In their 1996 contract, the United Auto Workers and General Motors Corporation renegotiated a number of innovative provisions to enhance the knowledge and skills of  workers.  Paid Educational Leave (PEL) is one of these important provisions.  The PEL program is under the direction of the UAW-GM National Joint Skill Development and Training Committee and is operated by the Joint Staff of the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources based in Auburn Hills,  Michigan.

PEL represents a unique and path breaking step in collective bargaining in the United States.  It comes at a crucial time when the UAW and the auto industry are faced with rapid change and unprecedented challenges.  The impact of new technologies, the transformation of the international competitive environment, and the changing demands on the work force all are continuing to produce effects which not even the experts can predict.

One of the top priorities of the last negotiations was to continue to assist local GM union leadership and managers to understand and be able to deal with these forces, which continue to reshape the auto industry.  PEL provides an avenue for instituting a program of leadership evelopment throughout the GM-Union structure.

As the centerpiece of the Paid Educational Leave Program, the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources has developed a course of study which emphasizes both training in leadership skills and the study of economic, political, and technological forces affecting the auto industry and the collective bargaining environment.  The course materials have been developed in collaboration with experts in the various fields and in the area of labor education.

The existence of an educational program of this type is due to the realization on the part of both management and the union that auto workers must be equipped to take an active and conscious part in the rapid and drastic transformations that are taking place.

The Paid Educational Leave course is an intensive and ambitious series of seminars for local UAW members and GM management.  These participants, selected from GM plants nationwide, travel to Boston, Washington, and Detroit where they meet with leading experts in the fields of economics, new technologies, labor-management relations, automobile production, business organization, governmental policy, and leadership development.

During the course of their week in Washington, in their meetings on Capitol Hill and at Executive Branch agencies, the PEL participants meet with policy makers and gain insight into the ways that political, legislative, and regulatory processes actually work.  The primary focus is on "case studies" of two policy level issues:
 

1. The impact of the governmental process on auto manufacturing, using health care reform as a specific issue deeply affecting the auto industry.
2. International competitiveness, using world trade and development issues as the basis for discussion.