The tentative contract between the United Auto Workers and General Motors was in danger of being voted down Wednesday after three large local plants joined two others to oppose the deal.
Workers at assembly plants in Wentzville, Mo., and Bowling Green, Ky., voted Tuesday and Wednesday against the tentative deal, the union said Wednesday. And workers at a third plant in Fort Wayne, Ind., also voted the contract down, the local union confirmed.
UAW workers at GM plants in Spring Hill, Tenn., and Lansing, Mich., also voted the contract down.
Yet, GM’s large plant in Arlington, Tex., voted to approve the deal, its local UAW union announced Wednesday. That means there is still a chance the GM contract gets approved. The final vote could go down to the wire, according to Marc Robinson, a former GM economist and game-theory expert who has been blogging about the strike.
The big vote in favor of the deal in Arlington, Texas, shows that much of the vote depends on how well local union leaders explain or promote the contract , Robinson said.
The agreements mark the biggest compensation gains the union has won in decades, including a 25 percent raise in base wages over 4½ years.
Opposition against the contract appears to be coming from veteran General Motors workers who are disappointed union chiefs weren’t able to negotiate gains like stronger retirement benefits. The union also failed in its bid to restore defined-benefit pensions for all workers, but it did force the automakers to increase their contributions to 401(k) retirement accounts.
“I think it’s pretty great overall. I think lots of folks are disappointed that pensions and retiree health insurance coverage weren’t won back,” said Chris Viola, a GM worker at Factory Zero, an electric vehicle plant in Detroit said in a text. Viola voted to approve the contract. “A lot of folks hired before 2007 may have had both of those at one point but lost them after a lengthy layoff reset their seniority.”
General Motors declined to comment until after UAW workers complete their voting.
When the deal was negotiated, GM chief executive Mary Barra had welcomed it and said the company is “looking forward to having everyone back to work.”
UAW President Shawn Fain has called these “record contracts” that have squeezed every “last dime” out of the companies. But he has also stressed that the decision is up to UAW members.
If UAW workers at GM plants vote against the contract, those workers could go back on strike. Union leaders could also try to renegotiate a new deal for GM workers.
The tentative contracts came after a long period when worker wages did not keep up with inflation, and after the union gave up some of its benefits around the time of the Great Recession, when the automakers were struggling to survive. The union managed to claw back many of those perks in the new deals, including restoring regular cost-of-living wage adjustments to offset inflation. It also eliminated wage tiers that had left newer workers on a lower pay scale.
Bill Bagwell, a longtime GM worker at a parts warehouse in Ypsilanti, Mich, said he voted against the contract.
“The temporary contract does not provide any gains in work-life balance," Bagwell said. "It provides very minimal gains for long-term employees who are the ones that sacrificed during the bankruptcy. And even though we eliminated the wage tiers we did not alter the benefit tiers.”
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