GM-union talks set to resume
Monday, August 04, 2008
MORAINE — How does a union negotiate a contract governing workers whose plant is expected to close?
Representatives of the International Union of Electronic Workers-Communication Workers of America will find out this week when they resume talks with counterparts from General Motors Corp.
Contract talks started at the Dryden Road IUE-CWA center last October. They're set to resume Tuesday, Aug. 5.
GM in early June said its Moraine assembly plant — where the IUE-CWA Local 798 represents more than 2,000 workers — will be closed by 2010 or earlier, thanks to rising fuel prices and slowing sales of SUVs and trucks.
"There are uncharted waters," said Jim Clark, president of the IUE-CWA. "I don't think we've ever seen GM as unsteady as it is."
But there is still plenty to discuss between the two sides — including the possibility of transferring IUE-CWA workers to plants represented by the United Auto Workers, according to a union handbill. For example, the automaker's plant in Lordstown, in Northeast Ohio, is adding a shift and expecting a new GM product, the Chevrolet Cruze. The Lordstown plant is UAW-represented.
Gaylen Turner, president of IUE-CWA Local 798, noted that the GM-Moraine plant opened its doors to UAW members displaced by the closing of GM's Norwood plant in the Cincinnati area in the early 1990s. The question now is: Will the UAW open its doors to IUE-CWA members?
"I'm hoping," Turner said last week. "We'll know next week. I know there is some talking going on with the UAW to make that happen."
Harry Bogan, director of the IUE-CWA region in which the GM-Moraine plant is found, said that in the past the UAW has welcomed IUE-CWA members who were displaced by Delphi plant closures.
A UAW spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.
Clark said he doesn't expect to be directly involved in talks. But he expects upcoming sessions to be "a different kind of bargaining."
"We're not giving up as a union in trying to maintain a workplace and a facility over there," Clark said, referring to the Moraine plant. "A lot of things change."
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.
