GM: Strikers will keep health coverage
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors now says striking workers will get company-paid health insurance, nine days after telling the union that coverage would be cut off.
The automaker said in an emailed letter to the United Auto Workers dated Wednesday that employee health and well-being are GM’s top priorities.
The about-face came after workers howled and GM received withering criticism from politicians and on social media about cutting off the benefits.
“These irresponsible actions by General Motors are toying with the lives of hundreds of thousands of our UAW families,” UAW Vice President Terry Dittes wrote in a letter Thursday to Scott Sandefur, GM’s vice president of labor relations. It wasn’t clear how the rhetoric or the health care spat would affect contract talks aimed at ending the strike by 49,000 workers that has shut down manufacturing for nearly two weeks at more than 30 GM plants across the nation.
“This is an attempt to do what’s right for our employees,” GM spokesman Dan Flores said.
It’s normal procedure in strikes for the cost of health care to shift from the company, which is largely self-insured, to the union. It says on the union website that the UAW will pick up the cost of the premiums. But the timing of when GM ends the health care and when the union takes over is at issue. The UAW said the benefits lapsed, but did not give a date.
On Detroit-area picket lines Thursday, workers said GM’s restoration of health care benefits makes them think that a contract agreement is near.
“That tells you we’re getting closer,” said worker Lee Harris, as he walked the picket line at an engine and transmission plant in the Detroit suburb of Romulus.