Beacon Journal staff report
The United Steelworkers said Sunday it has reached a tentative agreement with Goodyear on a new four-year labor agreement.
The pact covers 8,500 of the company’s hourly employees at six locations, including about 280 workers in Akron who make NASCAR and other race tires.
“The new tentative location includes economic and noneconomic improvements,” USW International vice president Tom Conway, head of the bargaining team for the Pittsburgh-based union, said in a news release.
Specific details of the deal are being withheld until bargaining committee members can directly discuss contract provisions on a local level, the union said.
The next step is for the tentative agreement to go to the locals for ratification in the next couple of weeks, Ed Markey, Goodyear vice president of corporate communications, said Sunday afternoon. He declined to comment further.
In a posting earlier this month on the company’s contract negotiation Web page, Goodyear said the main issues were wages, profit sharing, plant protection, vacations and more.
A previous four-year contract expired Saturday.
The other plants covered under the tentative agreement are in Buffalo, N.Y;, Danville, Va.; Fayetteville, N.C.; Gadsden, Ala.; and Topeka, Kansas.
Contract negotiations began in April in Cincinnati.
The USW represents about 850,000 workers nationwide and in Canada and the Caribbean who work in a wide range of industries.