CAW workers start voting on deal with Chrysler

Anxious Chrysler workers began voting Saturday on a deal reached between the company and their union that will decide the employees' future.

"If we don't do this thing, we might lose the job and Chrysler might move from here, so we have no choice," one worker leaving a ratification meeting in Toronto told CBC News.

Added another, "We're not fighting for just ourselves, we're fighting for the next generation, my kids."

Both declined to be named.

Chrysler workers were voting in Toronto, Brampton and Windsor over the weekend with results expected late Sunday or Monday.

After a week of tense negotiations, the Canadian Auto Workers union announced Friday night that it had reached a tentative agreement that will save the automaker $240 million a year.

"We provided what we believe is the best possible security for our members even though that gun pointed at our head was something we had to deal with," said CAW president Ken Lewenza.

The deal preserves workers' base wages and pensions, but cuts some of their benefits, including some health coverage, as well as tuition and car purchase rebates.

The deal will achieve savings equivalent to the reduction of $19 an hour in labour costs that Chrysler was demanding, Lewenza said, adding that he is confident workers will approve it.

"The labour movement did what they could do and now we're done. We have accepted responsibility and we're done."

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told CBC News on Saturday in Washington, where he is attending an International Monetary Fund meeting, that the deal is a positive sign for the auto sector.

"We all agreed back in December to see this through, assuming they had a viable plan going forward and it looks like they've accomplished that."

However, at least one labour analyst said the deal may not go far enough.

"Nineteen dollars an hour is huge for the union to give away. It is not enough to turn Chrysler around and so Chrysler has a whole series of other things it needs to do in order to remain competitive," Charlotte Yates of McMaster University in Hamilton told CBC News in an interview.

Chrysler has until April 30 to negotiate an alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat and also to reach deals with its American workers and its bondholders to qualify for government loans.

The deal reached between Chrysler and the CAW is expected to serve as a template for negotiations with the other struggling automakers.

Workers at General Motors accepted a deal last month in which they didn't have to give up as much, but the CAW said Saturday it will have to go back to those workers and ask them to give up more.