KEY POINTS:
Detroit - United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger says the union has been pushed into a strike by General Motors Corp after the automaker failed to meet it halfway in marathon contract talks.
"You can be pushed off a cliff, and that's what happened here," Gettelfinger said, speaking to reporters at a news conference at the union's Detroit headquarters.
Gettelfinger said that union negotiators would head back to the bargaining table and remained ready to discuss one of GM's key demands of establishing a trust fund to pay for retiree health care.
"We are ready to go in and wrap these negotiations," he said, adding that bargaining has to be a "two-way street."
But he cautioned that the United Auto Workers had no intention of suspending the strike before an agreement was reached with General Motors.
Gettelfinger, in his first public comments since bargaining began in July, said that the union's "No 1" issue was to protect the job security of 73,000 union-represented GM workers in negotiations.
Talks between the two sides also reached an impasse over issues related to wages and benefits of workers, job creation, profit-sharing and investment in US plants, the UAW chief said.
Gettelfinger was joined by Cal Rapson, the UAW's top GM negotiator, and other members of the bargaining team at the news conference.
The UAW set a deadline of late Sunday night local time when negotiators from both sides failed to reach agreement on a new contract to replace a 4-year deal on wages and benefits that expired on September 14.
Gettelfinger said GM's push to establish a cost-saving voluntary employee beneficiary association (Veba) was not the reason that the UAW had declared an impasse in the talks.
"We made it clear to them that we needed to see movement," he said, adding that GM came to the bargaining table with a one-way philosophy.
"The company walked right up to the deadline like they really didn't care," he said.
- Reuters
