UAW, GM Agree to Extend Contract : Labor: Union takes action to continue talks on new pact, ignoring strike deadline. Settlement would serve as a model for other auto makers.
The United Auto Workers union, apparently confident a settlement is near, ignored a midnight Friday strike deadline and said it would keep bargaining toward a new contract covering 300,000 active workers at General Motors Corp.
The UAW notified local union leaders around the country to stay on the job or report to work as scheduled “until further notice,” extending indefinitely the three-year agreement that expired at 11:59 p.m.
Bargaining at GM headquarters in Detroit continued past midnight and the negotiators agreed to continue talks this morning. In letting the deadline slip, the union in effect was giving itself until Monday to conclude an agreement. That is when 300 union leaders convene here to vote on any new pact.
There was no indication of what was preventing a settlement, but two issues reflecting the steady decline of jobs at GM--job security and limiting the auto company’s practice of farming work out to subcontractors--have been the hardest to resolve.
Union officials would only say late Friday night that “we are continuing our efforts to reach a settlement.” But Alfred S. Warren, GM’s top bargainer, said he thinks “meaningful progress has been made” and that an agreement will be reached.
The fact that the contract expired on a Friday night meant that a strike would have had little impact before Monday anyway. Only one GM plant, in Bowling Green, Ky., is scheduled to work today, a spokesman said.
The contract with GM covers workers at 240 plant sites in 33 states. Included are about 3,500 in California, of which 3,200 are at the Van Nuys assembly plant.
An agreement without a strike has been expected all along in the talks, which have appeared unusually harmonious since the UAW last month chose GM as the company it would focus on first in the round of negotiations with the Big Three auto firms.
The union’s national contracts with Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. also expired Friday night, but they were automatically extended. The UAW will attempt to duplicate its GM agreement at Ford and Chrysler, but hard-pressed Chrysler has served notice that it needs relief and would demand a cheaper contract.
Few details of the negotiations have become public. But wages and other traditional economic issues were secondary to the union’s demand for additional safety nets for displaced workers and GM’s emphasis on finding ways to reduce the cost of making cars.
GM has tried in the bargaining to cut its health care costs, for example, saying the medical tab for its middle-aged work force and huge ranks of retirees comes to $622 per car. By comparison, the foreign auto firms that have set up assembly plants in this country and hired a new, younger work force face health care costs of just $60 per car.
But the biggest conflict was in reconciling the UAW’s demand for a “no-layoff” policy, in effect, guaranteeing pay for workers who lose their jobs, and GM’s goal of slashing its work force by another 60,000 workers over the next three years.
Since 1979, GM’s U.S. blue-collar employment has tumbled by some 170,000, or nearly 40%.
The base wage for a GM assembler is $14.01 per hour. Bargainers were believed to be negotiating a 3% raise the first year and lump-sum “bonuses” in subsequent years, similar to the agreement signed in 1987.
In Toronto, contract talks between Canadian Auto Workers union and Ford’s Canadian subsidiary ended for the day without a settlement, paving the way for a walkout. Those talks also faced a midnight deadline, but Canadian Ford plants are closed weekends. The CAW represents about 12,800 Ford workers.
A strike at Ford of Canada would quickly cripple up to seven U.S. assembly plants at Ford that make some of Ford’s most successful vehicles. A glass plant in Niagara Falls, Ont., for example, makes all the windshields for Ford’s F-series pickup truck.
