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Marathon bargaining session fails to produce deal as 73,000 UAW members start strike; talks said to continue.
By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
September 24 2007: 12:13 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The United Auto Workers union launched a nationwide strike at General Motors facilities on Monday as 73,000 UAW members started walking off the job and hitting the picket lines at the nation's largest automaker. But negotiations continued past the 11 a.m. ET start of the strike, according to GM spokeswoman Kathryn McBride. McBride would not address the issues that had prevented an agreement that could have avoided a strike. A union spokesman was not immediately available for comment; the union has scheduled a press conference for 12:15 p.m. ET. A feed from CNN affiliate WDIV-TV in Michigan showed picket signs going up at 11 a.m. outside the the Orion Assembly plant in Orion, Mich., followed by a steady stream of union members driving out of the plant's main gates. The plant, which has almost 2,500 hourly workers, builds the Pontiac G6. The workers had stayed on the job for nine days past the original expiration of the contract on Sept. 14, while union and management negotiators kept talking. But late Sunday night, the union set an 11 a.m. ET strike deadline and issued a statement Monday saying that management had been unwilling to address the unions' key concerns on job security for the members at GM. "The company's disregard for our members has forced our bargaining committee to take this course of action," said a statement from union vice president Cal Rapson, the head of its GM bargaining committee. The company said it was still hopeful it could reach a quick deal with the union, despite the start of the strike. "We are disappointed in the UAW's decision to call a national strike," said a statement from GM. "The bargaining involved complex, difficult issues that affect the job security of our U.S. work force, and the long-term viability of the company. We are fully committed to working with the UAW to develop solutions together to address the competitive challenges facing general motors. We will continue focusing our efforts on reaching an agreement as soon as possible." While the strike idles 59 U.S. plants and facilities at GM, it does not affect the two other automakers whose workers are represented by the UAW, Ford Motor or Chrysler Group, which between them have more than 100,000 UAW still on the job. Members at those companies have been working under their own contract extensions as the union concentrated on reaching a deal with the UAW. A key to the contract talks is GM's goal of shifting an estimated $51 billion in future health care costs for retirees and their family members to union-controlled trust funds. GM has more than 340,000 retirees and surviving spouses receiving such benefits today. Shifting those costs is seen as a key to GM efforts to close its cost gap with nonunion automakers such as Toyota Motor and Honda Motor. Shares of Dow component GM were up a bit less than 1 percent in midday trading following the start of the strike, although that's down from the 2.6 percent gain it was showing before the strike started. Most analysts have said that a long strike at General Motors would be a crippling blow for the automaker's efforts to return its North American operations to profitability, the automaker is probably in a relatively good position to weather a short strike. David Healy, analyst with Burnham Securities, said he believes GM could take a strike of up to a month without a significant problem. "It's sort of an odd thing, the first thing that happens with an automaker in case of a strike is their cash increases, as their payroll stops, and they still keep collecting cash for the cars that have been shipped," said Healy. He believes the two sides are close enough that a strike, if it does in fact start, will be a short one. "Days, not weeks or months, that would be my guess," he said. The strike is the nation's largest since 87,000 workers at Verizon Communications walked off the job in August 2000, but that action did not shut down the company. GM was last hit by a strike at its Flint, Mich., locals in 1998, a work stoppage by only 9,200 workers that was felt across most of GM's North American operations since they couldn't get the parts they needed to keep making cars and trucks. The last strike by more than 70,000 workers that shut down a company's operations was the 1997 strike by 185,000 Teamsters at United Parcel Service. |
