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GM and UAW Sign 3-Year National Contract

12/12/96

The Associated Press reported that General Motors and the United Auto Workers signed their recently negotiated three-year national labor contract on Monday. The signing of the contract formally ended the UAW's national bargaining with Detroit's Big Three Auto Makers for the 1997-1999 contract period.

The 215,000 GM auto workers covered by the new contract overwhelmingly ratified it last month. The UAW-GM contract includes new job-security provisions, increased wages, and benefit improvements, like the contracts signed earlier at Ford and Chrysler.

Although some local unions had to strike to do it, workers won a guarantee that GM will maintain at least 95 percent of its jobs during the next three years, although the contract does include some exclusions that would allow GM to shrink its work force through attrition.

GM can postpone the guarantee during economic downturns, and does not have to replace jobs lost to productivity improvements like increased automation. Similar exclusions form parts of the contracts bargained by Ford and Chrysler workers.

The contract provides that GM will give its workers a $2,000 bonus in the first year, followed by 3 percent wage increases in the second and third years. The union says a typical GM worker will earn wage increases of nearly $14,000 over the contract's term.

The contract also specifies an increased role for the UAW in the company's decisions to make or contract out parts to outside suppliers.

Paul Dever -- The Auto Channel