Union Says G.M. Strike Will Go On Until Workers Vote on Deal

“It’s no deal for us,” said one of the protesters, Todd Piroch, a Lordstown worker who has been transferred to a plant in Bowling Green, Ky. He said he was going to vote against the contract, but said he wasn’t sure workers elsewhere would do so. “We’re just angry,” he said.

G.M. has promised to invest $7.7 billion in its manufacturing operations in the United States over the next four years, and a further $1.3 billion in ventures with partners, saying those moves would create or preserve 9,000 jobs. But the deal includes no specific promises to expand domestic production or to move manufacturing to the United States from Mexico, both of which were goals of the union going into the negotiations.

Mr. Rothenberg, the union spokesman, said the U.A.W. would make the details of G.M.’s investment plans public soon. In previous years, the union has presented a breakdown of plant-by-plant investments.

One of the union’s main objectives was getting G.M. to reopen the car factory in Lordstown, a goal that President Trump endorsed. But there is no indication that the matter was ever on the table in the contract talks. G.M. stopped production at that plant, and others in Baltimore and in Warren, Mich., as part of a cost-cutting effort that eliminated 2,800 factory jobs and thousands of white-collar positions.

In a statement on Thursday, General Motors said it was looking into building a battery factory near Lordstown that would employ about 1,000 workers. The plant would be built with a partner and would be unionized, but under a separate contract.

An electric-truck company that hopes to purchase the Lordstown plant from G.M. would employ about 400 production workers, the automaker said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/business/gm-uaw.html?emc=rss&partner=rss