DETROIT, Sept. 15 — The Ford Motor Company and the auto parts giant Visteon said late this evening that they had reached tentative agreement on four-year labor contracts with the United Automobile Workers union.þþThe Ford deal was the second announced today between the union and a Big Three automaker, an unusually swift resolution to the talks that reflects union leaders' realization of the competitive difficulties faced by the Big Three, whose domestic market share fell to a record monthly low in August.þþJust after midnight on Sunday, the union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, said he had reached a deal with the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler. Traditionally, the union waits until the first deal is ratified by workers at the company before moving on to negotiate in earnest with a second company, a process that can take a couple of weeks. þþÿThis was really quite a brave and unprecedented move that Ron undertook to have simultaneous bargaining,ÿ said William Clay Ford Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Ford.þþMr. Gettelfinger said, ÿNegotiation is the art of the possible, not the impossible,ÿ adding that negotiations continued with General Motors, the world's largest automaker by volume, as well as the parts giant Delphi, which was spun off from G.M. in 1999. þþThe sides are pushing to reach a deal this week, according to people briefed on the union's strategy.þþTerms of the deals with Ford, Chrysler and Visteon, which was spun off from Ford in 2000, were not disclosed. People close to the negotiations said it would probably preserve health care benefits but scale back some of the wage and pension increases that characterized the last four-year deals, which were negotiated in more prosperous times. þþThe union had tried to reach an unprecedented deal with all of the Big Three before the contracts expired at midnight Sunday but said early today that it had reached a deal only with Chrysler. þþDelphi and Visteon now negotiate alongside their former parent companies, a situation that made it more difficult to reach deals with G.M. and Ford. þþÿIt complicates things quite a bit,ÿ Mr. Gettelfinger said.þþBut reaching a deal with two companies also represented a sharp break with tradition. þþEarly today, John Franciosi, a Chrysler senior vice president and the company's top negotiator, said, ÿWe believe we've crafted a very fair and responsible agreement.ÿþþMr. Gettelfinger said at that news conference that ÿwe are going to continue to hammer away at the negotiations process until we reach an agreement,ÿ with Ford and G.M.þþThe union traditionally presents the contract terms to its members before discussing them publicly. Few, if any, concessions are expected on health care benefits, but union members are not expected to maintain the 3 percent annual wage increases, on top of cost-of-living adjustments, that were part of the last contract.þþChrysler, which surprised some analysts with a $1.1 billion loss in the second quarter, also wants to shed some of its parts operations, but by selling individual plants rather than spinning them off as a separate company like Delphi or Visteon.þþDieter Zetsche, a former executive of DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes unit, took over as Chrysler's chief in 2001 and devised a turnaround plan that included 26,000 job cuts.þþBut the division has continued to struggle during the Big Three's protracted price war, as has Ford. þþMr. Ford, asked whether the contract would help his company be more competitive, said tonight, ÿthere are a lot of elements in terms of our competitiveness, but we feel really good about this contract.ÿþþMany analysts are cautious about how much can be accomplished. þþÿIt's always been about the money for the U.A.W.,ÿ said Joseph Phillippi, an analyst with Auto Trends Consulting of Short Hills, N.J. ÿIt's only recently that the realization has set in that it's about the competitiveness. You can't blame the union, but it took them an awfully long time to come to the party, with respect to helping the Big Three get competitive.ÿþþThe union's effort to seek a comprehensive agreement broke with a decades-long tradition.þþTypically, the union announced a target company around Labor Day, then concentrated on reaching an agreement with that company. The terms of that contract then set the pattern for deals with the other two.þþA few weeks usually separate the first and last deals, partly because of the time it takes for union members to ratify them. In addition to 302,500 active members at the five companies, the contracts cover 370,000 retired workers and 105,000 survivors of members who have died.þþBut for this round of negotiations, little has been typical. Perhaps more than ever before, officials from the union and the automakers have plenty of problems in common, namely the surging fortunes of nonunionized, foreign-based automakers like Toyota, Honda and Nissan.þþThe situation was reinforced in August, when the Big Three's share of the domestic market fell to a record low and Toyota surpassed Chrysler's monthly sales in the United States for the first time.þþÿThe union is trying to defend what it got in the past and prevent any more erosion,ÿ said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. ÿIf anything, it's a reflection of the fear. This is an industry in which the parties realize that they're captive and they face the same fate.ÿþþ
Source: NY Times
