UAW Rejects Gen. Dynamics Pact

Union leaders Saturday rejected a tentative agreement aimed at ending a 6-week-old walkout by 5,000 General Dynamics Corp. tank builders in three states.

The United Auto Workers’ 35-member General Dynamics Council voted to turn down the tentative pact because no accord had been reached on the rehiring of workers fired during the strike, UAW spokesman Bob Barbee said.

The council agreed to reconvene if bargainers for the company agree by 5 p.m. Monday to provide amnesty for disciplined and dismissed members, Barbee said.

“They said in the absence of amnesty for those workers that have been disciplined by General Dynamics, (the council) couldn’t go along with the agreement,” he said.

Negotiators had hammered out the tentative settlement last Thursday. The pact covers 4,500 workers at three Detroit area plants, a Lima, Ohio, facility and and a Scranton, Pa., factory. The striking workers build MI and M1A1 Army tanks.