FENTON, Mo. (AP) -- Workers at Chrysler LLC's pickup truck plant in suburban St. Louis rejected a tentative four-year labor contract between the United Auto Workers and the automaker.þþRoughly 1,400 of the plant's 2,100 employees voted, with about 80 percent rejecting the deal, said Jerry Dennison, president of UAW Local 136.þþ''It actually failed by a larger margin than I thought it would,'' Dennison said Thursday night after the votes were tallied.þþUAW members at Chrysler's North Assembly Plant in Fenton were among the first Chrysler employees to vote on the contract. Those workers make Dodge Ram pickups.þþThe 2,900 members of UAW Local 110 at the nearby South Assembly Plant, which makes Chrysler Town and Country and Dodge Caravan minivans, vote Friday.þþUnion officials said workers were bothered by the contract's creation of ''core'' and ''noncore'' workers at the Fenton plant, with newly hired noncore workers being paid a lower hourly wage.þþThe contract did not specify which jobs would be designated noncore if the deal is approved, they said.þþ''There were people voting who didn't know if their job would be shuffled to a noncore job,'' said Local 136 Treasurer Glenn Kage Jr.þþMeanwhile, workers at a Chrysler engine plant in Kenosha, Wis., voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve the tentative agreement, reached Oct. 10 after a six-hour strike.þþUAW Local 72 President Dan Kirk said 78 percent of workers voted for the deal.þþThe UAW represents about 800 workers at the Kenosha engine plant, Kirk said. The plant recently was given a new six-cylinder engine to build.þþAll of Chrysler's 45,000 UAW employees are expected to complete voting sometime next week.þþKirk said the national bargaining committee worked hard to bring back the best deal it could.þþ''We're not really happy with it, but it is what it is,'' Kirk said. ''It's a contract we can live with.''þþThe chairman of the UAW's national Chrysler negotiating committee is among those criticizing the tentative deal.þþBill Parker, who also is president of a local, wrote an undated ''minority report'' letter that urged the union's Chrysler Council to reject the agreement and return to the bargaining table.þþThe council, made up of presidents and other local officials from across the country, approved the deal on a voice vote Monday at a meeting in Detroit.þþParker's letter says the deal's lower tier wage scale for some entry-level employees would create divisions within the union. It also says the Chrysler deal fell short of one that General Motors Corp. workers agreed to earlier this month, including a failure to guarantee vehicle commitments to many plants beyond current products.þþThe votes come as UAW officials in Detroit stepped up efforts to convince the rank-and-file to approve the pact in the face of dissent by a top bargainer.þþThe deal closely follows a tentative agreement ratified by workers at General Motors Corp., and is expected to be used as a template for negotiations with Ford Motor Co. The union won guarantees that Chrysler will continue to build vehicles or parts at most of its U.S. plants, at least through the life of the contract.þþA Chrysler spokeswoman declined comment on the future of any plants.þþ
Source: NY Times
