UAW sets strike deadline for 11 a.m. today

UAW sets strike deadline for 11 a.m. today

DETROIT (AP) — The signs were ready and picket assignments handed out as thousands of United Auto Workers at General Motors Corp. factories nationwide prepared to walk off their this morning if no contract deal was reached.

Negotiators worked all Sunday night and still were at the bargaining table early today as the deadline approached. The UAW set an 11 a.m. Eastern strike deadline Sunday night.

“We’re getting activated right now,” Mike O’Rourke, president of Local 1853 at a GM plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., said this morning.

If no agreement was reached, bargaining committee members would clear the plant of unionized workers at 11 a.m., and many would head to the picket lines, O’Rourke said.

“We’ll have pickets out there,” said Chris “Tiny” Sherwood, president of Local 652 in Lansing. “Some will come out of work and grab a sign with us.”

The UAW hasn’t called a nationwide strike during contract negotiations since 1976, when Ford Motor Co. plants were shut down. There were strikes at two GM plants during contract negotiations in 1996.