UAW-GM Talks Blacked Out, No Resolution

03/19/96

The United Auto Workers and General Motors continued talks aimed at ending a strike by UAW Local 696 at two Delphi Chassis plants in Dayton, Ohio. The strike has crippled GM's production, and Wall Street has estimated that the Nation's richest automaker is losing anywhere from $38 million to $50 million each day that their auto assembly plants across the nation remain shut down.

The two week old strike has not been resolved, although both sides have entered a media blackout concerning negotiations, which is often a sign that resolution is near to hand. By Friday of last week GM had laid off almost 125,000 workers from North American plants. The layoffs have been blamed on the unavailability of parts produced by the striking workers in Dayton. The Dayton workers assemble brakes for all but one of GM's automobile assembly plants.

The issues involved in the strike revolve principally around GM's plans to shift work out of the Delphi Chassis plants in Dayton. GM wants to buy brakes from a foreign firm (Germany's Robert Bosch, Corp.) rather than continuing to make them in-house. Union officials point out that the Delphi Chassis plants are money makers for GM. The UAW wants GM to invest in existing facilities and an existing workforce rather than to take jobs away from employees that have been making money for GM all along. Last year Bosch made 6% of GM's brakes, and GM wants it to assume 17% of their brake production by 1998.

Approximately 325 union jobs would be eliminated at the striking plants if GM carries out their plans to send brake work to Germany. That's more than 10 percent of the total number of striking workers (3,000). Apparently the automaker has decided that economic gains from derived from 325 firings is worth production losses of up to $50 million per day.

Paul Dever -- The Auto Channel