South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
GM workers OK contract, end 40-day strike
ROMULUS, Mich. — General Motors workers voted 57.2% in favor of a new contract with the company, bringing an immediate end to a contentious a 40-day strike that paralyzed GM’s U.S. factories.
Workers voted 23,389 in favor of the deal, with 17,501 against it, according to a statement Friday from the United Auto Workers union.
The union now will turn its attention to bargaining with crosstown rival Ford Motor Co.
The vote means that workers will put down their picket signs and return to their jobs. Some started as early as Friday night, and some production could resume Saturday.
Skilled trades workers will begin restarting factories that were shuttered when 49,000 workers walked out Sept. 16.
The deal includes a mix of wage increases and lump-sum payments and an $11,000 signing bonus. But GM will close three U.S. factories.
The five-week walkout was big enough to help push down September U.S. durable goods orders by 1.1%, the largest drop in four months.
On the picket line at a transmission plant in Romulus, Michigan, worker Tricia Pruitt said the wage gains were worth staying off the job for more than five weeks, but she’s ready to return to work.
Pruitt, a 15-year GM employee, was happy that the contract brings workers hired after 2007 up to the same wage as older workers in four years.
She’ll be glad not to be on the picket line when the strike ends. “Look at us now. We’re in coats,” she said on a gray, chilly Friday afternoon near Detroit. “We’d have been out here in the rain.”
Although GM dealers had stocked up on vehicles before the strike and many still have decent supplies, analysts say GM won’t be able to make up for the lost production.
“I don’t feel great about the contract ... but I can’t keep striking,” said Hazelwood, Missouri, worker Lindsey Higgins.