UAW, Lear Agreement Will Save 200 Jobs in Wisconsin

JANESVILLE, Wis., July 17 -- The UAW announced today that the Union and Lear Corporation have agreed to a joint plan which will preserve jobs for 200 members of UAW Local 95 who work at Lear's seating plant in Janesville, Wisconsin.

"I'm very proud of what our members in Janesville have accomplished," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "And I'm pleased that Lear management was willing to give full and fair consideration to our proposals. Working together, we came up with a solution that works for everybody."

Over 800 members of UAW Local 95 work at the Lear plant in Janesville, which supplies seats to a nearby General Motors assembly plant, and also welds parts for other plants in the Lear Seating Systems Division. In October 2001, Lear management informed the UAW that it intended to relocate welding operations to Tlahuac, Mexico.

Following extensive discussions, however, the Union and the company agreed to a plan that will improve productivity, add $1 million in new investment to the Janesville plant, and preserve 200 jobs of UAW members.

"We were able to resolve this problem because we had respect on both sides of the table," said Dennis Williams, Director of UAW Region 4, who led the UAW's effort to keep jobs in Janesville. "We listened to the company's concerns about the profitability of their welding operations. They listened to our proposals for improvements. The result is, we're turning an unprofitable operation into a profitable one, and preserving good-paying, family-wage jobs in Wisconsin."

As a result of the joint plan agreed to by the UAW and Lear, some of the welding work scheduled to move to Mexico will remain in Janesville. Other jobs will be retained due to the in-sourcing of welding jobs that had been sent to outside contractors due to a lack of capacity, and the transfer of some workers from welding jobs to seat assembly jobs.

"This was a total team effort," said Mike Sheridan, President of UAW Local 95, an amalgamated local union which represents workers at both Lear and GM in Janesville, as well as manufacturing, health care, and financial services workers in a variety of locations in Southern Wisconsin. "Any time you keep jobs here in town, and you add investment to a major manufacturing facility, that's a great day for our local union and for our community."