DETROIT — Members of the United Auto Workers union narrowly approved a four-year contract with Chrysler, the union said Saturday, clearing the way for talks to move forward at Ford Motor Co.
Approval of the Chrysler contract came after one of the most tumultuous votes in recent memory. Some local union officials opposed the agreement, reached Oct. 10 after a six-hour strike. It looked to be in danger when workers at four assembly plants rejected the contract in votes last weekend.
Opponents voiced concerns that the contract did not provide as many guarantees of future work as a similar contract approved by workers at General Motors earlier this month, after a two-day strike.
Still, the Chrysler contract gained support at smaller plants as well as four big factories in Detroit. On Saturday, the union said 56 percent of hourly workers and 51 percent of skilled trades workers approved the agreement.
The last plant to vote on the contract was Chrysler's factory in Belvidere, Ill., which defeated the agreement by a vote of55 percent to 45 percent. But the contract's margin of victory before the Belvidere vote was enough for it to pass.
Union leaders acknowledged the close vote. "Our members had to face some tough choices, and we had a solid, democratic debate about this contract," the union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, said in a statement.
In a statement, Chrysler's co-president, Thomas W. La-Sorda, said the company was "pleased that our UAW employees recognize that the new agreement meets the needs of the company and its employees by providing a framework to improve our long-term manufacturing competitiveness."
Gettelfinger and the union's vice president for Chrysler, General Holiefield, made an intense push for ratification over the past few days. Several local leaders credited Holiefield's efforts, in particular, for the contract's approval.
There has not been a defeat of a contract at a Detroit auto company since 1982, when Chrysler workers rejected a deal that did not fully restore concessions they granted when the company was close to bankruptcy in 1979.
"There's no question this wasa difficult set of negotiations during difficult times for the US auto industry," Holiefield said in the union's statement.
The most difficult times, however, may be at Ford, the last company that will negotiate a new deal with the union.
Ford had pushed hard to go first in the negotiations, which would have given it the most leverage to devise a contract according to its needs. Instead, the company will now face pressure to accept the terms of the agreements at GM and Chrysler, a practice called "pattern bargaining."
Ford is expected to follow the "essence of the pattern," said David L. Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John's University in Queens, N.Y. However, "there's going to have to be more flexibility because of Ford's predicament," he said.
Ford is in the worst shape of the Detroit auto companies. It lost $12.6 billion in 2006 and does not expect to earn money in North America until 2009. It is in the midst of a revamping plan called the Way Forward, which will include closing plants and eliminating 30,000 jobs.
Last year, Ford borrowed $23 billion by pledging virtually all of its assets, including plants, divisions and even its blue-oval logo as collateral. It has also put its Jaguar and Land Rover divisions up for sale and is expected to receive bids for them by Tuesday.
That money is meant to pay for its reorganization as well as the development of new products.
Even so, Ford officials say they can afford the contract's primary feature, a health-care trust that will assume responsibility for the company's liability for current and retired workers' benefits.
However, Ford officials are said to be reluctant to make the same guarantees for future investments that GM made in its contract, especially since it has not named all the plants it will shut as part of its makeover.
Chrysler also was reluctant to give specific assurances, and it saw its contract voted down at plants like its St. Louis South factory, where no decision has been made about future work.
In order to avoid the same turbulence, "the company may have to make extravagant promises that it really can't fulfill," Gregory said.
Still, the union goes to Ford on familiar terms. Gettelfinger came up through Ford's ranks, starting with his first job at the company's Louisville, Ky., truck plant. He ran the union's Ford department before becoming the union's president.
The union's chief bargainer, Bob King, was president of its biggest local in Dearborn, Mich., which includes the sprawling Rouge complex as well as the Dearborn assembly plant.
Given what happened at Chrysler, the leaders will move quickly to persuade Ford workers to support a deal, said Richard Block, acting director of the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University.
"They won't make the same mistake twice," he said.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/28/2007