Negotiations between the United Auto Workers and General Motors Co. continued Sunday morning as the two sides work to get a new four-year agreement on day 28 of a national strike against the automaker.
The union's executive board on Saturday voted to move up a 10% increase to striking members' pay by more than two months.
The increase to $275 per week starts Sunday. Some 46,000 hourly GM employees will have been on strike for four weeks living off $250 per week from the union's strike fund, which totaled $721 million at the end of 2018. Top-paid production employees earn around $1,220 for a 40-hour week.
Strike pay was scheduled to increase by $25 per week starting Jan. 1.
“UAW members and their families are sacrificing for all of us,” UAW President Gary Jones said in a statement Sunday. “We are all standing together for our future. This action reflects the UAW commitment and solidarity to all of our members and their families who are taking a courageous stand together to protect our middle-class way of life.”
The increase comes as talks continue between GM and the UAW after the Detroit automaker reviewed a counterproposal that the union submitted to GM on Friday night.
The union's proposal is a counter to the offer GM made on Monday. The proposal included "all of your outstanding proposals that are at the main table and unsettled," UAW Vice President Terry Dittes wrote in a letter to local union leaders Friday. If GM accepts, "we will have a Tentative Agreement," he wrote.
The UAW-GM strike isn't the only strike the union has going as it works through the negotiation process with two other companies: Aramark Corp. and Mack Trucks Inc.
The UAW's members employed by Aramark, which provides maintenance at five GM facilities — Hamtramck, Warren, Flint, Grand Blanc and Parma, Ohio. The about 850 Aramark union members have been on strike since Sept. 15.
More than 3,600 UAW members employed by Mack Trucks started striking Sunday over multiple issues including wage increases, job security, wage progression and health and safety issues.
Mack Trucks manufactures heavy-duty Class 8 trucks, engines and transmissions. The company has plants in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Middletown, Pennsylvania; Hagerstown, Maryland; Baltimore, Maryland; and Jacksonville, Florida.
“UAW members get up every day and put in long, hard hours of work from designing to building Mack trucks,” said Ray Curry, secretary-treasurer of the UAW and director of the union's Heavy Truck Department, in a statement. “UAW members carry on their shoulders the profits of Mack and they are simply asking for dignity, fair pay and job protections.”
The company had no intentions of closing any of its plants in the U.S. even as in continues to compete against companies that do business in lower-cost countries, Mack Trucks President Martin Weissburg said in a statement issued Saturday. He noted that the company has invested more than $400 million in U.S. plants and its logistics network over the last decade.
In response to the union's decision to strike, Weissburg said the company was "surprised and disappointed that the UAW decided to strike, rather than to allow our employees to keep building trucks and engines while the parties continued to negotiate. The positive working relationship between local UAW leadership and management at our facilities was clearly in evidence throughout the negotiations, and progress was being made."
khall@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @bykaleahall
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GM strike day 28: GM, UAW back at the table - The Detroit News
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