benefits, things like the crazy generous health insurance. The UAW eventually agreed to create two classes of workers - the more senior union people would have their pay and benefits kept intact (mostly), and then it would be the new hires that would see lower wages and reduced benefits. What they are arguing for now is to bring the new workers up to the level of the senior workers.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  The tiers are large. New hires make $17 per hour, the next tier starts at $28. That's a big gap for people doing the same work. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/09/13/uaw-contract-talks-deadline-strike-gm-ford-fca/2266631001/ https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/0...
- ellisv 7y ago
  They’re referring to two tier wage scales [1]. Workers hired after a certain date have worse pay and benefits, and it takes longer to earn benefits. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tier_system?wprov=sfti1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tier_system?wprov=sfti1
- mywittyname 7y ago
  During the last negotiations, the UAW agreed to a two-tiered structure where new workers were considered a lower-class than veterans and received much lower pay and benefits. > But in 2007, as the Detroit automakers were starting to bleed cash, UAW leaders agreed to create two classes of workers – in effect, protecting current members at the expense of future ones. Those hired after 2007 would be paid as much as 45 percent less and have less generous benefits as well as limited transfer rights. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-usa-families/for-uaw-members-two-tier-wage-issue-is-personal-idUSKBN0OI0C420150602 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-usa-families/for-ua...
- froindt 7y ago
  >...so there's less benefit to being a veteran worker than there would be as a "knowledge worker?" There can still be benefits for the company to having an experienced workforce - and it comes down to the company and union culture. I've worked in union shops as in industrial engineer. Your experienced press operator can help troubleshoot problems better and faster than a newbie, and they can tell you all the ways a plan you have is wrong before you implement it. Whether they do or not varies. Some individuals have an attitude of "I do what I'm told and go home at the end of the day", some are more than willing to help and collaborate, some hate their job but are holding out for a pension, some literally work harder at not working than if they just did their job. I had many internships before starting full time. Some places you'd never guess were union - mostly in a good way. Factory #1 I could go out on the line and talk with anyone, and largely everyone was helpful in trying to make the work more efficient, improve the bad parts of their jobs, etc. It felt wrong, but my first day on the job I went to the R&D manufacturing area with my coworkers, they made small talk with the union machinist, then started machining some parts. I was taken aback, and they then explained the union only really cares about normal production. Also factory #1, as I was making standard work, one worker was 10' and up a ladder from his toolbox when he realized he had the wrong size socket. He'd messed up a few other times for the same kind of thing and was tired of going up and down. He asked me to hand him the right size socket. I "took work from union labor" when I did that, though that factory had the attitude of "if you're making my life easier, it's okay". Factory #2: I've also worked places where the union workforce pushes for wage increases for every tiny thing that changes. You took added a monitor to the computer they run a machine with, you moved a few buttons on the interface, you change the process to greatly reduce the safety risks and also reduced labor required by a marginal amount. All of those have been brought up as reasons they deserve a raise. Factory #3: experienced downtime due to a mouse running into a 2' pit on the production line. The workers exited and refused to return to work until they saw the dead mouse come out. Not directly relevant to the conversation, but a fun story to tell.
- bluedino 7y ago
  There are good factory workers, and bad factory workers. On one side you have those that do the absolute minimum (just like any job), while on the other you have people that know how to work more machines and are more helpful in diagnosing production issues etc. The flaw here is that the only thing that matters is how long you've been hired. Not how good you are. Similar to teachers. Higher pay, shift preference, vacation scheduling, overtime availability, it all goes to the senior employees.
- phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
  My union shop has two pay schedules. It's a grid of classification x seniority. If you're level 1, you make $8/hr. If you're level 6, you make $24/hr. There are yearly pay increases until you hit the end of the grid, then it's just COL increases. There's a cutoff date where everyone before is on one schedule, and everyone after is on a different, lower-paying one. It's a concession the union made when the employer was less profitable that it had been. It's always been a dealbreaker that the two-tier system goes away, even though they could afford it. Of course, management is doing their damnedest to make sure they don't hire anyone who could possibly join the union.
  - maxk42 7y ago
    How do you prevent someone from joining a union?
    - phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
      non-full-time employees. Or being in a state with a Right To Work law. Which is actually worse, because non-union employees are required to be ~represented by the union without paying for that representation~ treated as though they are represented by the union when in fact they are not. So the employee reaps the reward of the union without contributing. dammit I want to strikeout something and I can't find the correct markup for HN. I know I've done it before.
frozen11b 7y ago
In 2008 GM nearly went under. Part of what saved them was the union working quite a bit of reduced compensation mostly for less senior employees. Now that GM is very healthy and profitable the union workers want thier share. Sees reasonable to me.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  It did go under. It's not the same company that was operating before the crisis.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    That seems more of a technicality than a practicality - GM workers in 2007 got a paycheck with the GM mark on them - in 2019, they also get a paycheck with the GM mark on them - the fact that the actual legal entity changes, matters for shit. Also the fact that GM considers itself the same GM that existed also somewhat dilutes this idea.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      The government dissolved the old company and gave the union a significant chunk of ownership in the new company. It's sort of a technicality, but it's an important one.
      - wil421 7y ago
        It’s the same company if the same executives, managers, salaried and union employees are still there. Did they rehire everyone and start their plants from scratch when the legal entity changed?
