Valley GM workers like job security in contract

The two-tier wage system will end additional outsourcing.

By DON SHILLING

VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR

LORDSTOWN — Judy Dean definitely will vote for the tentative labor agreement at General Motors — it gives her a job.

The 47-year-old Youngstown woman has been a temporary worker at GM’s Lordstown plant for parts of three years. Temporary workers earn 70 percent of full-scale union wages and don’t have benefits.

If the contract passes, Dean and about 3,000 temps across the country would be made permanent GM employees at $28 an hour. The Lordstown assembly plant has about 20 temps.

“I’m very blessed,” Dean said Friday after an information session at the United Auto Workers Local 1112 union hall. Dean lost her last job in 2003 when Oxford Automotive closed its Masury plant.

Others who were interviewed said they were satisfied with the tentative agreement, which ended a brief strike last week. The local, which has 2,400 members, is scheduled to vote next week. The UAW wants all locals to vote by Wednesday.

“We’ve got a job, and I think they did the best they could with this contract,” said Dorothy Crosby of Youngstown, who has been at the plant eight years.

The job security that the deal provides Lordstown was a constant theme among workers. GM had scheduled production of the Chevrolet Cobalt at the plant only until June 2009, but the UAW said the deal includes bringing new small- and midsize models to the plant.

The UAW said none of GM’s factories would be closed other than those already scheduled for closure.

“Keeping jobs in this country is better than having them build cars overseas,” said Tom Tenney of Alliance, who has 30 years at Lordstown.

In exchange for job security and bringing the temps to permanent status, GM would receive permission to create a two-tier wage system. New employees who are hired in nonproduction roles, such as janitorial or landscaping, would be paid about $16 an hour.

“We’re going to have to swallow it whether we like it or not,” said Buck Clearwater of Leavittsburg, a 29-year plant veteran.

In recent years, GM has moved a good amount of work outside the plant and given it to outside suppliers, he said. By agreeing to a lower tier of wages, GM has said it won’t outsource more work over the four-year contract, he noted. Besides, the new workers will move up to full-scale wages as they take production jobs, he said.

The contract has to be viewed in context of the financial pressure that GM is under, he said. “They have to make money or they can’t write us checks,” he said.

One worker, who didn’t want to be identified, said he was glad that wages remained intact. “We were expecting to lose money,” he said.

The deal provides annual bonuses instead of pay raises and diverts part of the workers’ cost-of-living adjustments to a fund for retiree health care.

A 37-year veteran of the plant, who also didn’t want to be identified, said he would have liked to have seen GM commit to a cap on pay for its senior executives. But overall, he doesn’t mind some concessions to help GM.

“We’ve been out here for too long to let it go under,” he said.

shilling@vindy.com