CAW, Chrysler consider early talks
Representatives from the Canadian Auto Workers met with Chrysler yesterday to try to prompt it into early negotiations.
CAW national president Buzz Hargrove says Chrysler didn’t immediately commit, but the automaker didn’t reject the idea either.
The CAW-Chrysler meeting followed a vote over the weekend in which members of the CAW ratified a three-year deal affecting nearly 9,000 employees at Ford Canada.
The union secured a promise from General Motors to begin talks tomorrow.
The current contracts with GM and Chrysler run out in September and affect around 22,000 workers.
Hargrove said the CAW and Chrysler "had a very cordial meeting," to share the information on the pattern agreement at Ford and the company "agreed that they would get back to us in a couple of days."
The CAW typically reaches an agreement with one of the Big Three automakers and then uses that deal as a framework for deals with the other two automakers where it has collective agreements payday loans online.
In the past, both GM and Chrysler have taken a harder line than Ford on the need to cut costs in the face of rising competition from Japanese-based manufacturers.
Chrysler didn’t highlight any particular factor or address specific issues, Hargrove said.
The Canadian Press