DETROIT (Reuters) – Workers represented by the United Auto Workers union approved on Wednesday a four-year labor contract with General Motors Co, the first such deal for the top U.S. automaker since its 2009 bankruptcy.
Ratification of the GM deal, which covers 48,500 hourly workers, paves the way for the UAW to complete talks with GM’s crosstown rival, Ford Motor Co. Talks are also under way at Chrysler Group LLC, which is controlled by Fiat SpA.
GM said the contract would allow it to break even if U.S. auto sales plunged by just over 15 percent from the still-weak levels of 2011 and boost its costs by only $20 million annually in 2012 and 2013.
GM executives said the contract would increase labor costs by about 1 percent annually. Still, the agreement leaves GM with U.S. factory labor costs that remain less than a third of what they had been in 2005.
That makes
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