New-Car Haulers Strike; Effect Will Be Felt Soon
About 20,000 Teamsters Union members who haul new cars to auto dealer showrooms across the nation went on strike today, and industry officials said the walkout’s effect will be felt in a matter of days.
Bargaining broke down Thursday, and the drivers, maintenance and warehouse workers walked out at midnight in the first national strike ever by the Teamster car haulers, who first negotiated a national contract in 1967.
“If the strike lasts more than a matter of a few days, auto production will certainly be affected,” Ian Hunter, executive director of the National Automobile Transporters Labor Division, the trucking industry bargaining group, said in a statement.
The car-hauling industry is almost 100% unionized, said Tim O’Neill, a Teamsters spokesman.
“There are many models that are in very high demand and very short supply” and “those are the ones that will not be available” because of the strike, said Bob Daly, spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Assn. “A customer who has a car on order also is going to have a problem getting that car.”
‘No Breakthrough’ Seen
Teamsters Local 299 President Pete Karagozian said in Dearborn, Mich., that “talks are at an impasse and no breakthrough is expected.” Karagozian said no bargaining sessions are scheduled.
Picket lines were set up in Detroit and Flint, Mich.; Shreveport, La.; Birmingham, Ala.; Los Angeles and Oakland; Boston; Dallas, and Newark.
The walkout was sanctioned by the Teamsters general executive board after Teamsters Vice President Walter Shea announced that the union had received “a totally unacceptable proposal” from negotiators for the employers.
The action by Teamsters officials came in the face of rank-and-file unrest over an earlier tentative pact that Shea and the remainder of the union’s brass had praised and recommended for ratification as the best deal available.
Overwhelming Rejection
In an embarrassing development for the union’s leadership, the drivers overwhelmingly rejected the earlier pact, setting the stage for the latest round of negotiations.
The tentative contract was voted down by a 5-1 margin.
The contract rejected by the membership included a 60-cent-an-hour raise in each of three years of the agreement. Hourly pay for the car haulers averages about $13. Most drivers earn 65 cents a mile while delivering cars and would have received a raise each year of 3 1/2 cents per loaded mile.
But the tentative contract would also have cut the mileage rate in half for return trips, included lower wages for newly hired employees and reduced cost-of-living allowances.
