After a monthlong strike that has idled General Motors plants across the Midwest and South, union leaders will gather on Thursday in Detroit to consider a deal that could send the picketing autoworkers back to the assembly lines.
The details of the tentative agreement have not been announced, but the union, the United Automobile Workers, said it had “achieved major wins.” According to people familiar with the agreement, it includes wage increases and a formula for allowing temporary workers to become full-time employees.
But details about some of the most contentious issues in the negotiations, including the status of plants that G.M. planned to shut down, have yet to emerge. It was also unclear what commitments G.M. made about expanding domestic factory capacity or shifting production to the United States from Mexico, both union priorities.
An end to the strike would come as a relief to the trucking companies and auto suppliers that provide parts to G.M. Since the strike began on Sept. 15, suppliers have had to lay off or cut wages for tens of thousands of workers, as the economic ripple effects of the strike have spread from Canada to Mexico.
What do we know about the deal?
People familiar with the agreement said that it included a signing bonus higher than the $8,000 each worker received in the last contract in 2015, and that it would make no change to the employee share of health care contributions. They said workers would also get 3 percent wage increases in two of the four years of the contract and 4 percent lump-sum payments in the other two.
The deal would provide a formula for temporary workers to become full-fledged employees, they said, but they did not elaborate. The use of temporary employees, who make up 7 percent of the G.M. work force, was reportedly a sticking point in the talks, along with possible modifications to a two-tier wage system that paid less to more recent hires.
What happens next?
If officials of the union’s G.M. locals accept the tentative agreement on Thursday, they could call an immediate end to the strike. They could also continue the walkout until the deal is ratified by a majority of the 49,000 U.A.W. members employed by G.M.
Wiley Turnage, president of Local 22, which represents 700 workers at G.M.’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant, said he needed to review the details of the agreement before deciding whether to vote in favor of it on Thursday.
“It has to be fair to our members,” he said.
Ratification is not a foregone conclusion. The last time the U.A.W. negotiated a contract with G.M., approval was delayed for a month in part because the automaker’s skilled-trades workers rejected the terms.
Why did the U.A.W. go on strike?
One of the union’s main objectives was getting G.M. to reopen a car factory in Lordstown, Ohio, a goal that President Trump endorsed. G.M. closed that plant, and others in Baltimore and in Warren, Mich., as part of a cost-cutting effort that eliminated 2,800 factory jobs and thousands of white-collar positions.
Another sticking point was the automaker’s tiered wage structure: While workers who started with G.M. before 2007 earn about $31 an hour, most of those hired since then make much less, and so-called temporary workers are at the bottom of the scale at about $15 an hour.
What was the economic impact?
Every day the strike continued, the economic ramifications spread throughout the auto supply chain, resulting in layoffs at factories that supply G.M. with parts and disrupting restaurants that rely on the patronage of autoworkers.
In Mexico and Canada, G.M. plants that depend on American factories have been shut down, putting thousands out of work. In Flint, Mich., at least 1,200 truckers and production employees from suppliers were out of work because of the strike, including hundreds from Lear, a supplier of seats to G.M.
The strike also cost the union, its members and G.M. hundreds of millions of dollars in lost dues, wages and revenue. In the United States, 34 G.M. plants went dark, forcing striking workers to make do with a $250-a-week subsidy from the union.
What does the deal mean for the other automakers?
If the General Motors contract is ratified, the U.A.W. will turn its focus to Ford Motor or Fiat Chrysler. Contracts with those manufacturers expired on Sept. 14, but workers continued reporting to assembly lines while the union negotiated with G.M.
G.M. has a smaller U.A.W. work force than its Detroit rivals. But the union took aim at G.M. as the automaker has earned solid profits — it made $35 billion in North America over the last three years — while closing plants in the United States.
The U.A.W. is likely to try to reach similar terms with Ford and Fiat Chrysler, a standard practice known as pattern bargaining.
Neal E. Boudette contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/business/gm-strike-whats-next.html
2019-10-17 09:00:00Z
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