GM Moves to Speed Up UAW Talks

DETROIT —  General Motors, concerned by the complexity of the key job security issue in contract talks with the United Auto Workers, is moving to speed up negotiations.

GM Vice President Alfred S. Warren Jr., the company’s chief negotiator, said Friday that GM will issue its first comprehensive contract proposal to the UAW by the middle of next week, more than two weeks ahead of schedule.

He said GM officials are worried that it may take longer than usual to work out an agreement on job security--the UAW’s No. 1 priority in this year’s contract talks.

Talks aimed at hammering out new labor agreements covering UAW members at both GM and Ford began here in late July, and bargainers for the two companies and the union now face a Sept. 14 deadline, when the existing contracts at both firms expire.

At Ford, union and company bargainers also seem to be moving at an unusually fast pace. Earlier this week, Ford made a presentation to the union in which it agreed that improved job security should be part of any new labor pact. UAW Vice President Stephen Yokich, the union’s chief negotiator at Ford, said he is encouraged but that he will withhold further comment until the union sees a more specific proposal.

At GM, where job security may be a tougher issue than at Ford, the company on Friday released the findings of a new study detailing how much more vulnerable to foreign competition GM’s components operations are than Ford’s much smaller parts divisions.

The study of several comparable GM and Ford car and truck lines found that GM makes 133 parts that Ford buys at lower prices on the world market. Those 133 parts account for 54,000 GM jobs, the study said. GM’s apparent message in releasing the study was that the UAW should not demand that GM and Ford agree to the same job security contract provisions, since GM has further to go to become competitive.