General Motors, UAW reach tentative deal that could end strike

Photo: General Motors

Bargainers for General Motors and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative contract deal on Wednesday that could end a monthlong strike that brought the company's U.S. factories, as well as some Canadian operations, to a standstill.

The deal, which the union says offers "major gains" for workers, was hammered out after months of bargaining but won't bring an immediate end to the strike by 49,000 hourly workers. They will likely stay on the picket lines for at least two more days as two union committees vote on the deal, after which the members will have to approve.

The strike closed more than 30 GM plants in the U.S., which created parts shortages that forced an almost complete shutdown of GM's assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., and the partial shutdown of its engine plant in St. Catharines, Ont.

The plant shutdowns in Ontario, and subsequent production halts by suppliers to the plants, have left thousands temporarily laid off in the province.

GM Canada spokeswoman Jennifer Wright said the company will look to resume Canadian operations as quickly as possible once an agreement is reached.

Terms of the tentative four-year contract were not released, but it's likely to include some pay raises, lump sum payments to workers and requirements that GM build new vehicles in U.S. factories. Early on, GM offered new products in Detroit and Lordstown, Ohio, two of the four U.S. cities where it planned to close factories.

The company offered to build a new electric pickup truck to keep the Detroit-Hamtramck plant open and to build an electric vehicle battery factory in or near Lordstown, Ohio, where GM is closing an assembly plant. The battery factory would employ far fewer workers and pay less money than the assembly plant.

"It sounds good," Clarence Trinity, a worker at GM's engine and transmission plant in the Detroit suburb of Romulus, Michigan, said of the deal. "But I have to see it in writing or hear from the leaders."

Trinity said he can't figure out why it took 31 days for the strike to end. "I don't understand what General Motors was expecting to get out of us. Maybe they didn't expect us to strike. Maybe they didn't expect us to strike this long."

The union's bargainers have voted to recommend the deal to the UAW International Executive Board, which will vote on the agreement. Union leaders from factories nationwide will travel to Detroit for a vote on Thursday. The earliest workers could return would be after that.

In past years, it's taken a minimum of three or four days and as long as several weeks for the national ratification vote. Workers took almost two weeks to finish voting on their last GM agreement, in October of 2015. Then skilled trades workers rejected it, causing further delays.

If approved, the contract agreement would be used as a template for talks with GM's crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. Normally the major provisions carry over to the other two companies and cover about 140,000 auto workers nationwide.

Art Schwartz, a former GM negotiator who now runs a labour consulting business, said depending on the contents, the contract could influence wages and benefits at other manufacturers. But he said foreign automakers with U.S. factories, mainly in the South, always give pay raises and shouldn't be affected much.

"They're located in low-wage areas and they pay well," he said. "The people who work there are kings of the locality."

The strike did show that the union still has power in the auto industry. "I think economically the UAW will do just fine in this agreement," Schwartz said.

The deal cost workers thousands of dollars in wages, and analysts estimate that GM lost about $2 billion due to the monthlong strike. It's unclear if GM will be able to make up some of the production lost to the strike by increasing assembly line speeds or paying workers overtime. Many GM dealers reported still healthy inventories of vehicles even with the strike.

If all of the committees bless the deal, it's likely to take several days for GM to get its factories restarted.