UAW OKs a Third Strike Against GM : Autos: The union authorizes a walkout next week at a headlight factory, a move that could trigger the shutdown of all the car maker’s U.S. assembly plants.
The United Auto Workers raised the stakes Wednesday in its war with General Motors, threatening to strike a key parts plant in Indiana in a walkout that could shut down all of GM’s North American vehicle assembly plants and idle as many as 250,000 workers.
The UAW, citing job losses and other complaints, issued the required five-day notice authorizing a strike next Wednesday at an Anderson, Ind., plant that makes nearly all of the exterior lights for GM’s domestic cars and trucks.
It would be the third, and potentially most damaging, GM plant strike in as many months as the car maker and UAW battle over the terms of GM’s massive restructuring plan, which calls for padlocking 21 plants and cutting 54,000 blue-collar jobs by 1995.
Neither side offered details on their dispute. But some industry observers believe that the Anderson plant is targeted for permanent closure and that the UAW believes its 3,400 members in Anderson have nothing to lose by striking.
Two recent strikes in Ohio and Michigan cost GM more than $100 million, and a strike in Anderson could have a far greater financial impact on the auto giant, which is suffering through the worst financial crisis in its history because of massive losses in its North American car and truck business.
Patricia Molloy, a spokeswoman at GM’s Inland Fisher Guide division, said none of GM’s North American assembly plants can operate without parts from the Anderson plant, mainly lighting and bumper systems.
GM operates 26 final-assembly production lines in 21 cities in the United States and Canada, where employment approaches 100,000.
Another 150,000 work at dozens of GM factories that feed engines, wheels, transmissions and countless other parts to the assembly lines.
Despite the fact that a strike at the plant has been threatened for months and that GM has been trimming production because of lagging car sales, there has been no stockpiling of parts at the Anderson plant, Molloy said. She said GM’s assembly plants would close “shortly” in the event of a strike.
Company officials wouldn’t speculate on what would happen to the rest of GM’s production system, but conceded that there is no need to make engines or radios if no cars are being assembled.
The UAW authorized the 3,400 union members at the plant to walk off their jobs at 10 a.m. Wednesday if bargainers can’t resolve disputes over jobs lost to non-union firms and unspecified health and safety issues at the plant.
The union contends that it has lost 800 jobs that have been “out-sourced” to non-union firms since 1986. Dave Toombs, an official of UAW Local 663, said Wednesday that the union wants to halt the job losses and to “in-source jobs to our plant. Our main concern is jobs.”
The feared plant closure in Anderson sets this proposed strike apart from the recent walkouts in Lordstown, Ohio, and Lansing, Mich., where the issues were more detailed, said David Cole, an auto analyst at the University of Michigan.
“This is just people trying to survive,” said Cole, head of the university’s office for the study of automotive transportation.
As the strike deadline was announced, union and GM negotiators were meeting at the plant 35 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
In August, a nine-day UAW strike at a GM parts plant in Lordstown crippled production at nine U.S. assembly plants and idled more than 50,000 workers.
Last month, a four-day walkout by UAW workers in Lansing stopped production of another of GM’s best selling cars--the Pontiac Grand Am.
