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UAW Chooses GM as Strike Target
The United Auto Workers Union has selected General Motors Co. as its initial strike target for this year’s labor contract talks.
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The United Auto Workers Union has selected General Motors Co. as its initial strike target for this year’s labor contract talks.
The designation means that the four-year GM-UAW contract which emerges will become a pattern for the union’s new agreements with Ford and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
GM also embodies the union’s thorniest issue: job protection. Last November GM left the fate of three assembly and two powertrain plants in North America in danger by announcing it was not assigning new vehicle programs to them. The five facilities represent about 6,000 hourly jobs in the U.S. and Canada.
Analysts note that GM, which shed 14 factories (many of them partsmaking facilities) when it went through bankruptcy in 2009, currently is running at only 72% of capacity in North America. That compares with 81% utilization for Ford and 92% for FCA, according to LMC Automotive.
GM also has a relatively high ratio of temporary employees in the U.S., about 10% of its 46,000-member hourly workforce. The UAW is eager to reduce that number and convert them into full-time workers.
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