Chrysler deal may be sealed today

Eric Morath / The Detroit News

BELVIDERE, Ill . -- A mixed mood among workers at Chrysler LLC's assembly plant here Friday suggests the tentative pact between the automaker and the United Auto Workers will march on to ratification as soon as today.

The last major vote in the ratification process began early Friday morning when members of UAW Local 1268 started casting their ballots. The vote was expected to last 24 hours.

The union could announce today the final results of the votes that have been taking place across the country since Oct. 18. Earlier this week, it appeared the chances for overall ratification of the deal would come down to the vote here after several major plants rejected it. But the voting tide turned Wednesday when workers at four large Metro Detroit plants approved the contract by wide margins.

To put ratification in jeopardy, dissidents here needed to generate wide-spread rejection of the deal among the 3,400 Belvidere Assembly workers. While a few members of the World Socialist Web Site called on workers to vote no, the scene outside the Community Building, a public auditorium where the voting was held, lacked the vocal battles between supporters and critics of the deal that were witnessed at locals in Metro Detroit this week.

Inside the auditorium, workers asked questions of local and international UAW leaders before voting. Belvidere worker Yolanda Brown said heartfelt speeches from international UAW leaders, particularly bargaining team member Robert Mitchell from UAW Local 51 in Detroit, which represents workers at Chrysler's Mack I engine plant, changed her vote from "no" to "yes."

"He brought tears to my eyes," she said. "He said (the company) is a three-headed monster that held our wages and job security in its mouth."

Shortly after the afternoon shift change Friday, workers filed into the auditorium to vote, but Brown said the turnout is likely lighter than it would have been if voting had been held earlier in the week, when passage was uncertain.

As of Friday, about 57 percent of workers who had voted at 33 union locals across the country approved the deal, according to a Detroit News analysis of the voting results.

Chrysler and UAW officials could not be reached for comment Friday evening and local union officials declined interview requests.

Workers at the Belvidere information meeting mainly quizzed leaders on job security and two-tier wages. Of particular concern here is the fate of temporary workers hired last year to staff a third shift at the plant, which makes the Dodge Caliber, Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot. Slow sales of the vehicles could put the workers' jobs at risk.

Leaders at the meeting said those temporary workers would likely be laid off shortly, and would be given first priority to fill new, probably noncore jobs, which means the work is not directly related to the assembly of a vehicle. Pay would start at $14 an hour, half the wage of their peers.

Speakers at the meeting said noncore jobs will be defined on a facility-by-facility basis.

Dennis Kirkpatrick, a Detroit native and former worker at Chrysler's engine plant in Trenton, recently relocated to Belvidere. He planned to vote "no," despite reports the contract's fate is sealed.

The two-tier wage system would split the union, he said.

"There are too many holes in this contract," he said. "The union has always fought for the future; now they are doing the opposite."