        maxerickson 7y ago
        You can read about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor... The new company had ~23,000 less people (I think many of those jobs were sold to other companies).
paco3346 7y ago
Most of their demands seem reasonable but I don't understand their request that plants be reopened. If there aren't customers to buy the products why would the UAW demand that GM keep making cars at those plants?
- learc83 7y ago
  I think their solution would be to reduce the number of cars made in foreign plants and move that work to the US.
- josefresco 7y ago
  I believe it's more about shifting plants to other locations/countries. Existing factories can be re-fitted to produce a different model.
- nradov 7y ago
  It's pretty simple: the UAW wants to keep their members employed. This isn't necessarily unreasonable. However it is one of the factors which drove the old GM into bankruptcy. Toward the end they were building cars that no one wanted and selling them at a loss because due to restrictive union contacts that was actually cheaper than laying off workers.
- refurb 7y ago
  Because they don't care if the cars get sold, just if their union members get paid.
InTheArena 7y ago
Unfortunately, what people need to judge this is information about where the negotiations are really at, and what the issues are, and what the differences are - not just PR releases from GM and UAW. Both institutions have proven corrupt over and over during the last fifty years, and it's hard to take either at face value. There is also a consistent pattern. Companies do great, leading to expansive contracts with workers, then are mismanaged, or not sustainable during down-cycles. Then a down-cycle happens, and the company declares bankruptcy (which more often then not involves a government, a hard core negotiation or a bank bailing them out), and moving to a starvation contract, which they keep in place to far to long, then they get a expansive contract, and the whole thing continues. Alternatively, Unions don't agree to the starvation contract, which then destroys the company - see Eastern Airlines, Pan Am, and all the carriers that didn't survive deregulation in the 1980s.
- seibelj 7y ago
  Wouldn't it be easier if the company could choose to pay more during the good years (bonuses / raises) and cut more during the lean years (no bonuses / layoffs)? Then the employees could choose to leave the company if they determined the broader market conditions were such that they could get more money at a different employer! This union thing seems really inefficient.
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    The actual result there is that companies never "choose" to pay more.
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      Yep, they'll largely only do so when forced by market conditions. Unfortunately there's a lot of other effects that will insulate them from small to medium wage differences: moving is tough, expensive, and affects the whole family not just the worker, in a reasonable commute radius there's often only a handful of potential employers for plant workers, and manufacturing by design has relatively little reliance on individual employees and their skills, tasks are rote and repetitive, and to top it all off getting healthcare outside of an employer in the US is insanely expensive. All of this adds up to a huge barrier to employee power to push for higher wages.
spodek 7y ago
Success for labor will truly come when they can do what management did: globalize. If labor is cheaper elsewhere, can they get them to strike together? Are they trying to connect with them?
- claudeganon 7y ago
  I think you’re subtracting quite a bit of historical context from your equation. The United States military and intelligence services through their weight behind making this globalization happen, policing trade routes and deposing economically unfriendly regimes. I don’t see them doing the same for labor any time in the near future...
- tokai 7y ago
  The wobblies tried that with the idea of One Big Union. They were suppressed heavily.[0] [0] https://depts.washington.edu/iww/persecution.shtml https://depts.washington.edu/iww/persecution.shtml
- salawat 7y ago
  >If labor is cheaper elsewhere, can they get them to strike together? Are they trying to connect with them? The Taft-Hartley Act actually made that illegal. Strikes can only be engaged in between the shop being struck against, and it's respective Union. Network effects are apparently too destructive to be used by anyone except for the people raising money. In short, no industry blacklisting of Union members/organizers by employers is allowed, and no secondary striking by other shops' laborers are allowed to be organized. This legislation was enacted due to some rather poorly timed strikes during WWII if I recall correctly. Or at least that's what I've read.
rmason 7y ago
This is not a great time for the UAW to be staging any kind of strike. Why? Because a bunch of UAW top officials from the president on down are facing federal charges for embezzling from their workers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-corruption-labor-factbox/factbox-highlights-from-criminal-complaint-in-widening-uaw-corruption-probe-idUSKCN1VX2XD https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-corruption-labor-fa... The UAW shouldn't be striking when under under indictment as they are weak. It's also at a time when auto sales are weakening.
- rpiguy 7y ago
  This is a great time to strike if you want to distract people from the fact that your top officials and president are under investigation :-)
specialist 7y ago
I've heard, but have not confirmed, that GM now makes and sells more cars in China than the USA. "The Truth About GM’s Huge Layoffs and Why You Should Be Mad About It" Scott Kilmer 2018/12/06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyppHyeSWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyppHyeSWQ Even if this is only partially true, I don't think labor (striking UAW workers) are going to win this round.
- rpiguy 7y ago
  GMs profit comes almost completely from large SUVs and Pickup trucks, which gives the union a lot of power. Essentially, they are selling pickup trucks and Escalades to Americans with fantastic margins to prop-up their car business (which is unprofitable in the US and only occasionally profitable elsewhere) and to fuel global expansion. Basically if the UAW stops making pickup trucks and Escalades, GMs cashflow will turn ugly fast. Doesn't matter where the growth is.
williesleg 7y ago
All part of the master plan to trigger a recession so we can get Elizabeth Warren in the White House! Hooray for Liz!
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I was kind of looking forward to the new C8 Corvette because it's only one of two interesting cars GM has produced recently (the other being the Bolt). But of course those people are on strike too. https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/local-uaw-strike-puts-corvette-production-in-doubt/article_f05e2f10-0625-56f0-9345-1f3850025483.html https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/local-uaw-strike-puts-corve...

