Autos: And Now for G.M.

After 34 hours of round-the-clock bargaining, negotiators for the United Auto Workers and Chrysler Corp. one night last week reached weary agreement on a new contract—less than four hours before the strike deadline. Though Chrysler was hardly happy with the generous settlement it had been forced to accept, Company Negotiators John D. Leary and William E. O'Brien greeted the accord with relief. The smallest of the Big Three automakers has been enjoying a sales spurt fueled partly by the strike at Ford. Last month was Chrysler's best October ever—and only by averting a strike could it hope to keep its momentum.

Though agreement came in time, many workers had begun to walk off the job five days before the deadline, and their numbers continued to grow even after the settlement was announced. The unauthorized work stoppages finally closed down Chrysler's auto-assembly operations, though company officials hoped to resume production this week. The walkouts were caused by the same sort of unresolved local work issues that kept Ford shut down for two weeks after it agreed on a nationwide contract. Ford finally went back into production only last week.

Chrysler's 95,000 workers seemed likely to ratify their national settlement. Under the terms, the $4.64 an hour the average worker now gets in wages and benefits would rise over a three-year period by almost a dollar, virtually the same increase agreed on at Ford. Beyond that, U.A.W. Boss Walter Reuther and his aide Douglas Fraser won some extras, notably a Chrysler commitment to raise the wages of its 11,000 Canadian workers over the next 30 months to the same level as those of U.S. workers, who now earn an average 34¢ an hour more.

Reuther plans to exact similar concessions from Ford and General Motors on the question of U.S.-Canadian parity. He will get his chance at Ford during upcoming negotiations covering its Canadian workers. G.M. is the only one of the Big Three that has yet to come to terms with the union on a national contract. As the richest, it may hold out against some of Reuther's demands—even to the point of risking a strike. But Reuther, cheered by last week's settlement, predicted that "there is a Chrysler in both Ford and G.M.'s futures."