ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 1, 1996 TAG: 9610010064
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DETROIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
Ford Motor Co. workers overwhelmingly ratified a new three-year contract, as the United Auto Workers turned Monday to the difficult task of negotiating a similar pact with General Motors Corp.
With a tentative agreement awaiting likely approval at Chrysler Corp., GM faces negotiations alone on two fronts.
In Detroit, the world's largest automaker continued to talk with the UAW on Monday after a weekend of low-level negotiations. In Toronto, the more militant Canadian Auto Workers union also was bargaining, but amid a threat to strike if no agreement is reached before midnight Wednesday.
Analysts said the Canadian union was the wild card.
``I get a feeling the UAW views our Canadian friends as being something of a loose cannon on the deck in this whole thing,'' said Dale Brickner, a labor professor at Michigan State University. ``They're sort of swerving and veering to avoid fouling up each other's negotiations.''
Conventional wisdom holds that the UAW will wait to see whether the Canadians strike before initiating high-level talks with GM. But this round of talks has been anything but conventional or predictable.
``These negotiations have been off the charts of what we've become used to in the last 50 years of UAW bargaining,'' Brickner said.
Few expected the UAW and Chrysler to reach a deal so quickly. The three-year contract announced Sunday night came just 13 days after the Ford pact was announced. There was no strike deadline set, no announcement that Chrysler was the second negotiating target, and none of the threats and rhetoric that have marked past UAW-Big Three negotiations.
At GM, spokesman Chuck Licari said talks resumed Monday ``at all levels.'' UAW spokesmen did not return phone calls for comment Monday.
The UAW said Ford production workers approved their contract by a 90 percent majority. Skilled trades workers endorsed it by 83 percent.
After making a point of avoiding the old UAW term ``pattern bargaining'' earlier in the talks, union President Stephen Yokich on Sunday warned GM that a pattern clearly had been set with Ford and Chrysler.
Chrysler's contract is believed to include the same wage terms, including a $2,000 lump sum in the first year and 3 percent raises in each of the following two years.
The Ford contract contains a landmark provision guaranteeing the company will maintain at least 95 percent of its 105,025 union workers during the next three years. It also allows Ford to hire workers at a lower wage in any new parts businesses it enters, a move aimed at discouraging ``outsourcing,'' the practice of contracting out work to outside, usually nonunion suppliers.
Chrysler's workers covered by the national contract will vote over the next two weeks. Details of the contract are expected to be announced Thursday.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Chrysler Corp. Chairman Robert Eaton smiles as UAWby CNBPresident Stephen Yokich announces the union's tentative agreement
on a national contract Sunday at Chrysler's headquarters in Auburn
Hills, Mich. Canadian and U.S. unions are negotiating with General
Motors.|