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Labor relations in the 1990s could boil down to a collision between an irresistible force (worker demands for job security) and an immovable object (industry insistence on lower operating costs). General Motors and the United Auto Workers have just been in such a collision. A job action that began among 2,300 workers at a GM body-stamping plant in Lordstown, Ohio, expanded to nine GM assembly plants before the two sides finally reached a tentative settlement. It had idled 42,000 workers over the issue of the company's right to determine which jobs would be eliminated under...
...surface, the strike was spurred by GM's decision to close down a tool-and-die shop -- but both sides know that larger issues are at stake. What + the corporation insists is a drive to banish outmoded practices that have made its factories the least efficient in the auto industry is perceived by the union as an effort to eliminate jobs. Dave Kimmel, president of UAW Local 1714, said his members received support from workers at distant plants whose weekly incomes are dropping from $700 to $200 a week. "Job security is important to everybody," he said. But the strike...
...truck division received memos informing them that they will be asked to pay a monthly premium of as yet unrevealed size for their health insurance next year. Retirees will also have to pay part of the cost of postretirement medical benefits. Unlike blue- collar workers represented by the United Auto Workers, who pay nothing for their health care, GM's white-collar employees are not protected by union contracts...
...union are already at odds because of company plans to close 21 plants. Last week 2,300 GM workers struck a parts plant in Lordstown, Ohio, over job security. The action halted the assembly line for the much touted Saturn, which depends on a steady flow of auto components to meet its Japanese-inspired "just in time" production system...
...Garden to applaud the pact as "the beginning of a new era." Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari went on early-morning television to praise the deal, while Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called it "an important step forward." Elsewhere the reception was chillier. In Japan, angry trade and auto-industry officials charged that the local-content requirement would force Japanese manufacturers to redesign cars sold in North America and jack up prices...