Girsky to GM board

[rickaren]

UAW names Girsky to GM board

Posted Friday, Jun 19, 2009, 10:31 am in Employee News

Stephen Girsky, an auto industry insider who helped broker the tentative sale of General Motors Corp.’s Saturn brand, will serve on the automaker’s new board of directors—representing United Auto Workers retirees, The Detroit News reported.

Analysts said the selection of an industry veteran is designed to counter the appointment last week of Edward Whitacre Jr., an outsider and former chairman and CEO of AT&T Inc., as chairman of the “new GM” once it emerges from bankruptcy protection, which is expected later this summer, the paper said. “He brings a lot of insider knowledge and it adds balance at a point when that’s pretty critical,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told the News. “It is an unusual pick, an unconventional pick,” given Girsky has worked for both the UAW and GM.

Trustees of a UAW-run health care trust, known as a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, were given the right to name a director as part of money-saving concessions agreed to before GM filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 1, the paper said. Girsky is president of S.J Girsky and Co., a New York advisory firm. He has served as an adviser to the UAW and GM, and is a former Morgan Stanley auto analyst, the story said. (The Detroit News)