Visteon Corp. and the United Auto Workers union at the weekend reached an agreement over a labour contract at a Michigan plant, averting a strike that could have quickly hurt production at Ford.
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“We are ecstatic to announce a tentative local agreement has been reached,” Joel Goddard, Local [branch] 898 representative at Visteon’s plant in Rawsonville, Michigan, said in a recorded message cited by Reuters. “The membership can rejoice tonight.”
The agreement was reached at about 10:30 pm EDT on Friday, just before a strike deadline of midnight, the news agency added.
According to Reuters, the union had called the strike after talks broke down late on Thursday over the car parts maker’s aim to reduce the work force at the plant by 30%.
A strike by the 2,074 hourly workers at the plant – which makes fuel injectors, windscreen wiper motors, alternators and fuel pumps – was feared to stall production at Ford, Visteon’s largest customer, Reuters said, adding that the plant supplies parts for many Ford vehicles including F-150 pickup trucks, Explorer SUVs and Taurus cars.
“We had been working with Visteon to mitigate any impact on our supply chain,” Ford spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari told Reuters on Saturday.
The news agency noted that Visteon, which lost $US1.2 billion in 2003, reached a broad agreement with the UAW in April that allowed it to lower wages and benefits for all hourly workers hired in the future.
The negotiations tentatively agreed upon on Friday were over a local operating contract, Reuters said.