108 points by jbegley 7y ago

> The U.A.W. is pushing G.M. to improve wages, reopen idled plants, add jobs at others and close or narrow the difference between pay rates for new hires and veteran workers. Can someone help me understand this? I mean, I guess I have to think about this as "factory workers are doing algorithmic tasks" so there's less benefit to being a veteran worker than there would be as a "knowledge worker?" I don't want that to sound demeaning - it just seems odd to me that you'd be in a union to improve things for workers, but you wouldn't want the most senior people to be making solid money in comparison to new employees. Wouldn't you then lose some of the motivation for those experienced workers to stick around?

momokoko 7y ago
It's that the veteran workers got their pay hikes during earlier collective bargaining agreements. Recently, things like the crash in 2008 have caused newer workers to have different wage growth. They want to bring those wages closer to where they would have been if it had not been for the financial issues caused by the banking crisis and the renegotiated contracts.
refurb 7y ago
A decade or so ago, GM was looking to control costs, in particular the benefits, things like the crazy generous health insurance. The UAW eventually agreed to create two classes of workers - the more senior union people would have their pay and benefits kept intact (mostly), and then it would be the new hires that would see lower wages and reduced benefits. What they are arguing for now is to bring the new workers up to the level of the senior workers.
maxerickson 7y ago
The tiers are large. New hires make $17 per hour, the next tier starts at $28. That's a big gap for people doing the same work. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/09/13/uaw-contract-talks-deadline-strike-gm-ford-fca/2266631001/ https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/0...
ellisv 7y ago
They’re referring to two tier wage scales [1]. Workers hired after a certain date have worse pay and benefits, and it takes longer to earn benefits. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tier_system?wprov=sfti1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-tier_system?wprov=sfti1
mywittyname 7y ago
During the last negotiations, the UAW agreed to a two-tiered structure where new workers were considered a lower-class than veterans and received much lower pay and benefits. > But in 2007, as the Detroit automakers were starting to bleed cash, UAW leaders agreed to create two classes of workers – in effect, protecting current members at the expense of future ones. Those hired after 2007 would be paid as much as 45 percent less and have less generous benefits as well as limited transfer rights. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-usa-families/for-uaw-members-two-tier-wage-issue-is-personal-idUSKBN0OI0C420150602 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-usa-families/for-ua...
froindt 7y ago
>...so there's less benefit to being a veteran worker than there would be as a "knowledge worker?" There can still be benefits for the company to having an experienced workforce - and it comes down to the company and union culture. I've worked in union shops as in industrial engineer. Your experienced press operator can help troubleshoot problems better and faster than a newbie, and they can tell you all the ways a plan you have is wrong before you implement it. Whether they do or not varies. Some individuals have an attitude of "I do what I'm told and go home at the end of the day", some are more than willing to help and collaborate, some hate their job but are holding out for a pension, some literally work harder at not working than if they just did their job. I had many internships before starting full time. Some places you'd never guess were union - mostly in a good way. Factory #1 I could go out on the line and talk with anyone, and largely everyone was helpful in trying to make the work more efficient, improve the bad parts of their jobs, etc. It felt wrong, but my first day on the job I went to the R&D manufacturing area with my coworkers, they made small talk with the union machinist, then started machining some parts. I was taken aback, and they then explained the union only really cares about normal production. Also factory #1, as I was making standard work, one worker was 10' and up a ladder from his toolbox when he realized he had the wrong size socket. He'd messed up a few other times for the same kind of thing and was tired of going up and down. He asked me to hand him the right size socket. I "took work from union labor" when I did that, though that factory had the attitude of "if you're making my life easier, it's okay". Factory #2: I've also worked places where the union workforce pushes for wage increases for every tiny thing that changes. You took added a monitor to the computer they run a machine with, you moved a few buttons on the interface, you change the process to greatly reduce the safety risks and also reduced labor required by a marginal amount. All of those have been brought up as reasons they deserve a raise. Factory #3: experienced downtime due to a mouse running into a 2' pit on the production line. The workers exited and refused to return to work until they saw the dead mouse come out. Not directly relevant to the conversation, but a fun story to tell.
