DETROIT — Rob Pacheco estimates that he brought home more money 20 years ago than he does today because of concessions autoworkers made to help save the U.S. auto industry during the Great Recession.
One of the benefits that autoworkers represented by the United Auto Workers gave up was cost-of-living adjustments, or COLA, which pegs employees' wages to the federal government's inflation index.
“The difference is night and day," said Pacheco, a UAW Local 31 member who works at General Motors Co.'s Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas. "I made so much more money with COLA."
