General Motors has averted a possible United Auto Workers (UAW) strike for two days, thus giving breathing room to its Kansas City assembly plant. The local UAW 31 has decided to give some extra time for the negotiations before considering a walkout at the Kansas Plant. The UAW has set the deadline till Thursday, April 24^th 2008.

According to the local 31 UAW President Jeff Manning, the offers put forward by General Motors over the issues of seniority rights and job security aren’t appealing to the 2,600 workers of the GM’s Fairfax assembly plant. This plant manufactures the widely popular Malibu Sedans at an average of 3,100 cars a week. However, as of now GM has only 37 days worth of supply for these cars on dealership lots.

Speaking on this subject Jeff Manning said, “We gave GM a great way to be profitable with our national agreement in September, but they’re going for more in the local negotiations.”

The Detroit-Hamtramck plant which was idle since March 31^st, 2008 due to the UAW strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc is now recalling its workers from Monday, April 28^th 2008. The slow progress of plant-level contract negotiations has put UAW and GM in a face off. Local agreements that comprise of work-rule, seniority and other noneconomic issues have been negotiated with only 10 out of 77 GM locals. These local contracts are not detailed in the master national contract.

Elsewhere, six other GM Plants are under the threat of UAW strikes over bargaining issues. The Lansing Plant in Lansing, Michigan has been idle since last week due to the UAW strike. This has severely affected the production of Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia and Saturn Outlook crossovers. General Motor’s Transmission plant in Warren, Michigan and GM’s stamping plants at Grand Rapids, Michigan and Mansfield, Ohio are also under the threat of a strike by the UAW workers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.