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GM
would not confirm the percentage of its counter-offer but said
its next meeting with the union is on Thursday, where it hopes
to reach a deal for the plant in the central city of Silao,
forestalling a May 31 deadline for workers to strike.
The GM labor negotiations are a high-profile test case for a new
trade deal's goal of reducing the vast wage gap between U.S.
workers and their Mexican counterparts.
SINTTIA's proposal would boost wages at the plant that makes
GM's profitable Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups to as much as
77.15 pesos ($3.81) an hour, based on a copy of the most recent
collective contract seen by Reuters.
That's about a quarter of the company's U.S. starting wage of
$17.50 an hour, highlighting the kind of disparity that drove
U.S. insistence on tougher labor rules in the United
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the 2020 trade pact that
replaced NAFTA.
SINTTIA's Secretary General, Alejandra Morales, called GM's
counter-offer "a slap in the face" at a time when workers are
cutting back to cope with rising prices.
The first major talks held under the new trade deal could usher
in similar demands at other companies in Mexico if SINTTIA lands
a big raise. U.S. government officials who have long wanted to
lessen the wage disparity with Mexico are closely watching.
SINTTIA, the Spanish acronym for the National Independent Union
of Automotive Industry Workers, made its 19.2% proposal when
talks started last month.
Morales said that on top of galloping inflation, the salary
increase was merited due to an uptick in production, years of
lost purchasing power and the peso's sliding value while GM's
profits are in stronger U.S. dollars.
A 3.5% increase would be less than half of current inflation.
Talks stalled April 12, and Thursday's session will be mediated
by federal labor officials. The USMCA labor provisions were
partially meant to help Mexican workers elect unions they feel
will best fight for their interests, breaking the grip of
business-friendly groups that operated behind workers' backs for
years as cheap labor lured companies to Mexico. GM is under
pressure to keep costs low as it faces off with the first major
independent Mexican union to sprout up since the start of the
new trade deal. A victory for the 6,300 workers in Silao could
spur higher demands at its other Mexico sites and across the
auto industry, experts say.
"That could be a game changer," said Harley Shaiken, a labor
scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. A union
dispute at the same GM plant last year prompted U.S. officials
to lodge the first USMCA labor complaint, threatening tariffs on
GM's Silao pickups if the company did not guarantee worker
rights. Workers ended up ousting the massive union that had been
in power for 25 years and elected SINTTIA, a fledgling group led
by fellow workers and supported by international activists.
($1 = 20.2251 Mexican pesos)
(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by David Gregorio)
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