A Chicago-area auto mechanics’ strike ended Sunday after union employees voted by a slim margin to accept a tentative four-year work contract from the association representing their dealerships of employment.
Those dealerships — which are part of the Chicago New Car Dealers Committee, or NCDC — will be open for service Monday, per a statement from NCDC spokesman Mark Bilek. The strike lasted eight weeks.
The mechanics belong to Local 701, which is part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers trade union. More than 800 of them went on strike on Aug. 2, just after a majority voted on Aug. 1 to reject a version of a four-year work contract proposal offered by the NCDC on July 31.
Mechanics from 56 dealerships engaged in the strike when it started. Over the course of eight weeks, several dealerships indicated they no longer wanted to be part of the NCDC. That ended up dropping the number of participating dealerships to 35 before the strike came to an end Sunday.
In an update posted to its website, Local 701 urged members who participated in the work stoppage but now have a ratified agreement to report to work Monday.
“This will help to facilitate the return-to-work process and give everyone a chance to have one meeting with their specific dealer,” the update said. “This will help ensure everyone is on the same page.”
Local 701 took issue with several previous iterations of the four-year work contract. One of the holdout arguments of the strike pertained to how stores planned to contribute to the union’s health and welfare fund.
In 2017, union members went on strike for more than seven weeks during similar contract debate with the dealerships.