By Alabama Public Radio
Tuscaloosa, AL – B-F-Goodrich Tire Manufacturing has agreed to spend 150 million dollars on improvements at four North American plants, including two in Alabama. The company has also dropped demands for concessions under a new two-year deal with labor. Canadian union members have already approved the deal...about 34 hundred U.S. union members will vote on it later this week. If the agreement is approved, it will ensure that the two tire plants in Tuscaloosa and Opelika would remain open through July of 2006. More than 23-hundred workers at the plant had threatened to go on strike this month, but they postponed the plans as talks with management continued beyond the strike deadline. The new contract affecting the four plants will expire in 2006...the other two plants affected are in Indiana and Ontario.