Bargaining could shift to GM or Ford after Fiat Chrysler workers deny deal
Combined dispatches
DETROIT
United Auto Workers union members have rejected a proposed contract with Fiat Chrysler in a rebuke of union leaders who had praised the deal.
Official totals weren’t released, but workers at many large factories voted against the pact by large margins.
Late Wednesday, members at the last plant to vote in Belvidere, Ill., also turned down the contract. The local union’s website says 65 percent of the 2,980 workers who voted were against it.
UAW leaders summoned local presidents and bargainers to a meeting in Detroit today to decide the next move.
The union could go back to the bargaining table with Fiat Chrysler, or it could shift bargaining to either General Motors or Ford. The union also could go on strike.
Calls to UAW locals at General Motors in Lordstown for comment were not returned Wednesday.
About 40,000 union Fiat Chrysler employees have been working under a contract extension since Sept. 14. The new deal had pay raises but didn’t end a lower wage rate for those hired after 2007. Workers also are concerned about shifting car production to Mexico and replacing it with trucks and SUVs.
Under the deal, pay for entry-level workers hired after 2007 would top out at $25.35 per hour after three years, up from the current $19.28.
Top-tier workers hired before 2007 would go from $28.50 per hour to $30 per hour during the four-year contract. They haven’t had raises in more than a decade, although they have received profit-sharing checks.
A Detroit Free Press analysis of voting already indicated that ratification by a majority of the 40,000 union-represented workers at Fiat Chrysler was unlikely before the Jeep results were announced. Mathematically, the deal cannot pass.
The rejection of the agreement by members of UAW Local 12 in Toledo isn’t surprising, but the overwhelming margin of defeat is the highest of any large UAW unit that has voted so far.
Many of the more than 5,000 workers there are angry at Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne because there have been media reports that the automaker plans to move the Jeep Cherokee – the best-selling Jeep model – to the automaker’s plant in Belvidere, Ill.
News of the company’s plans to move the Cherokee came after officials from Toledo and the state of Ohio spent more than a year putting together a land and incentive package to convince the automaker to keep the Wrangler in Toledo. But workers, as well as politicians, felt double-crossed when news emerged that the company would move the Cherokee instead.
Workers are worried about the relocation of the Cherokee because they are concerned that the Wrangler and a potential Wrangler pickup truck won’t support as many jobs even after production capacity is expanded for the iconic SUV.
Workers in Toledo and Sterling Heights who voted were among the last to vote in a nationwide ratification process that began last week. Workers at an assembly plant in Belvidere were the last to vote Wednesday.