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Fenton UAW workers vote overwhelmingly to reject Chrysler deal

By JIM SALTER
AP Business Writer

Friday, October 19, 2007

FENTON, Mo. (AP) — Workers at Chrysler’s pickup truck plant in suburban St. Louis on Thursday rejected a four-year contract proposal with automaker Chrysler LLC.

Roughly 1,400 of the plant’s 2,100 employees voted, with about 80 percent rejecting the deal, United Auto Workers Local 136 president Jerry Dennison said.

“It actually failed by a larger margin than I thought it would,” Dennison said late Thursday night after the votes were tallied.

UAW members at Chrysler LLC’s North Assembly Plant in Fenton were among the first Chrysler employees to vote on the contract, reached Oct. 10 after a six-hour strike. Those workers make Dodge Ram pickups.

UAW workers at a Chrysler engine plant in Kenosha, Wis., voted by a big margin Thursday to approve a tentative contract. Local 72 president Dan Kirk would not give specific vote totals, but said 78 percent of those voting approved of the deal and 22 percent were against it.

All of Chrysler’s 45,000 UAW employees are expected to complete voting sometime next week. Union officials in Fenton said workers were bothered by the contract’s creation of “core” and “noncore” workers at the plant, with newly hired noncore workers being paid a lower hourly wage.

The contract did not specify which jobs would be designated noncore if the deal is approved, they said.

“There were people voting who didn’t know if their job would be shuffled to a noncore job,” said Local 136 treasurer Glenn Kage Jr.

In Kenosha, Kirk said the national bargaining committee worked hard to bring back the best deal it could.

“We’re not really happy with it, but it is what it is,” Kirk said. “It’s a contract we can live with.”

The UAW represents about 800 workers at the Kenosha engine plant, Kirk said. The plant recently was given a new six-cylinder engine to build.

The 2,900 members of UAW Local 110 at the South Assembly Plant in Fenton, which makes Chrysler Town and Country and Dodge Caravan minivans, vote Friday.

The chairman of the UAW’s national Chrysler negotiating committee is among those criticizing the tentative deal.

Bill Parker, who also is president of a local, wrote an undated “minority report” letter that urged the union’s Chrysler Council to reject the agreement and return to the bargaining table.

The council, made up of presidents and other local officials from across the country, approved the deal on a voice vote Monday at a meeting in Detroit.

Parker’s letter says the deal establishes a lower-tier wage scale for some entry-level employees that would create divisions within the union. It also says the Chrysler deal fell short of one that General Motors Corp. workers agreed to earlier this month, including a failure to guarantee vehicle commitments to many plants beyond current products.

The votes come as UAW officials in Detroit stepped up efforts to persuade the rank-and-file to approve the pact in the face of dissent by a top bargainer.

The deal closely follows a tentative agreement ratified by workers at General Motors Corp., and is expected to be used as a template for negotiations with Ford Motor Co.

Those in favor of the Chrysler pact said it was negotiated during tough economic times for Chrysler, which has lost billions of dollars and is in the midst of restructuring.

“With the economic times that we’re having, you got to do something to be competitive and to save jobs,” said Edward May, president of a local at an axle plant in Detroit.

May said the lower-tier wage scale would help Chrysler now, but could be reversed in the next contract talks if the company’s finances improve.

The wording of the tentative agreement has raised concerns at both plants in Fenton. The deal lists future products for just seven of 21 Chrysler factories across North America.

The Fenton plants are not slated for closure, but also are not among those with future product listings. A report on the tentative contract said the long-term viability of the south plant is “tied to volume.”

Calls to the Fenton plants on Thursday, and calls to the UAW’s national spokesman, were not returned. A Chrysler spokeswoman declined comment on the future of any plants, including the two in Fenton.

AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit and Reporter Christopher Leonard in Fenton contributed to this report.

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