By GREG KEENAN
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 Posted at 12:24 AM EDT
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Roughly 17,000 General Motors autoworkers were told to stand down from threatened strike action late Tuesday as the Canadian Auto Workers union announced an 11th-hour deal with the world's biggest automaker.

The tentative deal came minutes before a planned strike by southern Ontario workers in Oshawa, St. Catharines and the Toronto area.

CAW president Buzz Hargrave says more work needs to be done and that issues at the Oshawa plant have yet to be resolved.

He says negotiators will continue talks throughout the evening with the last of the Big Three automakers to reach a labour agreement.

Workers at DaimlerChrysler ratified their deal over the weekend and Ford approved their deal last week.

The CAW uses so-called "pattern bargaining" in negotiating new pension, wage and job security terms with the three companies, in which it focuses talks on one company and then demands the other two match the deal.

Mr. Hargrove called the talks "a very difficult set of negotiations."

"We have reached a tentative agreement... we still have some work to do," Mr. Hargrove said.

"This has been a very difficult set of negotiations with General Motors."