Chrysler is facing its first strike in a decade after unions members began to walk off the job today following a break down in talks between the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and the US carmaker’s management.

The strike – Chrysler’s first since 1997 when one of its plants was closed down – began after the UAW could not agree the terms of a new four-year contract between the US company and its workers.

The UAW is also attempting to reach new four-year agreements with General Motors (GM) and Ford Motors, the other two major Detroit carmakers. Union members have already held a two-day strike at GM.

The UAW had set an 11 am deadline today to reach an agreement with Chrysler’s management or see about 49,000 workers leave their jobs at 24 US factories and other sites.

On Monday, the UAW said: “The company has thus far failed to make an offer that adequately addresses the needs of our membership.”

Chrysler entered the talks seeking health care cost concessions that the UAW already granted to GM and Ford in 2005. Bargaining also has focused on how much

Chrysler would pay into a company-funded, union-run trust that would take over its unfunded retiree health care costs, estimated at $18 billion.

The union agreed to the creation of such a trust last month in GM’s contract, but GM needed the trust more than Chrysler because it has 340,000 retirees and surviving spouses, compared with 78,000 at Chrysler, and billions more in retiree health care obligations.

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