GM reaches new contract at crossover plant in Mich.
GM reaches new contract at crossover plant in Mich.
Automotive News | May 15, 2008 - 10:13 am EST
ENLARGE
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| The UAW and GM reached a tentative agreement at the plant that makes the Buick Enclave and its crossover cousins, the GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook. |
General Motors reached an agreement with a local union Thursday and avoided a threatened strike from another.
GM spokesman Dan Flores confirmed a deal was reached at about 3 a.m. Thursday with UAW Local 602, which represents 3,300 workers at the Delta Township assembly plant near Lansing, Mich. The workers there have been on strike since April 17.
Employees will not return to work until the agreement is ratified. Flores said GM expects the ratification process will begin soon, but didn’t know if the union had set a vote time as of Thursday morning.
The plant makes the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook crossovers.
GM also avoided a strike by Local 549 at a stamping plant in Ontario, Ohio, near Mansfield. Flores said that the local withdrew the strike threat Wednesday afternoon, and that the automaker is continuing to bargain with the union.
GM still faces a local strike by workers at the Fairfax assembly plant in Kansas City, Kan., who went on strike May 5. That plant makes the hot-selling Chevrolet Malibu. Flores said talks with the local union broke Wednesday afternoon and resumed this morning.
Ending Axle or dissatisfaction?
Some analysts speculated earlier in the 12-week-old UAW strike against GM supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. that the union was using local strikes and strike threats to leverage a deal.
“It may have been the idea early on, but it’s starting to look now like they aren’t related,” said Aaron Bragman, a research analyst at Global Insight Inc. “I’m starting to think about whether this is simple dissatisfaction with the national contract reached last year.”
Local unions entered their own negotiations after GM and the UAW reached a national contract agreement last fall. The number of strikes and strike threats has allowed locals to vent frustrations with a national agreement that wasn’t terribly popular among some ranks of the union, Bragman said.
“The sort of labor bliss from last fall has clearly changed,” said Robert Schulz, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s corporate ratings unit.
If the UAW’s idea was to draw GM into American Axle negotiations, it was accomplished last week. GM last week offered $200 million to assist American Axle in efforts to reach a contract agreement with the UAW.
But on Monday, American Axle said the talks with the UAW hit a snag. American Axle said the main issues remaining are health care benefits and unemployment compensation.
