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In 2006, the company won the green light to close a Tyler, Texas, plant and the outdated Union City, Tenn., plant closed after the 2009 contract left its jobs unprotected. The company declined to specify if any plant was on a current hit list to close or if it would seek contract concessions. Commenting on the initial talks, Goodyear said they were progressing positively, adding, "Goodyear and the USW have exchanged a few beginning proposals and both sides have decided to work in their respective locations to review the details of the proposals with their actuaries." The union said in a brief update that wages, health care and pensions top the list of issues at the bargaining table. Thomas McIntosh, 50, a 25-year Goodyear employee who handles union grievances in Akron, said the economy and shrinking union rolls have limited rank-and-file expectations. Their goal in the negotiations: "Keeping what they have and they are not really interested in gaining anything," McIntosh said in his union office located over a hill from Goodyear's slick new corporate headquarters. "I don't hear anything about pay raises, you know, or more vacation, just,
'let me keep what I have'." In its opening pitch to the union, the company pressed its case for more flexibility and understanding that higher wages would be passed along to customers. "Manufacturing must be able to adjust and flex production," Steve McClellan, president of Goodyear's North American tire unit, told the union in the company's opening statement April 22. "We must be flexible and responsive to remain competitive. It all comes back to building the right tire, at the right time, for the right cost." For now, rank-and-file workers are wary and hoping for the best, McIntosh said. "Any time it's a contract year, there's a heightened sense of doom and gloom just because what the company's going to come for," he said. "We're so whittled down now, we just want what we got."
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