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Fiat Chrysler Avoids Strike With New Tentative Contract

The USA union on Tuesday called for a strike against Fiat Chrysler’s us operations at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Wednesday (0359 GMT Thursday) unless a new agreement on a four-year contract is reached.

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The union’s bargaining committee made “significant gains” in reaching a tentative agreement, the union announced on its website, saying it would make details available pending the results of a vote Friday.

“We heard from our members, and went back to FCA to strengthen their contract”, UAW President Dennis Williams said in a news release.

FCA and the union could reach a new tentative agreement before the deadline, or the union could put talks with FCA on hold and bargain with Ford Motor Co. or General Motors Co. instead.

“We have plenty of inventory”, said Bill Fox, a Fiat Chrysler dealer and chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association. It would have been the industry’s first strike since 2007.

About 43% of Fiat Chrysler’s 40,000 UAW workers were hired after 2007 and many of them have never experienced a strike.

The UAW must balance the need to make a forceful statement to Fiat Chrysler with concerns it could substantially hurt the company, the weakest of the Big Three, which would be bad for its own members and hopes of growth. It also called for a variety of bonuses and profit sharing payments. The proposed agreement would have narrowed the gap between veteran UAW workers, who earn about $28 an hour, and more recent hires, who are paid about $19 an hour.

Roughly 43 percent of the workforce now collects second-tier wages, and critics said that should be reduced to 25 percent under a contract provision negotiated in 2011.

Grant wage parity to Tier 2 and Tier 1 employees.

The two-tier wage system was set up to boost hiring of entry-level workers in the late 2000s when automakers were struggling.

Local union leaders will vote on the proposed deal Friday at a meeting in Detroit. Workers also complained about a lack information about a new health care cooperative and expressed anger over the company’s plans to move the production of the Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200 to Mexico.

“They can go out on a long strike and they’re not going to get much more”, she said.

“I$3 viewed it as a fair agreement and thought it was more than Fiat Chrysler would give, they are not in the strongest financial position”.

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Around 40,000 workers, mostly coming from the carmaker’s 23 factories in the Midwest, are members of the union.

Protestors picketed last month outside UAW offices in Detroit in opposition to a proposed labor contract with Fiat Chrysler that was ultimately rejected