This is a historic defeat for the UAW in particular and labor movement in general, not that the circumstances under which the UAW negotiated this agreement are totally under their control, as I indicated in my News Journal Delaware Talk Back blog entries on the GM agreement (see http://www.delawareonline.com/blogs/talkback/2007/09/thoughts-on-gm-strike-by-chrysler.html)
and later Chrysler agreement (see http://www.delawareonline.com/blogs/talkback/2007/10/chrysler-strike-and-new-deal-vision.html).
To get locals to vote for the agreement after several major locals had rejected it, all local appointees were forced to guarantee they would support the tentative deal.
Having been compelled to force this down their constituent's throats, it is hard to know how the UAW can maintain its roll as a leader in social unionism, supporting civil rights and single-payer health care movements. Indeed, there is a question how they can ever hope to organize unrepresented autoworkers and others if they are unable to prevent such historical rollbacks. In the the wake of 60's social ferment, a rank-and-file reform movement rose in the UAW, culminating in the New Directions Movement, of which UAW Chrysler negotiating chair Bill Parker was perhaps the highest ranking member. Parker opposed the agreement, yet his own local eventually ratified it.
The ratification is a Pyrrhic victory for the UAW leadership. It remains to be seen whether the rank and file movement will gain new credibility and growth through this development to influence the UAW and rebuild labor's power. For an account of some of the interaction of 60's radicalism and the struggles for safety and dignity on the assembly line, see my work Autoplant: a poetic monologue at www.autoplant.info.