NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers announced a new labor agreement Thursday morning, the final of three new tentative labor pacts for the nation's major automakers.
Details of the new pact were not immediately available. The previous four-year deal expired Sunday, but GM workers have remained on the job as the world's largest automaker and the union continued talks. There are 115,000 active UAW members at GM and 340,000 retirees and surviving family members covered by the labor pacts, making it one of the nation's largest labor agreements.
Delphi Corp. (DPH: down $0.07 to $9.59, Research, Estimates), the parts supplier that was spun off from GM (GM: down $0.20 to $41.49, Research, Estimates) in 1999 just before the last round of contract negotiations, also reached a deal with the union Thursday. Delphi and UAW held parallel talks with the GM-UAW negotiations.
UAW negotiators reached deals Monday with No. 2 Ford Motor Co. (F: Research, Estimates) and No. 3 Chrysler Group, the North American unit of DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX: Research, Estimates), as well as parts supplier Visteon Corp. (VC: Research, Estimates), a former unit of Ford.
"In the last five days, we have successfully concluded negotiations with five of the largest manufacturers in the world," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said at a news conference on Thursday. "That's five in five. What they do and how they do it basically touches everyone worldwide in one way or another."
The contracts with the five auto companies, which are all subject to rank-and-file approval, cover about 760,000 active and retired workers and their spouses.
The agreements were concluded in a difficult environment for the U.S. auto industry, with buyers demanding greater incentives to buy, an overcapacity in worldwide auto production and increased market share gains by Asian automakers, who make an increasing number of their vehicles at nonunion U.S. plants.
The UAW agreements allow for the closure or sale of more than a dozen U.S. plants and thousands of job cuts. But the union won moderate gains in wages and benefits, according to a summary of the Chrysler contract obtained by Reuters which is expected to mirror financial terms for the GM and Ford contracts.
The Chrysler contract summary shows the wage package for active employees includes a $3,000 signing bonus, a lump-sum payment in the second year and wage increases between 2 percent and 3 percent in the third and fourth years.
"I think the companies are coming out of it with a contract they can live with, but not with any major reductions in their employment costs," said analyst David Healy of Burnham Securities.
The Chrysler pact would also raise a key pension benefit by about 9 percent over the next four years, less than some Wall Street analysts had expected.
The union had won 17 percent hikes in pension benefits over the life of its previous four-year deals. But declines in the stock market and low interest rate environment have caused large multibillion-dollar shortfalls in the pension plans since that time, hurting automakers' earnings.
Reuters contributed to this report
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