Less than seven hours after it started, the United Auto Workers union called off a strike that sent thousands of Michigan autoworkers pacing the picket lines.
Before a tentative agreement was reached Wednesday, MSU labor and industrial relations professor Richard Block said the strike against Chrysler LLC showed the urgency that top union officials felt.
“This is the UAW jumping up and down, not clubbing Chrysler over the head,” Block said. “The UAW wants to get Chrysler’s attention and make it clear that they’re not going to lollygag on a deal.”
If Block was right, Chrysler got the message.
While details of the tentative contract weren’t immediately available, Block said the strike lasting shorter than he expected suggests that Chrysler looked for a deal similar to the union’s deal with General Motors Corp.
“Given the strong history of pattern bargaining, Chrysler would have had to make a fairly compelling case to get much different (from GM’s deal),” he said.
The strike came two weeks after the UAW ended a strike against GM. The UAW called strike two Wednesday afternoon when Chrysler whiffed on reaching a tentative contract agreement with the union by an 11 a.m. deadline.
Among the major issues in the Chrysler talks were funding for a union-run trust that would handle future retiree health care bills. The UAW deal reached with GM included a union-run trust, called a voluntary employees’ beneficiary association, or VEBA.
“This agreement was made possible because UAW workers made it clear to Chrysler that we needed an agreement that rewards the contributions they have made to the success of this company,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a statement.
Of Chrysler’s 24 domestic manufacturing facilities, at least five remained open Wednesday, including the Warren Truck Assembly Plant as well as the Jefferson North Assembly Plant, both in the Detroit area. The automaker announced they would begin temporarily idling these facilities Monday to make cuts on excess inventory.
Leo Jerome, owner and president of Story Chrysler Jeep, 3165 E. Michigan Ave., in Lansing, said his dealership’s inventory could have withstood a strike for more than two months.
David Elshoff, a Chrysler spokesman, said planning a nonproductive week was not related to the contract negotiations.
“It’s not uncommon to plan a down week for the plant when we’re adjusting inventory,” Elshoff said. “That’s how you manage production to coincide with consumer demand.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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