DETROIT (Reuters) - The United Auto Workers union has ratified a new contract with auto parts maker American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. (AXL.N), averting another strike like the one that disrupted production at General Motors Corp. (GM.N) last month, union officials said on Monday.þþThe four-year labor contract, covering 6,500 UAW members at American Axle's plants in New York and Michigan, was approved in voting that opened last Thursday and ended on Sunday, UAW officials said.þþSixty-eight percent of the UAW's rank-and-file members supported the controversial contract, which prompted a one-day strike that wreaked havoc with full-size pickup truck production at GM -- American Axle's largest customer -- late last month.þþSome aspects of the contract still need to be hammered out, in bargaining sessions set for the next three months between the union and American Axle.þþBut Wendy Thompson, president of UAW Local 235, based in the metropolitan Detroit area and American Axle's biggest UAW unit, said the majority of her members had voted against the contract because it establishes a so-called ``two-tier'' wage system under which new hires will receive less pay than veteran workers.þþThe system violates a long-standing insistence on equal pay for equal work at the UAW.þþ``We voted it down,'' said Thompson, adding that 56 percent of Local 235's 3,000 members had opposed the contract.þþThe UAW's national leadership tentatively agreed to a two-tiered wage system last fall, in contract negotiations with leading automotive parts suppliers Delphi Corp. (DPH.N) and Visteon Corp. (VC.N). But details of those contracts are the subject of ongoing negotiations, union sources say. þþ
Source: NY Times
