Talks between General Motors and the United Auto Workers (UAW) resumed in Detroit this morning (US time) and, at 12.30EDT, were still “ongoing, with nothing new to report”, GM spokesman Tom Wickham told just-auto on Tuesday.
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In a statement last night, key component supplier Magna International said: “[We have] been closely monitoring the situation between GM and the UAW as they continue to work on a new labour agreement.
“We are hopeful that the strike will be temporary and operations will be restored at GM as quickly as possible.
“Depending on the length of the strike, Magna International may be required to suspend the supply of parts to General Motors.”
GM’s Windsor, Ontario, transmission plant is now down as is its Oshawa no. 1 car plant, though all other Canadian facilities were still running as of about 9am EDT, just-auto’s Canadian correspondent reported. A decision on Oshawa no. 2 car plant was due later today.
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By GlobalDataAlso on Tuesday, the Detroit News reported that UAW president Ron Gettelfinger had said the strike may actually bring a quicker end to the stalemate between the union and GM as they attempt to agree on a new national labour contract for 73,000 US GM workers in 80 facilities.
Two local UAW branch presidents in the Detroit area told the paper striking workers remained enthused as they returned to the picket lines for the second day.
“Our people are energised. Spirits remain high,” Al Benchich, president of Local (branch) 909, which represents hourly workers’ at GM’s Warren Transmission plant, told the Detroit News.
US television channels again showed video of striking GM workers picketing outside production facilities in various states as far afield as California where GM has a joint venture assembly plant with Toyota.
The Detroit News said GM workers could be seen today picketing the entrances of their plants and noted the protests have gone on without major incident though police were called to a GM facility because at least one salaried worker said strikers were blocking access to the building. The strikers were informed they could picket and no one was arrested, the police told the paper.
Police also spoke to strikers at another GM facility in the Detroit area about blocking the entrance to the facility, the paper added.
According to the Detroit News, Gettelfinger said in an interview earlier this morning that the UAW reluctantly decided to call a strike over “job security and those type of issues” and added that retiree health care issues were not part of the impasse.
Gettelfinger also reportedly said that GM didn’t meet “them halfway” in negotiations and said he was “puzzled” why they two sides have not yet reached a tentative agreement.
He portrayed the strike as a move to bring negotiations to an end, according to the paper.
“In many ways it will bring an end to this thing quicker, we hope. We are ready to settle the agreement and move on with life. But it takes two sides to do that,” Gettelfinger was quoted as saying.
Gettelfinger was also reported to have said that the Voluntary Employee’s Beneficiary Association, or VEBA, [which would be set up to provide retiree health benefits, lifting the financial burden off GM after a one-off payment of over $US1bn to establish the fund -ed], was not the spark of the strike.
“This talk about the health care, the VEBA, that’s off the table for right now and it was prior to the going off on strike,” Gettelfinger said, according to the Detroit News, which added that the UAW president also criticised media portrayals that VEBA was solely GM’s idea.
“I am convinced that is in our best interest, as I was in ’05, for our retirees to go into a VEBA. That was never an issue for us,” Gettelfinger said, according to the Detroit News.
Meanwhile, the Teamsters, the largest transportation union in North America, which represents 1.4m workers – including nearly 10,000 drivers in the automobile transport industry – said in a statement it “would stand with our 73,000 UAW brothers and sisters in their fight with General Motors. Teamsters will not cross a UAW picket line and our 10,000 automotive transport members will not deliver GM cars.”
“It is time to put a stop to corporate America’s attack on the security of hardworking men and women in the United States,” the union said in a statement.
“Workers should not solely bear the brunt of decades of bad business decisions by GM management. By outsourcing good jobs and creating a growing environment of economic and job insecurity, GM has failed its workers and its customers.”
