GM Delta workers get $2,000

Bonus part of new local UAW labor contract after strike

Sharon Terlep / The Detroit News

Workers who launched a monthlong strike against a General Motors Corp. factory near Lansing will get bonuses up to $2,500 as part of a new local labor deal ratified on Friday.

The new United Auto Workers union contract at the Delta Township factory gives production workers $2,000 and skilled trades employees $2,500, according to a copy of the agreement on the union’s Web site.

The cash rewards workers for helping GM open the factory, completed in 2006, the contract says.

Cash bonuses, which have been included in national labor deals between the UAW and Detroit’s Big Three, are highly unusual at the local level, labor expert Harley Shaiken of the University of California-Berkeley said.

The Delta Township factory deal covers 2,300 workers at the plant that builds GM’s trio of popular crossover SUVs: the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook.

Employees are scheduled to return to work Monday morning.

About 74 percent of Local 602’s members voted to ratify the deal, which was reached early Thursday morning, according to the union’s Web site.

"We can put this behind us and get people back to work," GM spokesman Dan Flores said.

Flores said GM will look for a way to make up for production lost since workers walked off the job April 17.

Since the plant opened, workers have been covered by a temporary agreement that offers little consistency or job security, local union officials said.

Among the provisions of the new contract, team leaders on the assembly line will get an extra $1 an hour for taking on added responsibilities. Also, when GM hires temps, former employees will get preference for the jobs.

"This new agreement provides us needed stability now, and for those who come after us," said Local 602 Bargaining Chairman Steve Bramos in a statement.

Separately, Canadian Auto Workers members representing about 13,000 GM hourly workers in Canada ratified a three-year national labor deal, the union said late Friday.

GM and the CAW reached a tentative pact early Thursday morning. CAW workers at Chrysler LLC are voting today on their own national labor deal. Ford already has had its contract ratified by the union.

GM is still dealing with a UAW strike under way since May 5 at the Kansas City, Kan., factory that builds the fast-selling Chevrolet Malibu.