Striking Mexican autoworkers

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Global Automotive Report
VW offers 7 percent raise to striking Mexican workers


By Detroit News staff reports and wire services



    MEXICO CITY -- Volkswagen offered its 12,500 striking Mexican workers a 7 percent raise Monday after a round of heated negotiations and a threatened nationwide boycott of the automaker.
   Nearly 80 percent of the work force walked off the job Saturday at Volkswagen's 16,000-employee factory in central Puebla state, the only plant in the world that manufactures both the new and old-style Beetles.
   The workers began by demanding a 21 percent salary increase above their current average daily pay of nearly $30. They reduced their demands to a 19 percent increase Monday.
   Volkswagen called its first formal contract offer "fair and in accordance with the economics of the country."
   "In the opinion of the company, the union's counterproposal of 19 percent is not a serious offer and could force the company to retract its current offer," Volkswagen said in a statement released Monday.
   Miguel Galan, a spokesman for Volkswagen's labor union, said workers were willing to "adjust" their demands during another round of negotiations scheduled for today.
   Separately, Volkswagen Chief Executive Ferdinand Piech said Europe's biggest automaker would need another factory in North America if the dollar continues to weaken and the euro keeps rising.
   Piech told Financial Times Deutschland the group was considering building a new plant to serve the NAFTA free trade zone, which includes the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
   "If the dollar continues to weaken, we would need another plant in the NAFTA territory," he told the newspaper.
   He said that VW could move some of its production to South America in the short term.