News Sources: GM Workers Go on Strike

Workers at General Motors Corp. plants across the U.S. have walked out on strike after talks with the main auto union failed to reach a new pay accord. It's the first U.S.-wide strike during auto contract negotiations since 1976. The negotiations apparently stalled over the union's quest to protect jobs by getting the company to guarantee that new vehicles would be built in U.S. factories. Reporters looking for experts to interview on this topic can find them online at the collegenews.org database of news sources and subject matter experts from America's leading liberal arts colleges, including the following (click on names for contact information):

Candace Howes - Associate Professor of Economics, Connecticut College - Howes is an auto industry analyst for the United Auto Workers, who published a monograph for the Economic Policy Institute on the effect of Japanese direct investment on employment and wages in the U.S. (University of Michigan Press, 2000) and a book on industrial competitiveness and economic performance.

Gary Chaison - Professor of Industrial Relations, Clark University - Chaison is one of the most widely regarded scholars on unions worldwide and an expert in collective bargaining, labor movements and union organizing extensively. He has been quoted on the UPS strike and UAW/United Steelworkers merger, and has written Union Mergers in Hard Times-A View from Five Countries.

Janet C. Goulet -Professor of Economics, Wittenberg University - Goulet is former director of Center for Labor Management Cooperation and is an expert on labor-management cooperation in economic development. She has served as an arbitrator for the Ohio Employee Relations Board, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and the American Arbitration Association. She has been published in the Journal of Behavioral Economics.