All-day negotiations between GM and the United Auto Workers union proceeded Thursday and are expected today, said Ben Ippolito, a GM Fairfax plant spokesman.
“I’m not going to say we’re doing better than (Wednesday), but we’re at least talking about some things,” said John Melton, bargaining chairman of UAW Local 31.
“It’s a positive that we’re still meeting.”
The 2,420 GM production workers struck the Fairfax plant Monday after months of bargaining failed to produce a local contract to supplement the national bargaining agreement reached last September.
Union officials have said plant management has sought unacceptable changes in longstanding work rules pertaining to seniority rights, job security and job preferences.
At stake for GM is the sales momentum of the redesigned Chevrolet Malibu, made primarily at the Fairfax plant. Since its launch last fall, the new Malibu has been hailed as GM’s strongest entry in the midsize passenger car market in years and a formidable competitor to the top-selling Japanese vehicles.
On Wednesday evening, engineers operating a Union Pacific train trying to leave the Fairfax area with about two dozen carloads of Malibus decided to honor the UAW picket line and not deliver the cars, according to Local 31 officials and rank-and-file pickets.
Jeff Manning, Local 31 president, said a picket line was set up on Fairfax Trafficway on a property adjacent to the plant, where vehicles are picked up for delivery.
Union railroad engineers, upon approaching the picket, decided not to continue and left the carloads back where they originally picked them up, he said.
“The Union Pacific employees honored our picket line,” Manning said. “It was very nice of them.”
GM said it was unaware of any vehicles that were stopped from delivery because of the strike.
“We have and will continue to ship Malibus by truck and rail,” Ippolito said.
Meanwhile, GM and the UAW on Thursday reached a tentative local agreement at a Warren, Mich., transmission plant. The Warren facility was one of several GM plants where the union issued a strike-deadline notice in mid-April, but an agreement was reached there without a job action.
Also on Thursday, GM agreed to provide up to $200 million to help settle a prolonged strike at five plants of American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc., a big GM supplier.
About 3,600 UAW members at five factories have been on strike at American Axle for more than nine weeks, affecting production at 30 GM plants, mainly those making pickups and sport utility vehicles. GM said in a filing Thursday that its money would help to subsidize the lower wages that American Axle is seeking, as well as contribute to early-retirement and buyout packages.
One longtime observer of the UAW said he did not believe developments at the Warren plant or American Axle would affect the Fairfax plant’s situation.
“The local strikes are over issues that the workers live with every day,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor specializing in labor issues at the University of California, Berkeley. “I don’t think American Axle and the Warren plant have any relation to the bargaining going on in Kansas City (Kan.). If anything affects the bargaining there, it’ll be GM seeking to build and sell more Malibus.”
Shaiken called the Malibu the “crown jewel” of GM’s current product lineup, selling well in a highly competitive segment.
“Given the economic situation, I would expect the (Fairfax) strike to be settled sooner rather than later,” he said. “But that said, outsourcing and seniority are very tough issues to negotiate.”
While local GM employees remain out, their counterparts at the Wentzville, Mo., plant will return to work Monday. That plant, which makes the full-size GMC Savana and Chevrolet Express vans, has been idled since March 6 because of the parts shortage caused by the American Axle strike.
GM declined to comment on where the parts were coming from to allow production to resume. UAW officials have speculated that they were coming from foreign factories.
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