Automotive
General Motors (GM) is about to pay $8 million to United Auto Employees (UAW) members as compensation following an arbitration process related to the closure of plants in 2019. The ruling, which was reached in September, was recently announced by UAW-GM Vice President Mike Booth in a letter addressed to the union members.
In accordance with Booth, the compensation covers various elements, including lost extra time, 401(k) and pension contributions, performance bonuses, and nearly $800,000 in interest. He stated that the arbitrator awarded nearly every little thing the UAW sought as a treatment for GM’s breach of its 2015 contract with the UAW.
The arbitration process unfolded over a 12 months and a half, starting with an initial finding wherein the arbitrator determined that GM violated Document 13 of its 2015 contract with the UAW. Document 13 explicitly stated that the corporate couldn’t close, idle, or get rid of any plants through the term of the agreement, which prolonged through mid-September 2019.
GM had idled several plants, including those in Lordstown, Ohio, Baltimore, and Warren, Michigan, in violation of the contract. The corporate had also announced plans to shut additional plants, but negotiations with the UAW and Canadian union Unifor resulted in securing recent products for those sites.
Initially, the UAW had filed a lawsuit against GM over the plant closures but later agreed to drop the lawsuit in favor of arbitration when a brand new tentative contract agreement was reached in October 2019. GM had argued that it didn’t violate the previous contract, because it considered the motion as “unallocating” quite than closing or idling.
While Booth expressed satisfaction with the arbitrator’s decision, he noted that certain compensation, equivalent to “mutually satisfactory retirement advantages,” was dismissed as beyond the arbitrator’s jurisdiction. The UAW intends to proceed the fight for this award on behalf of eligible members.
In response to the ruling, GM stated that it’s pleased with the choice regarding retirement advantages and has no plans for further legal motion regarding Document 13.
The $8 million payout comes on the heels of GM announcing that its newly ratified contracts with the UAW and Unifor will increase costs by $9.3 billion, averaging $575 per vehicle. Despite the added expenses, GM executives express confidence in offsetting these costs through other means.
Source: Automotive News (subscription required)
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This Article First Appeared At www.automotiveaddicts.com
