The Nation - News from Sept. 16, 1987

The United Auto Workers union and Ford Motor Co. resumed bargaining after the union agreed to extend its contract with the nation’s second-largest auto maker, an act that a Ford official said was unprecedented in the company’s history. Leaders of the 53 Ford UAW locals across the country, poised to take their 104,000 members out on strike at midnight Monday, received word less than an hour before the deadline that the two sides were close to a settlement and had decided to keep talking. But while a U.S. strike was averted, a midnight Monday strike by Chrysler Corp.’s 10,000 Canadian Auto Workers union members forced Chrysler to shut down its Belvidere, Ill., plant, which employs 4,500 UAW members.