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GM Promotes 1,350 Temps to Full-Time Employment After Strike

GM Promotes 1,350 Temp Workers to Full-Time Status After Strike

(Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. delivered on one of the key promises made in its labor contract that ended a 40-day strike in October by giving 1,350 temporary staffers full-time status.

Temporary workers were a sticking point in labor talks between the United Auto Workers union and GM last year and one of several reasons the union walked out for almost six weeks. GM had more than 3,000 temps before the strike and is now bringing many of them on board permanently in 14 plants across the U.S.

“We are excited to welcome these employees as regular, full-time team members,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president of global manufacturing, said Wednesday in a statement. “Our employees are essential to meeting the needs of our customers, so providing these team members with an improved career-path forward has numerous benefits.”

The newly full-time workers will get higher pay and a better health care plan, including more favorable cost sharing and dental and vision coverage. GM will also make contributions to their 401(k) plans and give them profit sharing and life insurance benefits.

Wage Disparity

GM entered contract talks wanting to use even more temps to trim labor costs at its plants from $63 an hour, including benefits, to a level closer to $50 an hour, the approximate average costs at Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. plants in the U.S. Those factories use more temps than GM.

As a result of the deal, GM’s labor costs will rise to $71 an hour by 2023, compared to an estimated $52 at the Japanese-owned U.S. plants, according to the Center for Automotive Research.

But the union wouldn’t hear of it. The matter was a fairness issue for workers, since temps who had worked at GM plants for several years making less than $19 an hour were doing the same work as full-timers being paid between $28 and $32 an hour.

In exchange for giving more temps a better shake, the UAW acceded to GM’s plans to close a large and underused assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and two small transmission plants in Maryland and Michigan.

Still in Dispute

Months after agreeing to compromises that ended the UAW’s longest strike against GM in almost half a century, the automaker and union are still tussling over how many -- and which -- temps are being promoted.

At the automaker’s full-size pickup truck plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the company let go of 240 temps who had been hired to cover vacations and absenteeism. Their temporary work agreement expired Jan. 13. The company did convert 148 other temporary staffers who worked three years at the plant to full-time status and offered to hire 52 more existing temps.

The union balked at that offer. Rich LeTourneau, shop committee chairman of Local 2209 in Fort Wayne, said the local wants GM to make more of its temps permanent, including those who were let go, and also replace 177 full-time workers who plan to retire on March 1. The temps who lost their jobs are experienced workers who are well-trained to do high quality work, LeTourneau said.

“We build a beautiful truck and I want to keep it that way,” he said in an interview.

A GM spokesman said the company had been willing to keep 240 temps on a part-time basis, but couldn’t reach an agreement with the UAW.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Welch in Southfield at dwelch12@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chester Dawson at cdawson54@bloomberg.net, Craig Trudell

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