General Motors Co. and the United Auto Workers are down to a crucial topic at the bargaining table: wages, the Wall Street Journal reported. The UAW is pressing GM to lock in more guaranteed wage increases for members during the next four-year labor contact, while company bargainers want to give workers more pay in the form of lump-sum bonuses that don’t raise their long-term labor costs. Reaching a resolution on this topic is one of the few remaining obstacles to getting a new tentative labor pact for the company’s 46,000 full-time factory workers and ending a 23-day strike that has brought the Detroit auto maker’s U.S. factories to a standstill. The conflict over how to increase factory-worker pay is especially intense in this round of talks, with both sides wary of a possible cooling in the U.S. car market and looking to secure terms on pay for the next four years. U.S. auto sales remain healthy after a record stretch, but have historically been prone to sharp downturns.
