UAW Official Threatens Action to Thwart GM Plan to Close Plants
A top United Auto Workers official said Tuesday that he will block implementation of a three-shift system at General Motors Corp.’s Arlington, Tex., assembly plant, throwing a potential monkey wrench into GM’s plans to close factories and become more competitive.
The three-shift system was seen as one of the main reasons the company chose to spare the Arlington plant and close one in Michigan.
“We will not let locals be pitted against each other,” UAW Vice President Stephen Yokich said at a news conference Tuesday. “There will be no (three-shift system) in Arlington through the end of this contract.”
Yokich’s stance will likely thwart GM’s plan to secure concessions from its workers at a time when the ailing company is restructuring. Analysts said the hardball tactics GM is using to achieve its goal will only make for rockier relations with the union.
Yokich’s statement came a day after GM Chairman Robert C. Stempel identified 11 of the 21 plants set to close by 1995 and said that local unions’ willingness to agree to flexible work rules will play a major role in the company’s decision on which of the remaining plants to shutter.
“Yesterday, GM used economic coercion to extract the UAW’s cooperation,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor of labor relations at UC San Diego. “So with that as a backdrop, Yokich’s response today indicates that the union is going to take a hard line too. “
Nor did GM soften its tone in response to Yokich.
“It is essential that all employees, hourly and salary, review every possible step that could be taken to assess competitiveness and future job security,” said Richard F. O’Brien, vice president of GM’s industrial relations staff.
By closing the Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., which is closer to suppliers and has a bigger paint shop than Arlington, Stempel signaled that the Arlington local was the model others should emulate. Arlington workers agreed to keep the plant running 24 hours a day.
But the UAW contract, which expires in September, 1993, requires that local union agreements on working conditions--such as those ratified by the Arlington workers--be approved by the international leadership before they go into effect.
The UAW has agreed to the more efficient, but less popular, three-shift system at GM’s Lordstown, Ohio, plant. But Yokich said he would ban any work-rule changes in plants where GM is trying to wring concessions by pitting factories against each other, as it has been accused of doing with Arlington and Willow Run.
Yokich’s veto of Arlington’s could be moot: Since GM will not need the additional production from Arlington until the Willow Run plant closes in the summer of 1993, Arlington could receive approval just in time to move to the new work schedule under the new UAW contract.
Still, his message was clear: “We know how to get the giant’s attention when we need to,” Yokich said. “We’ll do whatever it takes to make them enforce our contract, including a strike.”
