Mark Wakefield, a managing director at AlixPartners, a consulting firm with a large automotive practice. said automakers were expected to spend some $225 billion over the next five years on development of electric and self-driving vehicles. “Industry profit is still good, but it’s down from its peak of a few years ago,” he said. The combination of heavy spending and slowing sales “has created some problems for them.”
That’s one reason that G.M. has been eager to retain flexibility in the size and deployment of its work force. Among the issues in dispute was the extent of G.M.’s use of temporary workers — now 7 percent of its head count — and their path to full-time status.
Marisol Gonzalez-Bowers worked for G.M. at Lordstown, Ohio, for about 24 years, most recently in “materials,” transporting parts to the assembly line. Relocating after the shutdown, she recently took a job at the company’s Lansing Delta Township plant in Michigan, where she was trained to assemble the insides of doors — the wires and plugs. Her trainers were almost all classified as temporary workers, she said, though they had been there four years.
“They’re working their butts off,” Ms. Gonzalez-Bowers said — and “making half my wages.”
Most temporary workers earn $15 an hour, compared with roughly $31 an hour for workers hired before 2007. Most permanent workers hired after 2007, known as “in progression” workers, earn about $17 to $25 an hour.
Veteran workers are guaranteed pensions in retirement. In-progression and temporary workers have 401(k) accounts to which they contribute.
Robin Sweet, an employee at a Ford Ranger plant in Wayne, Mich., said workers were upset at both the automakers and the union for not doing more to make them whole after the concessions made during the last downturn. “We want that money back in our pay,” Ms. Sweet said in a text message.
The agreement with G.M., even if followed by accords with Ford and Fiat Chrysler, won’t end the strain on the U.A.W. president, Gary Jones, and several of his top lieutenants. A federal criminal investigation has yielded corruption charges against several union officials over the last four years, including a union vice president who was sentenced to 15 months in prison.