UAW strikes GM [View All]

[Purveyor]

Source: Detroit News

The United Auto Workers launched a national strike today against General Motors Corp. after 10 days of marathon bargaining failed to produce a new labor pact for the automaker's 73,000 hourly U.S. workers.

The stunning move came after the union told its members on Sunday they were to walk off the job unless they heard otherwise by 11 a.m. That word never came, and now GM is facing its first strike since the UAW struck the automaker's operation in Flint in 1998.

The union and automaker have been wrestling for weeks to reach a new pattern-setting labor agreement for Detroit's Big Three automakers. The UAW picked GM as the lead company to strike a deal the day before the current contract expired Sept. 14.

Working under an hour-by-hour extension, GM and the UAW appeared late last to week to have reached agreement on the most difficult issue in the talks - the creation of a massive, union-run health-care trust to cover medical bills for GM's 340,000 retirees and family members.



Read more: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070924/UPDATE/709240402