uaw strike

Contract talks between the United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp. failed to produce a settlement in time to prevent the start of a strike late Monday morning.

The union set a firm strike deadline for 11 a.m., saying if a deal was not reached, members would walk off the job. The previous contract between GM and the UAW expired Sept. 14. GM officials say the talks recessed Monday night and were expected to continue Tuesday.

Dozens of GM workers in Spring Hill were picketing outside the entrance to the company's idled Saturn manufacturing plant on Monday. Most of the company's workers at the plant have been furlough while the plant undergoes renovation. The Spring Hill plant is represented by UAW Local 1853.

The plant employs 2,800 hourly workers and 290 salaried workers. GM did not provide information on how the strike will affect the retooling, or if there are any workers still inside the plant for renovations.

The UAW had not called a nationwide strike during contract negotiations since 1976, when Ford Motor Co. plants were shut down. There were strikes at a couple GM plants during negotiations in 1996.

The UAW negotiating team was at the bargaining table, officials said, up until the 11 a.m. deadline. Negotiations are expected to continue during the strike.

The UAW represents about 73,000 GM workers at 82 facilities nationwide.

The union also is in contract talks with Ford. That contract also expired on Sept. 14.

OTTAWA ― General Motors of Canada shut down its two main car-assembly plants in Oshawa, Ont., on Tuesday as the impact of a strike by the United Auto Workers union in the United States continued to spread north of the border.

The closure affects nearly 3,000 workers at the No.1 car plant, which closed early Tuesday morning, while 2,500 employees where sent home later in the day at the No. 2 plant nearby as the U.S. job action disrupted the supply of car parts.

"The bottom line is that we need parts to run it," said GM Canada spokeswoman Patty Faith.

Work at a third Oshawa plant, which produces GM trucks, is expected to remain open for at least another day. "We'll continue to monitor the situation,"_Faith said. The truck plant employs 4,000 workers.

Production at GM's transmission plant in Windsor, Ont., which has 1,400 worker, was halted Monday morning, shortly after the strike began.

Factory workers at GM in the U.S. staged the nationwide strike ―_the first in 37 years ―_paralyzing assembly lines at North America's biggest automaker.

The UAW wants job guarantees in exchange for agreeing to a special health-care trust and is pressuring GM through the strike, Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli said.

"So this has a financial impact to every one of our members," said Chris Buckley, president of Local 222 of Canadian Auto Works union in Oshawa.

"The mood right now probably isn't that bad because it's fresh. Some of our members will probably not mind this because they're going to get a long weekend for sure out of this, but as this thing progresses ― when it starts to impact people's pocketbooks ― then the mood probably could change.

"Saying all that, we are in full support of the fight our brothers and sisters are in in the United States, the UAW members."

The CAW has a separate contract with the automaker that expires in the fall of 2008.

Buzz Hargrove, CAW president, warned Monday that between 80,000 and 100,000 workers in Canada's auto belt in Ontario and Quebec could find themselves unemployed by the end of this week if the U.S. strike continues, dealing another blow to an industry already hit hard by job losses.

Among the other companies affected by the strike is Magna International Inc., Canada's largest parts supplier. Twenty-five per cent of the Aurora, Ont.-based company's revenues come from GM. A spokeswoman told Bloomberg News that Magna will adjust to its customer's production schedules, but she did not say whether it own operations would be reduced or curtailed.

About 12,000 Canadian auto-parts jobs have been wiped out since 2004 as suppliers adjusted to a higher Canadian dollar and production cutbacks by Detroit-based automakers.

"The root cause of this entire situation is a lack of action from both the Canadian and the American governments to do something on the unfair trade policies that are affecting our North American auto industry," Buckley said Tuesday.

"If General Motors hadn't lost so much market share over the last few years, as they continue to lose market share, they continue to have financial problems because they're not selling as many vehicles as they have for decades. Both the Canadian and American government needs to play a more active role in trying to secure the North American auto industry."

The last time the UAW staged a national strike against GM was in 1970.