A lengthy strike adds to ratification challenges

DETROIT — The contract offer that General Motors made public just before the UAW went on strike effectively set the minimum for what workers expect from the automaker. But the longer the strike has dragged on, the more expectations have grown.

Getting contracts ratified already looked like a bigger challenge than usual going into this year's talks, as years of multibillion-dollar profits by the Detroit 3 stoked eagerness to reverse past concessions. Workers will have to vote for a deal while also considering whether the time on the picket lines was worth it, or if they should keep fighting for more.

"I don't think you ever get a deal that you want, but you have to get one that you can live with," Scott Ferguson, a paint repair worker at GM's Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, said outside the plant Thursday, Sept. 26, the 11th day of the strike.

GM's "first serious offer," as a top UAW official described the automaker's Sept. 15 proposal, included $7 billion in U.S. investment, keeping some jobs at two assembly plants targeted for closure, annual wage increases or lump-sum payments, $8,000 ratification bonuses and improved profit sharing. Experts say that offer, which GM took the unusual step of publicizing in the hours before the strike, may have raised the bar for what it will take to earn a "yes" vote.

The workers expect any deal UAW leaders bring them "to have better economics than what they had seen from that," said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Even if union leaders are satisfied with a tentative agreement, getting members to ratify it isn't a given.

"I think the leadership is a little nervous that the contract might not get ratified," said Art Schwartz, a former GM negotiator who's now president of Labor and Economics Associates.

The union will find out what effect an ongoing federal corruption probe may have on the process, as workers could vote down a deal in retaliation against its leadership.

Nine people, including some UAW officials who were involved in negotiating previous contracts, have been convicted in the investigation, and a current regional director was charged with misusing union funds for his own benefit.

UAW President Gary Jones and his predecessor, Dennis Williams, also reportedly have been implicated after their homes were raided by FBI, Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor agents in August.

Recent history has shown that ratifying a deal can be challenging, even without a scandal looming over union leadership.

In 2015, workers rejected the first tentative deal between FCA US and the UAW, largely because it failed to address the membership's goal of "bridging the gap" between new and legacy worker pay. A later deal with Ford Motor Co. — which put new hires on an eight-year path to top wages, gave veteran workers their first raises in a decade and committed to $9 billion in plant investments — narrowly passed after officials drummed up just enough support from the last local to vote.

A contract that members approve will have to address full-time employment for temporary workers in some way, Dziczek said. That's a top issue for the union, yet GM didn't address it publicly in the initial proposal.

But an economic downturn in the next four years could mean recently hired workers get laid off, making their full-time status short-lived.

"That's the trade-off you have to make to be a full-time employee," said Mike Oxendine, a 36-year GM veteran and member of Local 598 in Flint, Mich. "But the bottom line is, now you're protected. They can't just go and say, 'Well, you have to do this or you're going to be fired.' It gives you the security of knowing you have a job."

Union members would likely vote down an agreement without a solution for temporary workers, experts say, sending the bargaining committee back to the table and potentially prolonging or restarting the strike.

"That's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, fundamental stumbling blocks," said Art Wheaton, a labor expert at Cornell University. "They are looking for ways to narrow how long it takes for them to get from being a new hire to a full-time, permanent, regular paid position."

Temps make up only about 7 percent of GM's work force, but the desire to give those employees a direct path toward permanent employment is widespread among union members.

"The people who are temps feel very strongly about it, but the people who were there the longest and are on the traditional payment system … those folks feel very strongly about it as well," said Michelle Kaminski, an associate professor in Michigan State University's department of human resources and labor relations. "I absolutely think that that is one of the most important things in order to get the membership to vote yes."

GM's initial contract proposal used two of the four U.S. plants it wanted to close as bargaining chips. The offer said GM would allocate an electric pickup to Detroit-Hamtramck and battery-cell manufacturing in Lordstown, Ohio, a person with knowledge of the offer told Automotive News.

Assigning products to those plants "was a positive step," Dziczek said. But "workers are going to want to see more than that in this tentative agreement."

It's unclear whether battery cells would be made in the existing Lordstown plant or nearby. The proposal would not affect the potential for GM to sell the plant to Lordstown Motors, a newly formed company that seeks to turn it into a site for Cincinnati-based Workhorse Group Inc. to make electric vehicles.

"Would they continue to get regular UAW wages? Would they be spun off into some separate entity and therefore no longer part of General Motors?" Kaminski said. "There wasn't really anywhere near enough information in what was released to the public to make an assessment of that."

At the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, striking workers questioned the long-term sustainability of building electric pickups. Battery-electric vehicles made up only 1.6 percent of U.S. retail sales in July, according to J.D. Power.

"We don't know if that will sell," said Chaz Akers, a Detroit-Hamtramck worker. "It's a good start, but they have products like the Chevy Blazer [and] Chevy Trax. They're all built in Mexico. Those are good-selling products."

Using Detroit-Hamtramck as leverage is unfair, said Sean Crawford, a material driver at Flint Assembly.

"That's like I'm going to steal something from you and then try to get you to give me something to give it back to you," he said. "They're really just using this great plant as a bargaining chip in their games to try to make more money at our expense."

Overall, workers are united on key issues, but their preferences on smaller matters vary, said John Hatline, a skilled-trades trainer for Local 22 in Detroit.
"Everybody's not going to want the same thing," he said. "But if we can get some of the things that please everybody, I think we can get that ratification."

Michael Martinez contributed to this report.