March 29, 2024

Automakers and U.A.W. Are Still Talking

The U.A.W. and Chrysler also agreed to extend their contract, though the pace of talks with Chrysler has slowed while the focus shifts to G.M.

Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, criticized the U.A.W.’s president, Bob King, for failing to show up at the bargaining table Wednesday as expected. Mr. Marchionne had left the Frankfurt auto show in Germany early, and said he arrived in Detroit expecting to finalize a deal.

With regard to G.M., top U.A.W. officials said in an update to workers posted online by several union locals that they were “hopeful that an agreement can be reached soon.”

“While we have made significant progress, we have not been able to secure a new agreement that we would recommend for ratification,” the message said.

A G.M. spokeswoman confirmed that officials were back in negotiations as of 10 a.m. Thursday.

Mr. Marchionne sent the letter to Mr. King after the union leader spent the day huddled in contract talks with General Motors rather than Chrysler. A copy of the letter was obtained from sources close to the negotiations.

“I flew back from the Frankfurt Motor Show late last night to be here today to finalize our dialogue that has been started by our teams but that required your presence and mine to conclude,” Mr. Marchionne wrote. “You unfortunately could not be here, I am told, due to competing engagements.”

Mr. Marchionne went on to say that he and Mr. King “failed” employees by not concluding the months-long negotiations before the current contract expired.

“I am willing to extend the contract by an additional week to allow closure on all outstanding matters,” Mr. Marchionne wrote.

Workers for both companies had been anxiously awaiting word of a settlement, and even U.A.W. officials at several plants said they were being kept in the dark about the pace and nature of the discussions.

“We are confident that we can reach an agreement that will meet many of the goals we set at the beginning of negotiations,” Joe Ashton, a U.A.W. vice president in charge of negotiations with G.M., wrote in a message to workers Wednesday.

Any agreements must be approved by the U.A.W.’s local leaders and then ratified by the rank-and-file membership.

Labor experts expect the companies to offer workers signing bonuses of at least $5,000 to improve the chances of ratification without permanently increasing labor costs.

Workers at all three companies received a $3,000 signing bonus in 2007. Their wages have not increased since 2003.

Talks with the Ford Motor Company are not as far along as the negotiations with G.M. and Chrysler.

On Tuesday, Ford and the union agreed to extend their contract indefinitely, at least temporarily putting off the possibility that a strike could be called. The union can end the extension with three days’ notice, and it might do so when a deal is close to pressure the company to settle.

Talks with all three companies lacked much of the acrimony that has defined past rounds of bargaining in the auto industry. Union leaders have vowed to help keep the carmakers competitive while also seeking ways for workers to be rewarded as the auto industry turns around.

Workers at G.M. and Chrysler are barred from striking over wage and benefit disputes through 2015, a provision they were required to approve when the companies received federal loans as they went through bankruptcy protection in 2009. Their only recourse in the case of an impasse is binding arbitration, a somewhat unpredictable process that both sides have said they want to avoid.

A major theme for the union during these talks has been regaining much of what workers gave up to keep their employers from collapsing under the weight of heavy debt and plummeting sales. But the union also wants to add jobs in the United States after suffering years of wrenching cutbacks at the three carmakers.

Mr. King, the U.A.W. president, has said U.A.W. members each ceded $7,000 to $30,000 worth of pay and benefits since 2005. In 2007, the union agreed to create a two-tier wage system that allowed the carmakers to cut costs by hiring new workers at about half the pay of other workers.

Many in the U.A.W. oppose the two-tier system, but Mr. King has said it is a way for the companies to become more competitive without cutting pay for existing workers and helps create jobs. Only about 4,000 of the 112,000 workers at G.M., Ford and Chrysler earn second-tier wages currently, but the companies hope to hire more people at the lower pay scale as older workers retire, further reducing their labor costs.

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U.A.W. Reverses Losses as Detroit’s Big Three Add Jobs

The union’s annual report, filed Thursday with the Labor Department, showed that membership grew 6 percent, or 21,421, to 376,612 in 2010. The union’s 2009 membership of 355,191 was the lowest since 1940, five years after it was founded and the year before it organized workers at the Ford Motor Company.

General Motors, Ford and the Chrysler Group each created thousands of jobs last year as they ramped up production and increased their sales from the dismal levels reached during the recession. The U.A.W. also has worked to compensate for its losses in the auto industry by organizing employees of casinos and other businesses outside of manufacturing.

“This increase is a reflection of new organizing by the U.A.W., the recovery of the domestic auto industry and U.A.W. members who won a first contract during the year,” Bob King, the U.A.W.’s president, said in a statement. “We hope to continue this growth in 2011 and beyond, as we fight to win a more fair and democratic process for workers to organize unions in the United States.”

Ford has committed to adding 7,000 hourly and salaried jobs in 2011 and 2012, and G.M. executives said this week that more workers probably would be needed this year.

The union’s new members amount to just a tiny fraction of the number it has lost since peaking at more than 1.5 million in 1969, according to union data. It still had more than 700,000 members 10 years ago.

Mr. King, who was elected last year, is seeking to increase the union’s influence by redoubling longstanding efforts to organize workers at the plants operated by foreign carmakers in the United States. He plans to identify soon which company those efforts will focus on first.

Another top U.A.W. official said this week that encouraging the Detroit automakers to create jobs would be a priority during contract negotiations this fall.

“They could get the best contract imaginable and that’s completely undermined if jobs continue to move offshore,” Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in labor relations, said.

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