Plan for New Union Vote on GM Layoffs Booed Down

Nearly 500 angry General Motors auto workers meeting in Van Nuys booed and shouted down a call Thursday for a new vote on a controversial work-sharing plan that would have averted a major layoff at the plant.

Leaders of United Auto Workers Union, Local 645, called the meeting to discuss allegations of voting irregularities in balloting Saturday, when GM workers narrowly defeated the work-sharing plan. Union officials, who negotiated the work-sharing arrangement with GM management only to see it rejected by their own membership, would like to schedule a new vote.

On Saturday, by a margin of only eight of 2,636 votes cast, union members rejected a proposal that would have reduced by 50% the working hours of all 3,800 employees at the plant as an alternative to the full-time layoff of 1,900 workers. Because the proposal was defeated, 1,900 will be laid off Monday for an indefinite period.

The Pontiac Firebirds and Chevrolet Camaros produced at the plant are not selling well, forcing the retrenchment.

Bitterly Divided

The plan has bitterly divided Local 645, pitting older workers, whose seniority protects them from layoff, against younger workers, who saw the plan as the only way to save their jobs.

Thursday’s raucous meeting was mostly attended by older workers, who work the plant’s first, or day, shift. Second-shift workers, who are predominantly younger, were scheduled to meet to discuss the second vote after their shift ended at 12:30 a.m. today.

Seven workers have filed protests asking that Saturday’s election be overturned, according to Lee Williams, a union official. Among their complaints is that the secret ballot was carried out without a master list of workers that would have prevented anyone from voting twice. Protesters also say ballots were unavailable for 45 minutes at one point, which caused some workers to leave the meeting before voting.

Union officials tried to take a vote on the reconsideration motion, but the older workers refused to cooperate and the meeting quickly disintegrated. Many in the crowd called local union President Jerry Shrieves “a traitor and a back-stabber.” Younger workers on the first shift started pleading for union solidarity but were drowned out by boos and hisses that could be heard several blocks away. Two younger workers facing layoff wept.

Piece of Paper

Shrieves adjourned the meeting and told workers that he would assume everyone who had signed in earlier was opposed to a new vote unless they signed a piece of paper indicating otherwise. The results were not available Thursday.

Plant manager Ernest Schaefer said GM still is willing to implement the work-sharing program defeated Saturday.

“We’re flexible,” he said.