GM avoids strike at Malibu plant — for now
GM avoids strike at Malibu plant — for now
Report: Detroit-Hamtramck plant to restart next week
Automotive News | April 22, 2008 - 4:28 pm EST
General Motors has won a two-day reprieve from a possible UAW local strike of its key Chevrolet Malibu assembly plant in Kansas City, Kan.
Officials at UAW Local 31 agreed to allow negotiations to extend into Thursday, April 24, before a decision is made whether to walk out, said Local 31 President Jeff Manning.
He said talks are progressing slowly. The 2,600 workers at GM’s Fairfax assembly plant would not approve what GM is offering on some key issues, including seniority rights and job security.
The Fairfax plant makes about 3,100 of the hot-selling Malibu sedans a week. GM has only a 37-day supply of the cars on dealership lots. Malibu sedans also are made at GM’s Orion Township assembly plant in suburban Detroit. That plant has a local agreement.
“We gave GM a great way to be profitable with our national agreement in September, but they’re going for more in the local negotiations,” Manning said.
Meanwhile, GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant is calling workers back on Monday, April 28, according to Detroit radio station WWJ AM 950. The plant makes the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac CTS sedans. It idled production March 31 because of the UAW strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc.
GM and several UAW locals have locked horns over the slowness of plant-level contract negotiations. Only 10 of 77 GM locals have local agreements, which deal with work-rule, seniority and other noneconomic issues not detailed in the master national contract.
6 plants threatened
Six GM plants are under a strike threat over local bargaining issues. Workers at the Lansing Delta assembly plant near Lansing, Mich., have been on strike since late last week over their failure to get a local contract. The stoppage has interrupted production of the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook crossovers.
And the rank and file at a GM stamping plant in Parma, Ohio, rejected a local contract agreement Friday, April 18, that officials at UAW Local 1005 had sent them. Local 1005 President Tito Boneta said today that the local would schedule a general union meeting to hear why workers had rejected the tentative agreement 61 to 39 percent.
Boneta, who is running for re-election as local president May 6, said the union would regroup and probably return to negotiations with GM once the leadership had heard from members.
In addition to Lansing Delta, Fairfax and Parma, GM also is under a strike threat at its key transmission plant in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Mich., and stamping plants in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Mansfield, Ohio.
GM spokesman Dan Flores said GM continues to bargain in good faith to reach local agreements.
Aaron Bragman of Global Insight Inc. is among the auto analysts who earlier had suggested that the UAW was using pressure from local GM strikes to try to draw the automaker into strike talks at American Axle.
Little effect on GM
That 2-month-old American Axle strike has hardly hurt GM. It has largely affected light-truck production — slow-selling vehicles of which GM still has plenty in inventory.
That notion still has some credence, Bragman said. But the local contract defeat at Parma and the haphazard way that locals are warning of strikes has called into question how highly organized the UAW effort is.
“This may be about worker disaffection,” Bragman said. “Workers were not thrilled about the national agreement, even though they approved it.”
The national agreement contained huge money-saving concessions for GM. Those included a lower new-hire wage that will pay nonproduction workers half the $28 an hour earned by veteran workers as well as a restructuring of health care benefits.
ENLARGE
|
| 2008 Chevy Malibu |
