Saturn Strike Vote Deals GM Another Blow

General Motors Corp., already crippled by a 46-day strike at two parts plants, was dealt another blow Sunday when workers voted to authorize a strike at its Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.

Saturn, GM’s small-car import fighter, was once viewed as a model of union and management cooperation. But growing labor tension means Saturn could be hit with a strike as soon as this week if talks falter.

The threatened strike turns up the pressure on GM, which already has lost most of its vehicle-producing ability due to two strikes in Flint, Mich. Those strikes revolve around job security and plant efficiency issues.

GM already has lost production of 227,000 vehicles as well as $1.2 billion from the strikes. Each day the labor dispute goes unresolved, GM loses $80 million and misses production of 20,000 more cars and trucks.

The strikes are already the biggest to hit GM since 1970, when a nationwide United Auto Workers walkout shuttered factories nationwide for 67 days. The walkouts have forced it to close 25 assembly plants, scores of parts facilities and lay off 186,000 workers. The Saturn plant is now one of only three North American assembly plants still making cars.

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Union leaders said 95% of the 5,000 workers who submitted ballots favored the strike authorization. Saturn has about 7,200 workers. Any strike would have to be first approved by the UAW leadership in Detroit.

The Saturn vote is an embarrassment to GM, which has held up the company as a proud symbol of its harmonious labor relations. Saturn is marketed as “a different kind of car company,” often with hourly workers making endorsements of the friendly relations with management.

But now Saturn clearly faces the same problems as any other manufacturer, said Maryann Keller, a GM analyst at ING Bayer Furman Selz, a financial services firm.

Even though a Saturn strike would complicate GM’s situation, it “wouldn’t necessarily hurt earnings,” said Merrill Lynch analyst Nicholas Lobaccaro, mainly because Saturn is a small part of GM.

“The bottom-line effect is not going to be huge. They don’t make that many vehicles,” Keller said.

But the vote adds Saturn to GM’s broiling labor troubles. UAW members at GM parts plants in Dayton, Ohio, and Indianapolis, and the Buick City assembly complex in Flint also have authorized walkouts. Workers at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Ky., will hold a strike vote this week. GM and UAW negotiators are meeting at all those factories.

There’s been little progress reported at the bargaining table in the Flint parts plants, despite phone conversations in recent days between GM Chairman and Chief Executive John F. Smith Jr. and UAW President Stephen Yokich.

The UAW suspended local talks today because more than 300 leaders are coming to Flint for rallies at the striking plants. Yokich is expected to brief them on strike progress and strategy.

The two sides are scheduled Wednesday to begin arbitration hearings before Thomas Roberts of Los Angeles. GM is seeking a ruling on whether the ongoing strikes are illegal.

GM said the union walked out over plant investment and work allocation issues, which the union cannot strike over under the national contract. The UAW says the strikes are over local line speedups and safety violations, issues that it is allowed to walk out over.

The Saturn vote reflects worker concerns about being left out of key business decisions, outsourcing that they say could lead to hundreds of job cuts, and declining pay under the company’s sliding bonus system. Although their base pay is lower than for other GM workers, Saturn’s pay system gives workers the potential to earn more if production goals are met.

“This membership and leadership can no longer stand here and live a lie about us being full partners,” said Michael Bennett, bargaining chairman of UAW Local 1853.

Saturn officials acknowledged that there are issues that are being resolved with the UAW but declined to discuss them.

“We recognize we have critical issues to work through. We will continue to talk through each one of them just as we have in the past--in the spirit of partnership,” said Saturn Chairman and President Don Hudler.

It is not the first time workers have authorized UAW to call a strike against Saturn, said company spokesman Greg Martin. In 1991, a strike was authorized in a dispute over pensions. That was resolved without a walkout, he said.

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Keller said that worker frustration about leaving positions of seniority at other GM plants to start from scratch in Spring Hill could be adding to tensions.

“There is no possibility of them earning the kind of compensation they could have before. There is no way that Spring Hill is ever going to operate at capacity as long as the vehicle they are building is the current one,” Keller said.

Moreover, a new Saturn mid-size car will not be built in Spring Hill, which otherwise could boost production and therefore workers’ pay. Rather, it will be built in Wilmington, Del.

Slow sales and production cutbacks have dogged the company for the last year. Still, in March, workers defeated a proposal to abandon their unique contract, which ties bonuses to production.

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Times staff writer Nauss is based in Detroit and Fulmer is a special correspondent in Los Angeles. Bloomberg News contributed to this report.