United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger gave his most open pledge yet Sunday that the union would work to impose further sharp concessions on US auto workers.

Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “Late Edition,” Gettelfinger said the union is “prepared to go back to the bargaining table” and reopen the four-year labor agreements signed in 2007.

The UAW president’s remarks came as Detroit’s Big Three automakers were readying proposals to present to Congress on Tuesday that will include outlines for further downsizing and cost-cutting in the attempt to return the companies to profitability. According to a report in the New York Times Monday, these plans include a “significant shrinking” of GM’s North American operations, including shutting more factories, eliminating brands and delaying or reneging on billions the company pledged to pay into a newly-established union-controlled fund for retiree health care benefits.

Both Democrats and Republicans have demanded concessions in return for any government loan to avert bankruptcy. The UAW bureaucracy completely accepts the consensus of the American political and media establishment, and is working behind the backs of its membership to negotiate cuts.

The contracts signed by the union last year imposed historic concessions on auto workers, including a fifty percent cut in wages for new-hires and so-called non-assembly workers, and the ending of employer-paid retiree health care benefits. But this was considered inadequate by the most powerful financial and political interests, which are using the crisis in the auto industry to destroy the conditions of auto workers and set a precedent for an attack on the entire working class.