General Motors Co. is working to deliver on one of the key promises made in its labor contract that ended a 40-day strike in October, giving 1,350 temporary staffers full-time status.
The issue of temporary workers was a sticking point in labor talks between the United Auto Workers union and GM last year and was one of several reasons the union walked out for almost six weeks. GM had more than 3,000 temporary workers before the strike, and it is now bringing many of them on board permanently in 14 plants across the U.S.
"We are excited to welcome these employees as regular, full-time team members," Gerald Johnson, GM's executive vice president of global manufacturing, said Wednesday in a statement. "Our employees are essential to meeting the needs of our customers, so providing these team members with an improved career-path forward has numerous benefits."
The newly full-time workers will get higher pay and a better health care plan, including more favorable cost sharing and dental and vision coverage. GM will also make contributions to their 401(k) plans and give them profit sharing and life insurance benefits.
GM entered contract talks wanting to use even more temporary workers to trim labor costs at its plants from $63 an hour, including benefits, to a level closer to $50 an hour, the approximate average costs at Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. plants in the U.S. Those factories use more temporary workers than GM.
As a result of the deal, GM's labor costs will rise to $71 an hour by 2023, compared with an estimated $52 at the Japanese-owned U.S. plants, according to the Center for Automotive Research.
Union workers saw the matter as a fairness issue, since temporary workers who had been at GM plants for several years while making less than $19 an hour were doing the same work as full-timers being paid between $28 and $32 an hour.
In exchange for GM's concession on temporary workers, the UAW acceded to the automaker's plans to close a large and underused assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and two small transmission plants in Maryland and Michigan.
But months after agreeing to compromises that ended the UAW's longest strike against GM in almost half a century, the automaker and union are still struggling over how many -- and which -- temporary workers are being promoted.
At the automaker's full-size pickup plant in Fort Wayne, Ind., the company let go of 240 temporary workers who had been hired to cover vacations and absenteeism. Their temporary work agreement expired Monday. The company did convert 148 other temporary staffers who worked three years at the plant to full-time status and offered to hire 52 more existing temporary workers.
The union balked at that offer. Rich LeTourneau, shop committee chairman of Local 2209 in Fort Wayne, said the local union chapter wants GM to make more of its temporary workers permanent, including those who were let go, and also replace the 177 full-time workers who plan to retire March 1. The temporary workers who lost their jobs are experienced and are well-trained to do high-quality work, LeTourneau said.
"We build a beautiful truck, and I want to keep it that way," he said in an interview.
A GM spokesman said the company had been willing to keep the 240 temporary workers on a part-time basis but couldn't reach an agreement with the UAW.
At the same time, all of GM's key parts plants in southeastern Michigan have been on "emergency status" since Oct. 26, the day the UAW's nationwide strike against the automaker ended. The emergency status has called for mandatory seven-day workweeks until last Sunday, which was the first Sunday to be voluntary.
At GM's Ypsilanti, Mich., processing center, more than half of the hourly workers have been written up for skipping work since late October. They say they are exhausted, exasperated and speaking up.
The 125 regular hourly workers have had only a handful of days off over the past few months -- most of which were holidays. That's because GM is pushing to fix a nationwide parts shortage that has left many customers vexed.
"I have hard feelings" toward GM demanding so much overtime, said Bill Bagwell, shop chairman at the processing center in Ypsilanti.
Bagwell watched as managers, security guards and vendors got time off while he and other UAW members worked a mandatory 68 hours a week. He said management even denied him time off to attend church services.
"You want me to trust a company that wouldn't give me a Sunday off to go to church for eight weeks?" said Bagwell. "The company that has fed me every morsel of food I've ever eaten -- I'm second generation -- has shown they don't care about me."
Other workers at the Ypsilanti facility echoed the sentiment, saying managers treat them more like machines than humans.
GM spokesman Jim Cain said the company is grateful for the long hours from the workers. He said the Ypsilanti processing center is now on mandatory six-day weeks, running two 10-hour shifts each day. Sunday shifts are now voluntary. As soon as GM's parts supply is restored, he said, GM will end the emergency status.
Cain declined to comment on any disciplinary actions the automaker has taken against workers. He said GM does not discuss personnel issues.
It's been nearly 11 weeks since the UAW's 40-day nationwide strike ended. In the days that followed, GM frantically started restoring the parts distribution system to its dealers.
The company understands the workers' plight, said Cain, but he added: "We all have an enormous obligation to our customers, especially the people who can't get to work or school or the doctor while they wait for parts. That's why we have to clear the order backlogs as soon as possible."
Information for this article was contributed by David Welch of Bloomberg News and by Jamie L. Lareau of the Detroit Free Press.
Business on 01/16/2020