bluedino 7y ago
There are good factory workers, and bad factory workers. On one side you have those that do the absolute minimum (just like any job), while on the other you have people that know how to work more machines and are more helpful in diagnosing production issues etc. The flaw here is that the only thing that matters is how long you've been hired. Not how good you are. Similar to teachers. Higher pay, shift preference, vacation scheduling, overtime availability, it all goes to the senior employees.
phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
My union shop has two pay schedules. It's a grid of classification x seniority. If you're level 1, you make $8/hr. If you're level 6, you make $24/hr. There are yearly pay increases until you hit the end of the grid, then it's just COL increases. There's a cutoff date where everyone before is on one schedule, and everyone after is on a different, lower-paying one. It's a concession the union made when the employer was less profitable that it had been. It's always been a dealbreaker that the two-tier system goes away, even though they could afford it. Of course, management is doing their damnedest to make sure they don't hire anyone who could possibly join the union.
- maxk42 7y ago
  How do you prevent someone from joining a union?
  - phjesusthatguy3 7y ago
    non-full-time employees. Or being in a state with a Right To Work law. Which is actually worse, because non-union employees are required to be ~represented by the union without paying for that representation~ treated as though they are represented by the union when in fact they are not. So the employee reaps the reward of the union without contributing. dammit I want to strikeout something and I can't find the correct markup for HN. I know I've done it before.

frozen11b 7y ago

In 2008 GM nearly went under. Part of what saved them was the union working quite a bit of reduced compensation mostly for less senior employees. Now that GM is very healthy and profitable the union workers want thier share. Sees reasonable to me.

maxerickson 7y ago
It did go under. It's not the same company that was operating before the crisis.
- Aloha 7y ago
  That seems more of a technicality than a practicality - GM workers in 2007 got a paycheck with the GM mark on them - in 2019, they also get a paycheck with the GM mark on them - the fact that the actual legal entity changes, matters for shit. Also the fact that GM considers itself the same GM that existed also somewhat dilutes this idea.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    The government dissolved the old company and gave the union a significant chunk of ownership in the new company. It's sort of a technicality, but it's an important one.
    - wil421 7y ago
      It’s the same company if the same executives, managers, salaried and union employees are still there. Did they rehire everyone and start their plants from scratch when the legal entity changed?
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        You can read about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor... The new company had ~23,000 less people (I think many of those jobs were sold to other companies).

paco3346 7y ago

Most of their demands seem reasonable but I don't understand their request that plants be reopened. If there aren't customers to buy the products why would the UAW demand that GM keep making cars at those plants?

learc83 7y ago
I think their solution would be to reduce the number of cars made in foreign plants and move that work to the US.
josefresco 7y ago
I believe it's more about shifting plants to other locations/countries. Existing factories can be re-fitted to produce a different model.
nradov 7y ago
It's pretty simple: the UAW wants to keep their members employed. This isn't necessarily unreasonable. However it is one of the factors which drove the old GM into bankruptcy. Toward the end they were building cars that no one wanted and selling them at a loss because due to restrictive union contacts that was actually cheaper than laying off workers.
refurb 7y ago
Because they don't care if the cars get sold, just if their union members get paid.

