GM faces Thursday strike deadline at Ohio plant
DETROIT (Reuters) - Union workers at a General Motors Corp GM.N metal stamping plant in Ohio have set a Thursday deadline for reaching a local contract or walking out on strike, a spokesman for the automaker said on Tuesday.
About 1,500 workers represented by United Auto Workers union Local 549 set a deadline of 10 a.m. EDT Thursday in a letter delivered to GM on Tuesday, GM spokesman Dan Flores said.
A strike at the GM stamping plant in Mansfield, Ohio, would be the third such work stoppage at the automaker. GM has been negotiating for months to complete plant-by-plant work agreements with UAW locals needed to implement a cost-saving national contract reached last year with the UAW.
UAW workers at two key GM assembly plants remain on strike in local contract disputes. Talks with bargaining units for both those plants were continuing on Tuesday, Flores said.
UAW Local 549 President Pam Drake could not be immediately reached for comment.
Union-represented workers at a GM Delta Township assembly plant near Lansing, Michigan, have been on strike since mid-April. That plant makes GM's new crossover vehicles, including the Buick Enclave, which have sold relatively well at a time when sales of larger trucks and sport utility vehicles have been under deepening pressure from rising gas prices and a weak U.S. economy.
Workers have been on strike since last week at a GM plant near Kansas City, Kansas, which makes GM's strong-selling Chevrolet Malibu sedan.
The Malibu, named car of the year at the Detroit auto show, represents GM's effort to break back into the market for mid-size sedans where Japanese rivals led by Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) have dominated.
Analysts have seen the UAW local strikes against GM as a way for the union to exert pressure on the No. 1 U.S. automaker in a separate contract dispute with supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings that has largely shut down GM's North American production of trucks and full-size SUVs. (AXL.N)
About 3,600 UAW-represented workers have been on strike at American Axle plants in Michigan and New York since February 26.
The Detroit-based supplier, which was spun off from GM in 1994, has asked UAW workers to accept sharply lower wages and to close three plants, saying it needs those concessions to remain competitive.
GM last week offered $200 million to help settle the American Axle strike by creating a fund that would be used for worker buyouts and one-time payouts to remaining workers in exchange for accepting lower hourly wages.
GM represents about 80 percent of American Axle's sales. The automaker said the American Axle strike had cost it 230,000 units of lost production through April.
(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Gunna Dickson)
