Gm Workers

FLINT, Mich. -- General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers hope to settle two crippling strikes by agreeing in part that a Michigan parts plant and an Ohio brake plant won't close or be sold for at least 14 months, union and company officials said yesterday.The no-sale, no-closing pledge would include GM's striking Delphi East parts plant in Flint, Mich., and another Delphi brake plant in Dayton, Ohio, under terms of an agreement being made final yesterday, officials said. It is unclear whether the pledge would be extended elsewhere.

FLINT, Mich. -- From the view on the streets, you'd never know there was such a thing as, say, a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry. Here, they drive not just American, but local.It seems everyone who lives here has either built a spark plug or welded an engine cradle -- or is the spouse or child or sibling of someone who has -- of the Chevys, Buicks and other local products that ply the roadways in this city 65 miles north of Detroit."We don't make lemons, so we believe in buying our own," said Russ Brown, a longtime auto worker who tools around in his new Chevrolet Astro van, which rolled off the General Motors assembly plant on Broening Highway in Baltimore a couple of months ago and ended up here, the birthplace of both the company and the union of the workers who created it.Today, however, as Brown and his fellow United Auto Workers continue a 12-day-old and increasingly crippling strike against GM, it is their shared hometown that seems certain to lose, regardless of its outcome.

General Motors Corp. wants Maryland to halt payments of unemployment benefits to about 3,000 union workers at its Southeast Baltimore van assembly plant who were laid off last month as a result of strikes at two GM parts plants in Flint, Mich.The local development comes as GM is indicating that it may drop some low-profit cars if United Auto Workers' strikes continue into August.The No. 1 automaker had asked the state Office of Unemployment Insurance to either reconsider its June 12 decision to pay the benefits to the laid-off workers at the Broening Highway plant or it will appeal to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

Workers filing out of Baltimore's van plant yesterday had just lost their jobs again, this time because of the United Auto Workers' strike at the General Motors plant in Flint, Mich.But they had a clear message:Solidarity.Employees were told at noon that the Broening Highway plant, which assembles Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari vans, didn't have the inventory to continue production.Living with uncertainty has become commonplace for the workers, many of whom transferred to Baltimore after other plants were permanently closed.

General Motors Corp.'s van assembly plant in Southeast Baltimore, idled by two-month strikes elsewhere, will resume production Aug. 17, the company announced yesterday.That's about two weeks later than GM factories in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Delaware, Louisiana and Missouri, a delay that results from routine but needed maintenance and has nothing to do with uncertainty about the plant's future, a local union official said."We're certainly happy that they reached an agreement, and, yes, we're happy to go back to work," said Charles R. Alfred, president of United Auto Workers Local 239, which represents about 3,000 workers at the factory.

General Motors Corp. took another step toward a complete shutdown of its U.S. and Canadian vehicle production yesterday when it closed two more assembly plants, amid concern that the strike against two brake plants in Dayton, Ohio, could be a long one."Once everything is shut down, this strike could go on for some time," said David E. Cole, director of the University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation."I think GM has said 'This is it,' " said Mr. Cole, the son of a former GM president.

The United Auto Workers strike against two General Motors Corp. brake plants in Dayton, Ohio, entered its 12th day today with a slight hint that a breakthrough could be in the works."

General Motors Corp.'s van assembly plant in Southeast Baltimore stopped production at 4:42 yesterday afternoon, the latest victim of the eight-day strike against two brake plants in Dayton, Ohio, that threatens to halt all of GM's North American vehicle production."

When the first Chevrolet Deluxe rolled off the assembly line at General Motors Corp.'s plant in Baltimore after World War II, the automaker proudly pointed out that nearly every part in the car was genuine GM.In 1946, it was to GM's advantage to produce the bulk of its parts in house.It could make them more cheaply, and the company had more control over its operations and more importantly its profits.But those days have gone the way of the rumble seat and the running board.GM is moving aggressively in the opposite direction.

DAYTON, Ohio - General Motors Corp. and United Auto Workers negotiators, weary after more than 80 hours of almost nonstop bargaining, still seemed to be waiting for the other side to blink.Union leaders appeared tired but confident as they emerged for a brief break from talks at the Delphi Chassis plant, site of the TC 16-day strike that has shuttered 26 of GM's 29 assembly plants, idled 175,800 GM workers and slowed the growth of the U.S. economy."We're going to outlast them; they're going to give in," Steve McCarroll, a union bargainer, told strikers.

