By Alabama Public Radio
Opelika, AL – Union members at three B-F-Goodrich Tire Manufacturing plants in the United States approved labor agreements Thursday. The deal covers about 34-hundred employees represented by the United Steelworkers of America at plants in Tuscaloosa, Opelika and Indiana. About a thousand workers in Ontario, Canada also approved the deal Monday...more than three weeks after continued talks saved the workers from striking. The U-S workers voted 70 percent in favor of the contract Thursday...the Ontario workers approved the agreement with a 94 percent vote. Both agreements will expire in 2006. Officials say the the agreement stipulates that there will be no plant closures or layoffs during the term of the agreement.