DETROIT - The auto industry's longest strike in more than 40 years, a walkout at a parts supplier that disrupted production at 32 General Motors plants, will end within days if the picketing workers ratify a tentative agreement reached late Friday with their employer, American Axle and Manufacturing.
Negotiators from the United Automobile Workers union and American Axle reached the deal on the 81st day of the strike, which began Feb. 26 when about 3,650 workers at five factories in Michigan and New York walked off the job.
People involved in the negotiations have said they expect the agreement to call for closing two or three plants, offering buyouts worth as much as $140,000, and drastically reducing the wages and benefits of workers who remain with the company, in exchange for a $5,000 signing bonus for all workers.
Neither side released any details after announcing the tentative settlement.
American Axle had been offering a pay cut from $28 to $17 per hour for production workers, with a $90,000 wage "buydown" over three years to help workers make the transition to lower pay.
A person briefed on the deal, who asked not to be identified because the deal has not yet been presented to workers, said the agreement includes pay of $18.50 per hour and increases the size of the buydown.
Noncore workers, those not involved in actual manufacturing, would be paid $14.55 per hour, the person said, while skilled trades workers would get $26 per hour.
"Going into this, everybody knew it was going to be ugly," said Adrian King, the president of UAW Local 235 in Detroit. "There's going to be a lot of people that are going to be upset, but this is the best that we could get from this company at this time and keep jobs in America."
The picketing workers, most of whom earned about $28 an hour, have been receiving $200 a week in strike pay from the union. Union officials plan to start informing workers about the deal today in Detroit.
Strike captain Duane Thompson said ratification will dependon whether workers believe they can get a better offer. He thinks a better deal than what has been reported can be negotiated.
"There's a bunch of us who don't like it because we feel we deserve more, or just leave what we have alone. But don't take away from us," said Thompson, a Hamtramck, Mich., resident.
The strike forced American Axle's biggest customer, GM, to reduce or halt production of many pickups and large sport utility vehicles and to temporarily lay off tens of thousands of its workers. Some of the GM factories that ran out of parts from American Axle have reopened, after getting those parts from other suppliers or GM plants. GM said the strike cost it $800 million in the first quarter but that sales were not affected.
As the strike dragged on, UAW members at two important GM assembly plants called strikes of their own, citing disagreements over local work rules. Auto analysts believe those strikes, at a plant in Kansas that builds the popular Chevrolet Malibu sedan and a plant near Lansing, Mich., that builds a trio of fast-selling crossover vehicles, were aimed at pressuring GM to make American Axle loosen its demands. The UAW has denied that its actions at GM were related to the American Axle strike.
The crossover plant is scheduled to resume production Monday, after its workers ratified anew contract with GM on Friday that gives them bonuses of either $2,000 or $2,500. The Kansas workers remained on picket lines Saturday.
GM recently agreed to give American Axle as much as $200 million to pay for buyouts, early retirement offers and buydowns.
Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said the union must point to the buyouts and buydowns as examples of what it gained by keeping workers on strike for 12 weeks.
"The union has to tell the membership that it was all worth it, or else tell them that we haveto go back to work because we're not going to do any better," Chaison said.
American Axle has said it needs to cut wages nearly in half, from about $28 an hour to as little as $14, to remain competitive with rivals that have squeezed similar concessions from the UAW.
Last week, American Axle said that wages were among the issues that had been resolved with the union and that negotiations were stalled on discussions about health-care benefits and the company's desire to no longer pay workers a large portion of their salary after laying them off, as the previous contract required.
Information for this article was contributed by Tom Krisher and Margaret Harding of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 05/18/2008