DETROIT — American Axle and Manufacturing, the auto parts maker, is trying to force an end to the industry’s longest strike in a decade by calling back laid-off employees, advertising for replacement workers and threatening to move production out of the United States.þþThe company is feeling increasing pressure from its largest customer, General Motors, to end the monthlong strike. G.M. temporarily closed its Detroit sedan plant on Monday and is expected to close its sedan plant in Lordstown, Ohio, later this week, when it will run out of some parts.þþUntil now, the strike had affected only the production of slower-selling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, but analysts say that halting the production of cars like the compact Chevrolet Cobalt, which is built in Lordstown, could quickly hurt G.M. sales.þþA total of 30 G.M. factories, including a transmission plant in Ohio that also closed Monday, have been fully or partly shut down, along with dozens of factories run by other G.M. parts suppliers, since 3,650 members of the United Automobile Workers union at American Axle walked out on Feb. 26.þþFormal negotiations broke off, and officials said no new talks had been scheduled. The strike began when the U.A.W. refused to go along with American Axle’s plan to cut wages by as much as half, citing a need to remain competitive with lower-cost rivals like the Dana Corporation.þþThe union, in turn, says that a profitable company should not be reducing its workers’ pay. (American Axle earned $37 million in 2007.)þþ“If a company making profits can break the union, then any company can,” said Adrian King, the president of U.A.W. Local 235, which represents American Axle workers in Detroit. “We’re willing to be out here one day longer than the company to get a fair and equitable contract.”þþOn Monday morning, about 400 people who had recently been laid off by American Axle joined picket lines in Michigan and New York after the company recalled them over the weekend. The workers were given the choice of either returning to their jobs or risk losing their unemployment benefits, but there was no indication that anyone had crossed the picket lines.þþStriking workers were incensed on Monday after American Axle ran help-wanted ads in newspapers near its factories in Detroit and Three Rivers, Mich., and in the Buffalo, N.Y., area. The ads describe the jobs as “anticipated attrition replacement openings after negotiations or in place of employees involved in this strike.” þþThe U.A.W. is assuming that the company intends to bring in nonunion replacements.þþA spokeswoman for American Axle, Renee B. Rogers, said the company merely wanted to have new hires ready when current employees leave through a buyout program after the strike is settled. But Ms. Rogers left open the possibility that some striking workers could be replaced “on a temporary basis.”þþ“The main purpose of this is to get this pool of potential associates when people taking the buyouts and early retirements exit,” she said.þþThe U.A.W. was also angered last week by a regulatory filing showing that American Axle raised the salary for its chief executive, Richard E. Dauch, by 9.5 percent in 2007, to $10.2 million, and by Mr. Dauch’s statement that he would shift production to plants in Mexico, South America or other regions if the union continued to refuse his demands.þþ“We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world, and we have the right to do so,” he told The Detroit Free Press. “If we cannot compete for new contracts in the U.S., there will be no work in the original plants.”þþMs. Rogers said Monday that Mr. Dauch did not want to take part in additional interviews.þþWorkers said threats of a closing of their plants did not change their opinion of the company’s proposed wage scale.þþ“If he wants to take it to Mexico, let him,” said Nate Mitchell, 41, a machine operator at the Detroit plant. “I’m not working for nothing.”þþDavid Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York, said the U.A.W.’s hard line against American Axle had as much to do with its overall future as a union as it did with workers at that particular company.þþThe U.A.W.’s membership fell below 500,000 in 2007, the lowest since World War II, according to a filing by the union on Friday. In the 1970s, the U.A.W. reported a membership of 1.5 million. But employment at the automakers and their suppliers has since fallen steadily, particularly in the last few years as the Detroit carmakers began a succession of sweeping corporate cutbacks.þþ“The U.A.W. is sending a signal that as a union they are still formidable, and can’t be underestimated,” Mr. Gregory said “It’s critically important that they send that signal, or they really could be headed for oblivion.”þþ
Source: NY Times