InTheArena 7y ago

Unfortunately, what people need to judge this is information about where the negotiations are really at, and what the issues are, and what the differences are - not just PR releases from GM and UAW. Both institutions have proven corrupt over and over during the last fifty years, and it's hard to take either at face value. There is also a consistent pattern. Companies do great, leading to expansive contracts with workers, then are mismanaged, or not sustainable during down-cycles. Then a down-cycle happens, and the company declares bankruptcy (which more often then not involves a government, a hard core negotiation or a bank bailing them out), and moving to a starvation contract, which they keep in place to far to long, then they get a expansive contract, and the whole thing continues. Alternatively, Unions don't agree to the starvation contract, which then destroys the company - see Eastern Airlines, Pan Am, and all the carriers that didn't survive deregulation in the 1980s.

seibelj 7y ago
Wouldn't it be easier if the company could choose to pay more during the good years (bonuses / raises) and cut more during the lean years (no bonuses / layoffs)? Then the employees could choose to leave the company if they determined the broader market conditions were such that they could get more money at a different employer! This union thing seems really inefficient.
- vertex-four 7y ago
  The actual result there is that companies never "choose" to pay more.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Yep, they'll largely only do so when forced by market conditions. Unfortunately there's a lot of other effects that will insulate them from small to medium wage differences: moving is tough, expensive, and affects the whole family not just the worker, in a reasonable commute radius there's often only a handful of potential employers for plant workers, and manufacturing by design has relatively little reliance on individual employees and their skills, tasks are rote and repetitive, and to top it all off getting healthcare outside of an employer in the US is insanely expensive. All of this adds up to a huge barrier to employee power to push for higher wages.

spodek 7y ago

Success for labor will truly come when they can do what management did: globalize. If labor is cheaper elsewhere, can they get them to strike together? Are they trying to connect with them?

claudeganon 7y ago
I think you’re subtracting quite a bit of historical context from your equation. The United States military and intelligence services through their weight behind making this globalization happen, policing trade routes and deposing economically unfriendly regimes. I don’t see them doing the same for labor any time in the near future...
tokai 7y ago
The wobblies tried that with the idea of One Big Union. They were suppressed heavily.[0] [0] https://depts.washington.edu/iww/persecution.shtml https://depts.washington.edu/iww/persecution.shtml
salawat 7y ago
>If labor is cheaper elsewhere, can they get them to strike together? Are they trying to connect with them? The Taft-Hartley Act actually made that illegal. Strikes can only be engaged in between the shop being struck against, and it's respective Union. Network effects are apparently too destructive to be used by anyone except for the people raising money. In short, no industry blacklisting of Union members/organizers by employers is allowed, and no secondary striking by other shops' laborers are allowed to be organized. This legislation was enacted due to some rather poorly timed strikes during WWII if I recall correctly. Or at least that's what I've read.

rmason 7y ago

This is not a great time for the UAW to be staging any kind of strike. Why? Because a bunch of UAW top officials from the president on down are facing federal charges for embezzling from their workers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-corruption-labor-factbox/factbox-highlights-from-criminal-complaint-in-widening-uaw-corruption-probe-idUSKCN1VX2XD https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-corruption-labor-fa... The UAW shouldn't be striking when under under indictment as they are weak. It's also at a time when auto sales are weakening.

rpiguy 7y ago
This is a great time to strike if you want to distract people from the fact that your top officials and president are under investigation :-)

specialist 7y ago

I've heard, but have not confirmed, that GM now makes and sells more cars in China than the USA. "The Truth About GM’s Huge Layoffs and Why You Should Be Mad About It" Scott Kilmer 2018/12/06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyppHyeSWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyppHyeSWQ Even if this is only partially true, I don't think labor (striking UAW workers) are going to win this round.

rpiguy 7y ago
GMs profit comes almost completely from large SUVs and Pickup trucks, which gives the union a lot of power. Essentially, they are selling pickup trucks and Escalades to Americans with fantastic margins to prop-up their car business (which is unprofitable in the US and only occasionally profitable elsewhere) and to fuel global expansion. Basically if the UAW stops making pickup trucks and Escalades, GMs cashflow will turn ugly fast. Doesn't matter where the growth is.

williesleg 7y ago

All part of the master plan to trigger a recession so we can get Elizabeth Warren in the White House! Hooray for Liz!

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I was kind of looking forward to the new C8 Corvette because it's only one of two interesting cars GM has produced recently (the other being the Bolt). But of course those people are on strike too. https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/local-uaw-strike-puts-corvette-production-in-doubt/article_f05e2f10-0625-56f0-9345-1f3850025483.html https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/local-uaw-strike-puts-corve...