Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.latimes.money From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: AUTOMOBILES UAW, GM to Continue Buyout Talks Labor: A union negotiator expects an agreement with the giant Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 08:59:51 EST Message-ID: HEADLINE: AUTOMOBILES UAW, GM to Continue Buyout Talks Labor: A union negotiator expects an agreement with the giant Publication Date: Saturday November 14, 1992 BYLINE: AMY HARMON United Auto Workers union officials went home Friday without the hoped-for news of an early retirement plan with General Motors Corp. to announce to expectant members. "There is no deal," Stephen P. Yokich, head of the union's GM department, said Friday to officials meeting here this week. "We are not there yet." But Yokich said the union's relations with the world's largest corporation had improved dramatically since Chief Executive John F. (Jack) Smith Jr. took over from former Chairman Robert C. Stempel, who resigned under fire last month. He said negotiations on the retirement plan were continuing, and he expected to reach an agreement. "I think Jack Smith is a lot different than what I have been dealing with," Yokich told reporters Friday. "He isn't out there making goddamned announcements like Stempel did in December and February, when we don't know what's going on, and I have to dig around and find out about it myself." Stempel's announcement last December that the auto maker would close 21 plants and eliminate 54,000 union jobs by mid-decade came as a shock to UAW leaders. And the former chairman's February decision to close the Willow Run assembly plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., after extracting a more favorable agreement from the local union at the company's Arlington, Tex., plant provoked the UAW to begin rolling strikes this fall. Yokich cited improved communications--he said he talks to Smith about once a week--and Smith's apparent commitment to improve production efficiency without resorting solely to slashing union jobs as key reasons for the detente taking place between the UAW and GM. But worker buyouts are one of the few concrete plans the company and union have acknowledged working on together, and their failure to reach an agreement this week reflects the underlying tensions that remain. Union and company officials had pushed to resolve the plan in time for GM's meeting with securities analysts in New York on Thursday and the four-day UAW caucus here. With GM set to identify by the end of the year the remaining seven of the 21 plants it plans to close, an early retirement plan sounds appealing to many union members who may soon be out of a job. An added appeal is the rapid depletion of the $3.35-billion fund set aside to pay the salaries of laid-off workers, which could run out as early as January. Steve Featherston, president of the union local at GM's Oklahoma City assembly plant, was hoping to have some information to brighten the outlook for the Oklahoma City workers, who found out last week that their plant was back on the list of possible closures. "I've got a membership meeting Sunday and they were expecting something significant," he said. "But no news is no news." This article is copyright 1992 The Los Angeles Times Home Edition. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM