General Motors roughly 50,000 hourly workers passed a strike authorization by 97 percent, UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada said in a letter to The Detroit News on Monday.
Unions around the country representing the employees held votes over the past few weeks and the overwhelming majority voted in favor.
While the authorization does not mean there will be a strike, it does give GM employees the ability to strike if need be.
According to the General, the strike vote is a procedural process that occurs each contract. Incidentally, the current four-year contract with the union is primed to expire in just two weeks.
“The resounding ‘yes’ vote enables your elected bargaining committee to leverage for the best agreement possible,” the news outlet quoted Estrada as saying.
According to the Vice President, the UAW’s GM bargaining committee presented the General with workers demands and will meet over the next few weeks to hopefully work out an agreement.
“We remain committed to working with our UAW partners on an agreement that benefits employees and strengthens GM’s long-term competitiveness,” said a GM spokesperson.
It is the first year since 2007 that UAW workers can strike against General Motors.
Comments
Good! Leverage against Made-in-China Buicks. I doubt that The General wishes to waste the rest of our pre-recession boom on Envision and Verano.
If the union is smart, they would keep their focus on keeping production here in the US and not worry about bloated health insurance packages, pay increases, and retirement packages. Those need to be kept at a reasonable scale. That’s what killed them before. Otherwise, production will continue to go overseas. I would push to move some of the production back here like the Encore and new Envision. The union should entice GM to make it cost effective to be built here. I know it is easier said than done, but the workers are always the ones to end up suffering.
What you say makes no sense. Striking and and excessive demands on your employer are exactly what makes Union-less overseas manufacturing options so attractive.
The Union’ high horse and resistance and stubborness to any sort of rational thinking helped GM (and the big 3 for that matter) to slide into bankruptcy just a few years ago; looks like they’re on that road again when some of the higher ups get bored.