The UAW and General Motors,after a 14-hour bargaining session, agreed late Friday on a tentative, four-year labor agreement covering wages and benefits for about 48,000 workers. Specific terms of the deal were not released, but the union said it “successfully fought back efforts to make major changes and weaken our retirement plan.
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The settlement, the union said in a statement, also “will get our members who have been laid off back to work, will create new jobs in our communities and will bring work back to the United States from other countries.”
The proposed contract would provide a signing bonus of about $5,000 to each worker, recall about 570 GM workers on layoff, and reopen an idled assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., Reuters reported, citing a person familiar with terms.
The union said GM also proposed major concessions in health care, but the UAW said it was able to protect health care benefits and made some significant improvements in benefits.
The agreement is another major milestone for GM. Some skeptics said Detroit’s automakers wouldn’t or shouldn’t survive the Great Recession and plunge in U.S. car and light truck sales in 2008, followed by the bankruptcy filings of GM and Chrysler in 2009.
“In these uncertain economic times for American workers and faced with the globalization of the economy, the UAW approached these negotiations with new strategies and fought for and achieved some of our major goals for our members, including significant investments and products for our plants,” UAW President Bob King said in a statement.
