Uaw Emphasizes Job Security Bargaining Strategy Formulated At Convention

On the heels of an 18-day strike over job security issues that brought General Motors to its knees, the United Auto Workers put jobs at the top of its agenda as it began preparing for summer contract talks with the Big Three.

Reduced overtime, protection of health care benefits and limits on automakers’ freedom to use outside suppliers all are part of the UAW’s goals.

But the paramount theme will be protecting jobs for union members at GM, Ford and Chrysler, and assuring that there will be jobs for new workers in the future, UAW President Stephen P. Yokich said Monday.

“Job security does everything,” Yokich said in a speech to the union’s national bargaining convention. “If good jobs are not secure, then there’s nothing else secure.”

Negotiations for contracts covering about 400,000 GM, Ford and Chrysler employees are scheduled to begin in June. The current three-year contracts expire in mid-September.

UAW contracts with the automakers began protecting existing jobs or substantially guaranteeing the income of current workers in the mid-1980s, but employment levels at the Big Three have declined by nearly one-fifth since then, mainly through attrition.

With smaller work forces, the automakers have used overtime to boost production when demand for their products required it.

“We’re going to put the brakes on overtime. We’re going to say, ‘Enough is enough,”’ Yokich told the convention. “We’re going to cut overtime and make room for younger workers.”

The three-day convention began in the aftermath of a UAW strike at two GM parts plants in Ohio that was triggered by company plans to shift production of some future brake systems to an outside supplier, a practice called outsourcing.

The bargaining resolution being considered by convention delegates proposed that the union seek a prohibition on outsourcing of work that traditionally has been done by UAW members.

On health care, it said the union will continue to work for changes to make the system more efficient, but that it will not give up benefits its members and retirees now receive.