Awkward Timing

Though apparently over, the GM strike cut into sales -- and profits

Labor relations in the 1990s could boil down to a collision between an irresistible force (worker demands for job security) and an immovable object (industry insistence on lower operating costs). General Motors and the United Auto Workers have just been in such a collision. A job action that began among 2,300 workers at a GM body-stamping plant in Lordstown, Ohio, expanded to nine GM assembly plants before the two sides finally reached a tentative settlement. It had idled 42,000 workers over the issue of the company's right to determine which jobs would be eliminated under a sweeping corporate restructuring scheduled to...

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