Early UAW votes on ending the GM strike a mixed bag

Nearly 50,000 General Motors employees are in the process of voting on a tentative labor deal that could end their five-week strike. The early results are mixed.

The Warren Technical center, in Warren, Michigan, which is made up mostly of engineers, voted 85% in favor of the deal. It also passed easily at a metal stamping plant in Saginaw, Michigan, and a transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio.

But at the enormous assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, which has almost as many UAW members as Warren, Saginaw and Toledo combined, members voted narrowly against the deal by a 51% to 49% margin. That factory builds three different SUVs, including the GMC Acadia, and the Cadillac XT5 and XT6.

Union locals across the country are voting on different days. They will remain on the picket lines while the vote is completed. The nationwide results are expected to be announced Friday evening.

The tentative deal reached last week would pay members an $11,000 signing bonus and raise hourly pay for veteran workers 6% over the life of the contract, to $32.32. And many workers who have been getting by on $275 a week in strike benefits are eager to get back to work earning more than $30 an hour.

The deal also will allow many temporary workers to become permanent employees, which will significantly improve their pay and benefits. And the union got GM to drop its demand that workers pay a much greater percentage of their own health care costs.

But union members are angry at GM’s management, because the deal would lead to the closure of three US plants: an assembly line in Lordstown, Ohio, and transmission plants in Warren, Michigan, and Baltimore. Although GM has found other jobs for most of the employees who were working the plants when production ended earlier this year, most of the workers had to relocate. Those displaced workers, and some of those who lost their jobs and have not taken new ones, will get a chance to vote on whether to accept this deal.

Many of those workers wanted GM to instead shut some of its production in Mexico, where it made more than 800,000 cars and trucks last year, and build some of those vehicles at US plants. GM refused to agree with that union demand.