G.M. Deal Saves One Plant, Union Says, but 3 Others Stay Shut

DETROIT — General Motors has agreed to continue production at a Detroit plant it had planned to shut down, but will not resume operations at three others recently idled, the United Automobile Workers union said Thursday in announcing the terms of a tentative contract agreement.

The details were released as leaders of the union’s G.M. locals gathered in Detroit to learn and consider the terms. If they accept the tentative agreement, they could call an immediate end to a monthlong strike. They could also continue the walkout until the deal is ratified by a majority of the 49,000 U.A.W. members employed by G.M.

According to a summary posted online by the union, the deal includes wage increases and a formula for allowing temporary workers to become full-time employees.

It would also keep open the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which G.M. had said it would close.

It does not reverse plans for three other plants where production has ceased, including one in Lordstown, Ohio, but provides retirement incentives for workers displaced there.

When it announced the tentative accord on Wednesday, the U.A.W. said it had “achieved major wins.” According to the online summary, the agreement has these provisions:

• A 3 percent wage increase in the second and fourth years of the contract, and a 4 percent lump-sum payment in the first and third years.

• A shortened path to permanent status for full-time temporary workers, beginning in 2020, and a path for part-time temporary employees to convert to regular status, starting in 2021.

• No change to the health care plan and no additional costs.

• An $11,000 ratification bonus for “seniority employees,” and a $4,500 bonus for temporary employees.

• The elimination of a $12,000 cap on profit-sharing payouts.

Ratification of the agreement is not a foregone conclusion. The last time the U.A.W. negotiated a contract with G.M., approval was delayed for a month in part because the automaker’s skilled-trades workers rejected the terms.

A rejection of the proposed contract would be a rebuke for the U.A.W. president, Gary Jones, and his negotiating team.

“If the rank-and-file vote down an agreement their leaders send them, they also are voting down the leaders,” said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan who follows the auto industry. “Workers may ask whether it was worth being out of work a month to get a deal that could be close to what they would have gotten with no strike and no loss of pay.”

There were signs of dissent from union members outside the Renaissance Center office complex, where G.M. is headquartered and the contract negotiations took place. As the roughly 200 union officials who will vote on the proposed contract arrived for the meeting, they were greeted by about 30 workers from the Lordstown plant in red T-shirts shouting, “Vote no!”

“If we don’t have product in Lordstown, we want them to vote no on this contract,” said Anthony Naples, a father of five who worked for 25 years at the Lordstown plant. “Now our jobs are going away. They have to figure out a way to get product in the U.S.”

One of the union’s main objectives was getting G.M. to reopen the car factory in Lordstown, a goal that President Trump endorsed. But there is no indication that the matter was ever on the table in the contract talks. G.M. idled that plant, and others in Baltimore and in Warren, Mich., as part of a cost-cutting effort that eliminated 2,800 factory jobs and thousands of white-collar positions.

In a statement on Thursday, General Motors said it was looking into building a battery factory near Lordstown that would employ about 1,000 workers. The plant would be built with a partner and would be unionized, but under a separate contract.

An electric-truck company that hopes to purchase the Lordstown plant from G.M. would employ about 400 production workers, the automaker said.

The company has not indicated that displaced workers from its Lordstown plant would be given preference in hiring at either operation.

G.M. reaffirmed a plan announced in May to invest $700 million in three existing plants in Ohio — in Parma, Toledo, and the Dayton area — with an expected net gain of 450 jobs.

“G.M. is committed to future investment and job growth in Ohio,” the company said.

If the G.M. contract is ratified, the U.A.W. will turn its focus to Ford Motor or Fiat Chrysler. Contracts with those manufacturers expired on Sept. 14, but workers continued reporting to assembly lines while the union negotiated with G.M.