UAW and Lear reach tentative agreement, allowing GM to restart pickup production

After a nearly three-day strike, the union that represents some 500 workers at a Lear factory in Missouri has reached a tentative agreement with the company, ending the strike and allowing General Motors to resume production of its midsize pickups and cargo vans.

GM was forced to idle its nearby Wentzville Assembly plant in Missouri on Monday because the workers at the Lear Wentzville facility, which supplies the seats for GM's midsize pickups and vans, went on strike at midnight Sunday. That was when their contract expired and they had not reached a new tentative agreement with the company.

The Lear facility produces the seats as part of a just-in-time production system at GM's Wentzville plant. That means Lear makes the exact number of seats GM needs at the exact time GM needs it, with very little kept in inventory. So without the seats being produced, GM had to stop the assembly line and send some 4,600 workers home until Thursday.

GM spokesman Kevin Kelly confirmed that Wentzville restarted operations Thursday morning.

"Our supplier has reached a tentative agreement, and our focus is to resume regular production as quickly as possible for the good of our customers," Kelly said in a statement.

Lear spokesman Brian Corbett told the Free Press, “We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with the UAW at our Wentzville facility. We are focused on resuming normal operations.”

During Lear Corp.'s second-quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts Thursday, CEO Ray Scott said the tentative agreement was reached "and we’re hoping to get it ratified sometime in the near future here. We'll work closely with the UAW. As far as any information, we’ll continue to work with the team on the ground. They’re back to building vehicles this morning and we couldn’t be more happy for GM and our employees down in Wentzville.”

CFO Jason Cardew said the financial impact of the strike is included in Lear's adjusted guidance for 2024. That guidance is based partly on global customer production estimates, but factors in the estimated strike impact. For the full year, Lear's restructuring costs are expected to be $25 million more than its previous forecast, coming in at $150 million. But its capital expenditure will be $650 million, down from the previous forecast of $675 million. Lear estimates its full-year adjusted pretax income to be $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion, down from an earlier forecast of $1.8 billion to $1.9 billion.

Details of the deal inclue a raise

UAW Local 282, which represents the Lear Wentzville workforce, reached the tentative agreement late Wednesday and finalized it in the early morning hours, during which time Lear strikers returned to work, UAW Local 282 President Bill Hugeback told the Free Press on Thursday.

Hugeback said the first shift was operating at the Lear facility Thursday but, “it’s probably going to take a little while to catch back up on production.”

As part of the agreement, Hugeback said the workforce will receive a raise in wages, but he declined to offer any more details until the union could print it up and hand it out to the workers later.

"We'll let them read for it for a couple days and meet on it and then vote," Hugeback said. "They’re happy that they’re going back to work and the strike is over. As far as the contract is concerned, they don’t know all that’s agreed to yet, we have to print out the pamphlets and hand them out.”

Strike, breach of contract and NLRB

Earlier in the week, Hugeback said the union had made about 60 proposals to Lear that remained unresolved. The two biggest issues centered on health and safety and production standards. Those have led to the worst injuries in the plant, he said.

On Tuesday, the situation was headed toward serious complications after GM notified Lear that the supplier was in breach of its contract with GM by not supplying the seats needed to keep GM's assembly line going at the Wentzville Assembly.

As the Free Press first reported, GM's notification and Lear's subsequent use of it during bargaining prompted the UAW to file an unfair labor practice charge against Lear with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday. 

In a notice to UAW Local 282 members obtained by the Free Press late Tuesday, Ken Barrett, the UAW Local 282's lead bargainer, wrote that when the union bargainers went to negotiate with Lear representatives, "They used their time to reject our membership's demand and to present a letter from General Motors that seats be supplied. The letter and the intent of its presentation was designed as a scare tactic to claim that if we didn't accept the terms of the company's proposal, Lear would lose the business."

Barrett said the action was unethical and illegal, so the union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB.

In a statement sent to the Free Press on Thursday morning, UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Campbell said, "I'm proud of our UAW membership and their bargaining team for standing up against the billionaire class and, as Walter Reuther said, forcing this company to say yes when they wanted to say no."

Campbell said the agreement proves that when workers fight in solidarity for "fair pay, benefits and working conditions, corporate greed can be beat."

Wentzville Assembly is one of GM's key plants and it was one of the first plants the UAW struck last fall during the union's so-called Stand Up strike which targeted specific Detroit Three automakers' plants.

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This story has been updated to accurately reflect that Lear estimates its full-year adjusted pretax income to be $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion, down from an earlier forecast of $1.8 billion to $1.9 billion.

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.