Canadian UAW, Chrysler Agree to End Walkout
Chrysler and the independent United Auto Workers of Canada reached a tentative agreement Sunday to end the five-day-old strike by Chrysler’s 10,000 Canadian workers, increasing pressure on the American UAW to bring a quick end to its nationwide walkout against the No. 3 auto maker.
With rank-and-file union members expected to approve the proposed 23-month contract in ratification voting today, Chrysler’s Canadian workers could be back on their jobs as early as this afternoon. The company warned, however, that they may be laid off again by the end of the week, due to shortages of U.S.-built parts, if the American strike is not resolved.
Wage Parity Achieved
The Canadian union, which split from the American UAW last year and bargained separately with Chrysler, won its key demand that Chrysler pay the same wages and benefits General Motors and Ford pay their Canadian workers, union and company officials said Sunday.
The union also forced the company to grant its Canadian workers additional bonuses to help reimburse them for the wage concessions they granted Chrysler during its brush with bankruptcy.
In the United States, however, bargaining efforts to end the strike of 70,000 Chrysler workers broke off Friday, with little progress reported. Negotiations were to resume today, but it appeared Sunday that the settlement in Canada might add to the mounting pressure on union leaders to cut the costly strike short and gain a quick agreement.
Company officials expressed relief over the Canadian settlement. Thomas W. Miner, Chrysler’s chief negotiator, said Sunday that he was very pleased and remained “very hopeful that the few outstanding issues can be resolved quickly” in the U.S. negotiations.
In the past, the Canadian union has been more militant and strike-prone than the American UAW. It pulled out of the international organization last year in part because the Canadian leadership thought the Americans were getting too soft on the auto industry.
The Canadians, who staged an independent strike against Chrysler in 1982, have disagreed with the American union’s new strategy of emphasizing job security over wage gains, and so concentrated their efforts in the Chrysler talks on simple economic demands.
Such demands would seem to be relatively easy for the company to deal with, compared to the U.S. union’s strategy of bargaining to protect jobs from foreign competition. The American UAW’s more complex demands, including its efforts to force Chrysler to provide funds for a job security program and to limit Chrysler’s ability to buy parts and fully assembled cars overseas, apparently have been responsible for prolonging the American strike.
Both Contracts Expired
Chrysler’s 80,000 unionized workers in both Canada and the United States walked off their jobs when their old contracts expired last Tuesday, after union and company bargainers in both countries were unable to hammer out new agreements by the midnight deadline. The walkouts idled all of Chrysler’s North American automotive production, and analysts estimate the strike has been costing the company $15 million a day in profits.
Talks continued after the walkouts began, but little progress had been reported in either country until Saturday, when Canadian UAW leader Robert White met privately with Chrysler Chairman Lee A. Iacocca in New York. The new pact fell quickly into place after that, and White said the agreement met all of the union’s basic demands.
“It meets all of our expectations of full and complete parity with Ford and GM (in Canada) in terms of wages, pensions and benefits,” White said at a press conference in Toronto. He predicted easy passage of the contract in today’s voting.
New Wage Scale
The agreement grants raises averaging 55 cents (Canadian) an hour for Chrysler’s assembly line workers in Canada, which will bring their wages up to an average of $14.18 an hour (Canadian), equal to the average wage paid by GM and Ford. The new contract also provides for $1,000 (about $730 U.S.) lump-sum bonuses to Chrysler’s workers and retirees in Canada, to make up for previous union concessions.
White said Iacocca told him that paying similar bonuses to the U.S. work force--one of the key demands of the American UAW--would cost Chrysler $60 million.
Chrysler’s chief negotiator in Canada, William Fisher, acknowledged Sunday that the pact was “a very liberal settlement from an up-front money standpoint.”
