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...United Auto Workers pulled down its pickets around General Motors Corp. plants across the United States early Wednesday morning. The union's leadership said it was satisfied with GM's guarantees of job security - the ostensible reason for the strike. The scene is now set for ratifying a labor agreement that would shift GM's liabilities for retiree health care to a Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) that would be run by the union itself...
...health care of present and future retirees for the next 80 years. "I think our retirees will be exceptionally pleased with this contract," he told reporters during an early morning press conference convened to announce the end to the union's first nationwide walkout against GM since 1970. "We feel very good about this agreement," he said. Other unions, including the Teamsters and building trades unions, have helped administer union members' health care benefits for decades...
...GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, who launched an effort to turn around GM's money-losing North American operations two years ago, hailed the agreement. "There's no question this was one of the most complex and difficult bargaining sessions in the history of the GM/UAW relationship," said Wagoner. Wagoner and Gettelfinger offered few other details of the settlement. However, GM is expected to transfer enough cash and other assets into the new trust to cover about 70% of the company's current health care liabilities of nearly $50 billion, sources said...
Alan Baum, an analyst with the Planning Edge in Birmingham, Mich., said, that a strike over job security is likely to be the UAW's attempt to win concessions from GM in exchange for the union's acquiescence to parts of the health care financing agreement, embodied in the so-called Voluntary Employment Benefit Association (VEBA). "If the UAW its going to take the VEBA to its members," says Baum, "it has to have something to show for it. The issue then becomes, 'We gave here but this is what we got.'" Baum said the strike could well serve...
...going to be General Motors' way at the expense of the workers," Gettelfinger said. "The company walked right up to the deadline like they really didn't care." He added, "You can only be pushed so far. There comes a point where you have to draw the line." GM officials, meanwhile, said the talks involved complex issues and the company planned to "continue focusing our efforts on reaching an agreement as soon as possible." Union members said they were prepared for a long slog. "You can't look at it just for today," said another member as she signed...