REPORT: UAW agrees to ban strikes?(!) 
According to a post on The Detroit Bureau, a key stipulation in the tentative contract reached between the United Auto Workers and Chrysler is that the union's right to strike will be all but eliminated for at least the next few years.
As quoted in the story, Harley Shaiken, a labor relations specialist at UC-Berkeley, notes that the so-called "no strike" portion of the agreement was arrived at "in the context that it will take anywhere from three to five years for this company to recover." According to TDB, the provisos of the bridge loan means that a strike would be viewed as a default on the agreement, including any local strikes.
The same contract apparently calls for binding arbitration (instead of strikes) on financial issues for any contract arrived at in 2011, and the same arrangement will be in effect in 2015 if Chrysler still owes money to the Treasury Department.
The contract goes in front of the UAW's 28,000+ members for a vote today. Click on the link below for more details.
04-30-2009, 09:49 AM
