The United Auto Workers and General Motors Co. have agreed to extend by one week its existing labor contract covering more than 50,000 factory employees, providing more time to resolve disagreements standing in the way of ratifying a new agreement.
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In 2011, 55.6 percent of skilled trades workers for Chrysler Group LLC (now Fiat Chrysler Automobiles US) voted against a tentative agreement, but a majority of workers overall voted in favor of the contract.
Williams’ decision came despite a push by UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada – head of the union’s GM department – to ratify the agreement after hearing the skilled-trades workers voice their concerns.
Both skilled trades and production workers must vote to approve the deal separately for it to be ratified.
A few of the issues skilled trades have with the tentative agreement pertain to local contract agreements, while other issues have to do with problems with the overall agreement, such as the lack of early retirement offers/buyouts for skilled trades workers and no cost of living increases, according to two sources familiar with a call held by UAW leadership on Thursday, November 12, as reported by The Detroit News. “Someone is going to get hurt and it’s going to be because of this”.
The worldwide Executive Board met Thursday, according to Estrada’s Friday letter.
The statement comes a week after voting results were released and skilled trades workers rejected the contract, after much wrangling over the motives. In a call with UAW-GM local leaders Estrada indicated she’d urge that the union’s global Executive Board as well as Williams ratify the deal.
Estrada early Thursday had pushed for ratification.
GM’s deal with all the union guarantees placements, including at least 400 new trainees to 1,300 new skilled trades. The new contract has individual parts specific to both classifications. In 1973, the final vote on a national contract at Ford Motor Co. also resulted in a split between trade workers and production workers. That would match Tier 1 workers, who also are getting their first wage increases in more than a decade: 3 percent raises in the first and third years of the contract, with lump-sum bonuses in the second and fourth years. More significantly, lower paid workers earning less than $20 an hour would be able to advance in eight years to the higher wage scale paid to “legacy” employees.
It wasn’t clear when it would be received by workers.
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GM workers would keep the outgoing contract’s profit sharing structure of $1,000 per $1 billion in GM North American profit. The plant employed 3,200 people in 2011.
