UAW Vote Allows NUMMI to Add Shift : Labor: Union reverses last month’s rejection of proposal that would result in $50-million expansion at Fremont plant.

A dose of harsh economic reality has squelched a brief spate of union militancy that temporarily jeopardized a proposed $50-million expansion at the General Motors-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, California’s only remaining auto plant.

Late last month, members of UAW Local 2244, which represents about 3,600 hourly workers at the pioneering New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, voted 2 to 1 to nix a proposal--endorsed by their leaders--that would have added a third shift in some sections of the plant.

NUMMI management had said endorsement of the plan was necessary to keep the proposed expansion on track. They had expected that the promise of more hours and about 150 new jobs, primarily making plastic sheaths for bumpers that now are imported from Canada, would make the deal a shoo-in--despite the loss of overtime pay that the new schedule would have meant for some in the existing work force.

Stunned by the vote, plant managers put the expansion on hold, saying it was not economically feasible without the agreement on shifts and a companion plan to keep a current wage arrangement. That agreement starts new hires at 75% of the pay of current employees but enables them to achieve parity after 24 months.

Union leaders immediately launched a lobbying effort that prompted a sobered membership to petition for another vote.

On Friday, the members reversed their earlier decision by an even more lopsided margin: 1,698 to 705.

Now, NUMMI says, the expansion is back on.

“We’re glad the team members took another look at it,” Michael Damer, manager of community relations at the plant, said in a telephone interview Monday. “We think it’s good for job security, for our competitiveness and for attracting investment.”

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Charlie Curry, president of Local 2244, agreed. With profitability at the plant marginal, he said, ensuring that the expansion can go forward is crucial. “In a global market . . . you really can’t afford mistakes like that,” he said in a telephone interview from Indianapolis, where he was attending a UAW meeting.

Curry blamed the initial rejection of the NUMMI proposal on a small dissident wing of the union known as the People’s Caucus. The group “misled” members, he said, by contending that the alternative shift schedule would be implemented throughout the plant. Instead, Curry said, “it was clearly stated that it would be only in two facilities.”

Richard Aguilar, leader of the dissident group, could not be reached for comment.

Specific details of the work schedule will be negotiated when the two sides begin bargaining for a new contract next spring.

Presumably, however, it would involve four-day-a-week, 10-hour-a-day work shifts--without overtime--for as many as 130 workers in the stamping plant and the new bumper molding facility. That would replace the standard eight-hour-a-day, five-day workweek.

Workers elsewhere in the plant would continue receiving the regular overtime to which they have become accustomed, Curry said.

To one expert in the field, it was no surprise that some workers would be loath to sacrifice the traditional schedule.

“The eight-hour day is one of the most sacred principles of the union movement,” said David Levine, a professor of industrial relations at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

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However, times have changed, and some workers probably would welcome a three-day weekend, Levine noted. Management gains the most from the changed schedule, he added, because it can keep its costly equipment up and running more hours each week, leading to gains in productivity and profit.

Variations of the new workweek are expected to be implemented at GM’s Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., and its Chevrolet Cavalier plant in Lordstown, Ohio, Levine said.

The People’s Caucus “sensibly” alerted employees that they could expect to see the alternative schedule spread to other parts of the plant if it worked well in the stamping plant and bumper facility, Levine added.

NUMMI got under way in 1984, two years after General Motors closed its Fremont plant because of high absenteeism and low productivity and quality.

The venture is owned jointly by GM and Toyota but is managed by Toyota.

It has succeeded in large part because of a Japanese-style team concept--marked by unusual harmony--that has reduced absences, boosted output and improved quality.

Each year, workers turn out 200,000 Geo Prizms and Toyota Corollas and about 125,000 small Toyota pickup trucks.