Fathers get respect if they deserve it I was disappointed to read Kevin Cowherd's personal conclusions to a national survey on in-home care for elderly parents ("Lousy survey shows dads get no respect," May 10). Those surveyed were more likely to say they would take care of their mothers than their fathers. In this commentary, Cowherd paints fathers as the helpless victims. From my view, the survey results are a reflection of the type of relationships people have with their parents. It is often the case that fathers are not involved in any aspect of their children's lives - as youth or adults.

On Monday their paychecks stop, and the long days at home start. Wall Street, Washington and Big Labor are playing double-dare chicken over their future. Half of America seems to think they're greedy crybabies; the other half, hapless victims. But the people who make Chevrolet Tahoes and GMC Yukons just want to get back to work. "The best thing I can do is just try and survive and not worry about things," says Ed Tilley, a quality manager at General Motors' White Marsh transmission plant who, like thousands of GM workers, faces a two-month furlough.

DETROIT -- Negotiators for the United Automobile Workers and General Motors have agreed on the framework for a health care trust, GM's key demand in talks on a new contract, people with direct knowledge of the private discussions said yesterday. But the two sides face a long weekend of bargaining on other matters, such as pay and job guarantees, before negotiations are completed, they added. GM and the UAW have tentatively sorted out the details for a voluntary employee benefit association.

In the largest employee buyout in U.S. corporate history, General Motors Corp. said yesterday that nearly a third of its 113,000 manufacturing workers in the United States have agreed to quit or retire this year in return for cash payments of as much as $140,000. The program will cost GM nearly $4 billion, but it is expected to save money in the long run by reducing the automaker's health care and pension costs as it struggles to reverse huge losses and adjust to its diminished share of the U.S. auto market.

DETROIT -- More than 20,000 U.S. factory workers at General Motors Corp. have accepted buyout offers, surpassing the automaker's internal target with a month to go before the deadline, according to people familiar with the situation. The stronger-than-expected response means GM is well on its way to reaching and eventually exceeding its goal of eliminating 30,000 U.S. hourly jobs by the end of 2008 - a central piece of its North American restructuring plan. The automaker, which made the offers to all 113,000 of its U.S. hourly workers in one of the biggest buyout programs in corporate history, had expected 20,000 employees to come forward by the June 23 deadline, the sources said.

The chairman and chief executive of General Motors Corp. is due to make an announcement tomorrow at the company's transmission plant in northeast Baltimore County that could mean jobs for an undetermined number of workers who were displaced when the company closed its van manufacturing plant in Southeast Baltimore last spring. That would be welcome news locally for a company that posted a sizable annual loss last week and whose struggles, along with those of "Big Three" brethren Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChysler AG, have stirred broad concern about the future of the American auto industry.

NATIONAL Preparing for Hurricane Wilma As Hurricane Wilma bore down on the Yucatan with the power to wreak havoc on one of Mexico's top tourist destinations. In Florida, officials and residents began getting ready yesterday for the storm's potentially destructive arrival. pg 3a WORLD Millions need shelter U.N. and private aid workers said yesterday that up to 3 million people in Pakistan's ravaged earthquake areas urgently need shelter before the harsh Himalayan winter sets in. pg 1a U.N. probe of assassination ends A U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri concluded that high-ranking Syrian officials and their Lebanese operatives were involved in the killing.

General Motors Corp. announced yesterday a tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers union to slash its health care costs, a move that promises pain for hundreds of thousands of GM workers and retirees but is widely viewed as a necessary step to save the troubled automaker. Neither the company nor the union gave particulars on how workers and retirees would be affected, and the president of UAW Local 239 in Baltimore was waiting yesterday to be briefed. GM said in a statement that the deal was expected to cut its annual employee health care costs by $3 billion before taxes and save it $1 billion a year in cash.

When Paul Pinkney heard of job openings at the General Motors plant in southeast Baltimore, he went there nearly every day for two weeks before being invited inside. Finally, on his ninth visit, he was taken to the assembly line and shown a greasy pit, with automobiles suspended above and sparks flying, where he would work. That was nearly 40 years ago. Today, the filth and danger have diminished, but Pinkney, at age 63, remains. He has spent more than half his life in the 3.1 million-square-foot plant, so vast that it could house 50 football fields and workers use bicycles to get from one end to the other.

Living with uncertainty is nothing new for 1,100 people who earn a living at General Motors Corp.'s factory in southeast Baltimore. The plant, nearly 70 years old and producing van models with diminishing sales, has been threatened with closure for decades. But the loss of a clause in the workers' new contract may drive another wedge between them and their present job security. General Motors and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract Thursday. But it is unclear if the new agreement retains a clause from the old contract that prohibited the company from closing any plants.