Fate of Chrysler Contract in Question

Six local unions representing more than 11,000 workers have turned down the landmark pact, while five locals representing about 8,200 workers have said "yes." It's nearly impossible to keep a running total because most local union officials give out only percentages and not the number of people who voted.

Yet with large chunk of the 45,000 workers covered by the contract still voting, UAW leaders in Detroit have started a heavy lobbying campaign for passage. Two more large locals in suburban Detroit are scheduled to vote on Wednesday.

Counts by the international union show the deal passing with just over 50 percent of the vote, according to a person who has been briefed on the vote count. The person did not want to be identified because the count has not been made public.

But a dissident, Shawn Fain, a worker at a Kokomo casting plant, said so many large locals have voted against the deal that it cannot be passing.

"I don't believe for a second that they can have the votes that close," he said.

On Monday, Local 51 representing 1,200 workers at two engine plants in Detroit voted 76 percent in favor, said Lorenzo Poole III, local president.

Poole said he told his members that they should trust UAW international officials who got the best deal they could from the company. The deal was reached Oct. 10 after a six-hour strike.

"If we go back out on strike, who knows how long we'd be out there?" said Poole, who believes dissidents are spreading misinformation about the pact.

"I think a lot of the people that are voting no are just misled or uninformed," he said.

UAW workers haven't rejected a national contract since Chrysler employees did in 1982, said Mike Smith, director of the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.

Opponents mainly object to a lower-tier wage scale for many new hires of around $14 per hour and new vehicle guarantees for factories that mainly run for the life of the contract but are less than General Motors Corp. guaranteed workers in its contract settlement.

If the contract is voted down, the UAW could return to the bargaining table or call for a revote.

"It's going to be close. They're going to work very hard here at the end to pull this together," David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said Monday.

Chrysler sells most of its vehicles in North America and has little global presence. Its new owner, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, needs a partner to give it the global economy of scale that its main competitor, GM, already is using, Cole said.

Without a competitive wage agreement, no partner will join Chrysler, and that could make Cerberus look for other options to get a return on its investment, such as selling off the company in pieces.

"I don't think the membership at Chrysler really quite understands the gravity of the situation," Cole said.

Chrysler, he said, is likely to cut models, so it can't guarantee next-generation products for individual plants like GM did, he said.