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Chrysler Autoworkers Begin Strike


The Associated Press

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:30:00

Chrysler autoworkers walked off the job Wednesday after a union deadline passed with no tentative agreement.

Chrysler Autoworkers Begin Strike by The Associated Press

Union begins job action as negotiations continue.

Chrysler autoworkers walked off the job Wednesday after a union deadline passed with no tentative agreement.

The job action came after progress had been reported in contract negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and Chrysler, but several key issues remained unresolved, according to a person who had been briefed on the talks.

The UAW had set an 11 a.m. deadline for an agreement or it would have about 49,000 workers leave their jobs at 24 U.S. factories and other sites.

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“The company has thus far failed to make an offer that adequately addresses the needs of our membership,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and the UAW’s chief Chrysler negotiator, General Holiefield, said in the memo sent Monday.

The strike at Chrysler came as UAW members at General Motors Corp. wrap up voting on their own tentative contract. The UAW was expected to announce Wednesday whether a majority of GM’s union members approved the agreement, which was reached Sept. 26 after a two-day strike. Contracts can’t go into effect until workers approve them.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said Tuesday that it appeared the GM contract would be ratified with about 60 percent of the vote despite protests from some members. The historic agreement establishes lower pay for some workers and puts GM’s retiree debt into a UAW-run trust in exchange for promises of future work at U.S. plants.

Typically, the union crafts an agreement with one Detroit automaker and then persuades the other two to match its terms. But it was clear that Chrysler wanted a different deal than the one given to GM. The UAW is expected to bargain with Ford Motor Co. last.

Chrysler entered the talks seeking health care cost concessions that the UAW already granted to GM and Ford in 2005. Bargaining also has centered on how much Chrysler would pay into a company-funded, union-run trust that would take over its unfunded retiree health care costs, estimated at $18 billion.

The union agreed to the creation of such a trust last month in GM’s contract, but GM needed the trust more than Chrysler because it has 340,000 retirees and surviving spouses — compared with 78,000 at Chrysler — and billions more in retiree health care obligations.



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