Getting your player ready...
Toronto – The Canadian Auto Workers union reached a tentative agreement with General Motors Corp. minutes before a strike deadline late Tuesday, averting a walkout by 17,000 members and capping weeks of heated negotiations with the Big Three automakers.
The three-year contract, on the heels of agreements with Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG, was reached after GM withdrew a demand for shorter worker breaks at its assembly complex outside Toronto.
GM faced a strike deadline of midnight Tuesday. The last walkout by the Canadian division was in 1996 and lasted 22 days.
CAW president Buzz Hargrove called off the strike deadline while the union and General Motors were putting the contract’s terms on paper.
