General Motors, union reach tentative agreement, workers will not strike
Staff/wire report
LORDSTOWN
The United Auto Workers and General Motors averted a strike and reached a tentative deal, the union announced late Sunday.
The UAW announced on Facebook that it “secured significant gains and job security protections,” but has yet to release specifics.
Local UAW Chapter 1714 President Robert Morales said he got word from International headquarters in Detroit about 11:55 p.m., just minutes before the 11:59 deadline set forth by the UAW.
Morales told The Vindicator a minute after midnight that he breathed a “sigh of relief.”
Local UAW leaders who comprise the union’s national GM Council will head to Detroit Wednesday to review the proposed agreement and vote on it.
General Motors workers who arrived for the third shift at the Lordstown plant after 10 p.m. Sunday said they were prepared to strike, if it came to that.
The UAW, which includes some 53,000 Generals Motors employees nationwide, raised the possibility of a strike if it could not reach a tentative agreement for a four-year contract renewal with the company by 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
With less than an hour to go before the deadline, leaders of local union chapters, including chapters 1112 and 1714 in Warren, waited for notification from international headquarters in Detroit.
Morales said members were prepared for a walkout, but that a strike would be a “last resort.” Chapter 1714 posted marching orders, including picketing assignments, on its Facebook page Sunday afternoon, in case of a strike. The chapter also announced that the union Hall in Lordstown would be open 24 hours.
Some 4,500 UAW members work at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, where the CheVy Cruze is manufactured.
Glenn Johnson, president of local UAW chapter 1112 which, told The Vindicator Sunday that negotiations were at a fever pitch.
“They’re doing everything in their power to make an agreement happen,” he said.
The UAW similarly threatened to strike during negotiations with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles last week, but the two parties were able to reach an agreement before that happened. The UAW negotiated a four-year agreement with Chrysler that nixed a tiered payment structure and instead opened the possibility for workers hired after 2007 to earn top wages after eight years with the company.
UAW representatives said they were seeking a similar agreement with GM, but that they hoped to eliminate the two-tier system over four years instead of eight.
Morales said he estimated about 20 percent of nonmanagement workers at the Lordstown plant were entry-level, meaning that they earn between $15 and $20 an hour.
The UAW argues that GM profitability enables it to pay more than Chrysler and that workers should be compensated for sacrifices made after government bailouts in 2007 and 2009.