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UAW Leaders Hit the Shop Floor To Lobby Workers on Chrysler Deal
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Autoworkers in Sterling Heights and Warren, Mich., two major manufacturing centers, begin voting today, and the balloting there will be watched closely. The plants employ about 9,700 union members, who have been the targets of heavy lobbying.
"It's the intensity of it," said Melvin Thompson, president of UAW Local 140 in Warren. "Our elected officials are on the floor all day answering questions that members may have. We are actually calling people on the phone and urging them to read the contract and vote on it."
He added, "I think we are going to pass it."
Thompson and other union officials have been arguing that the tentative contract is the best deal they could get from Chrysler. Thompson said it protects workers while giving the company room to become more competitive with rivals.
Opponents of the contract include UAW factions that have long criticized union leadership in Detroit for being too willing to bend to corporate demands.
Bill Parker, chairman of the union's Chrysler contract negotiating team, broke with union leadership over the final contract deal. He released a minority report arguing that the contract "undermines years of gains by our union" and urged Chrysler workers to reject it.
At the center of this argument are complaints that while the contract contains big concessions on health care and wages, it has no guarantees that Chrysler will continue to build cars and trucks at U.S. plants or provide jobs at top-tier union wages.
Devers said he peppered the UAW committee official on Monday with questions about the new wage system, zeroing in on fuzzy contract language about "non-core" workers.
A leaflet from opponents of the contract that was being distributed at the plant yesterday described non-core jobs as any that don't involve putting parts on a car. Devers and other workers fear that terms of the contract will allow the company to outsource the jobs or pay the workers $14 per hour.
"There are 3,000 people in this plant. Almost half the jobs are non-core -- maintenance, material handling, underbody in the body shop, paint shop, inspection, people who drive cars off the line," Devers said. "Non-core is an open window. We don't know where it closes."
Devers said he was not planning to vote for the contract and that he did not fear the possibility of Cerberus taking a hard line if rejection meant a new round of negotiations.
"This contract is a hard line," he said.
Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at University of California at Berkeley, said rejection of the contract wouldn't doom the company or the workers.
If the deal collapses, UAW President Ronald A. Gettelfinger will have a number of options. He could seek a new vote within a week. He could renegotiate. He could move on to the Ford deal, which hasn't been negotiated or voted on, and then come back to Chrysler.
"If it passes, both sides will have a loud sigh of relief," Shaiken said. "If it fails, both sides will swallow hard, go back to the table and see what can be addressed in the context of the existing agreement."
